“That’s what many believe, but I’ve learned my mother laid the curse on her own land to protect me and my sister, Brenna.”
“Who is not actually Brenna.”
“That’s me, I suppose. Her name’s Layla. She was hidden as well. My mother cursed Lydel, and it’s remained enshrouded in thorns ever since.”
“Thorns protecting people turned to stone, from what I heard.”
“If they’ve been turned to stone, I’ll find a way to free them. I’m going to right this. How much ofEmber’s Shadowdid you read?”
“What I could.” A frown tightened her brow. “It’s funny. Each time I opened it, I read something different, as if the book held things back from the reader. Other times, I only found blank pages.”
I’d seen the same thing. “Did you read about the powerless?”
“They’re the dregs. Probably the Lieges too.”
As I suspected. “We need to break the spell binding them to those forms.”
“And then what?”
“I still have to kill Ivenrail.”
“Don’t leave a gap in Bledmire or it’ll haunt you.”
“I have someone in mind to take the throne.”
I just had to track down Zayde.
5
VEXXION
Ilived, if floating somewhere could be considered living. That meant Fury hadn’t killed Ivenrail. Or she had, and I was locked somewhere between faerie and whatever waited for us after we died.
If I was dead, why did the pain and anguish about losing the woman I’d love beyond this lifetime still stab through me like a jagged blade?
I swore I could hear her calling to me, telling me she needed me, that she loved me, that she’d wait forever as long as we could be together again. Yet a vast wall stood between us, one so tall and wide, I’d never be able to scale it.
That wouldn’t do. Nothing and no one would keep me from my fury. Rage burned through me, and I called my threads, lashing them against the wall. I blasted magic at it, even beat on it with my fists. But she remained on one side and I on the other.
“Fury,” I bellowed until my voice went raw and tattered, until I couldn’t find the strength to shout her name again.
I slumped on the ground and peered around, taking in a vast desert stretching around me in all directions. Nothing broke the desolate, scraggly wasteland of sand and tiny rocks and dirt other than a few gray leafless trees pointing starkly toward the sky in the distance and the enormous wall behind me.
An inky sky bled overhead, punctured with what looked like stars, but they couldn’t be. The dim, muted lights felt like dreams unspoken, those whispered by the drained who’d come here before me. Those who were banished to wander this realm forever.
While I’d never been to the ether before, I recognized it from what I’d read, books containing the experiences of those who’d been here and somehow found their way home. Tipping my head back, I leaned it against the wall that felt and looked like stone, but stone could be chiseled. It could be cut away and destroyed.
My magic couldn’t penetrate this blighted substance.
I could stillfeelher pleading with me to come back, to be with her once again. Her face filled my mind as anguish gnawed at my bones. This desolate place was a mirror of my pain, every bit of the cold, emptiness inside me. This was the man I became without her by my side.
If I knew my fury, and I knew her potential almost as well as my own, she would never stop trying to reach me. She’d cast the spell she’d used with the trapped creatures, over and over until she dropped from exhaustion. And after only a brief rest,she’d try again. She’d keep at it until she had nothing left to give. Even then, she’d scrape at the bottom of her well of power to find more to throw my way.
How could I do anything less than keep trying to reach her?
Rising to my feet, I walked beside the wall, my bare feet sinking into the sand that tried to suck me down into its hot, coarse embrace. I studied the wall as I walked, looking for a crack or anything unusual that might tell me that here, my magic might make a difference.
I found nothing, just smooth stone almost the exact same color as the sand beneath my feet, the same sand that stretched away on my left forever.
