brace for an impact that never comes.
Instead, I’m falling.
My brain can’t catch up as the world reels around me. I see churning darkness and an intermittent light fading from view as I plummetdown, down, down, on and on.
Could this be the fall into the underworld?My stomach swoops and the earth narrows around me, pinching until I feel like a cork being screwed into a bottle. I hurtle faster and faster, spinning aerial somersaults as the darkness consumes everything.
And then I slam into a wall of water.
The impact blasts my senses to oblivion. I can’t tell which way I’ve landed. Something vital is broken.My ribs? My pelvis?Pain. There’s so much pain.
I choke, and my lungs fill with water that burns like a flame. The current drags me—up? Down? I can’t orient myself. I can’t move, I can’t breathe.
Then something seizes my shirt. A hand. It pulls,hard, and some inner voice screams:SWIM, LYRIA. SWIM NOW OR DIE.
I kick, and every move sends spasms of pain through me. My bones feel like rubber. But I struggle, thrashing; the blackness pitches, then all at once the world explodes around my ears as I slam through the surface.
Air.
I gasp the deepest breath I’ve ever taken.
“Hold on,” someone growls.
I know that voice. I think I hate that voice.
Arms like tree trunks clamp around me. I’m being dragged. We hit pebbles—the shore. Cygnus pulls me onto rough terrain, then collapses.
I roll and vomit until hacking consumes me. When it’s over, I lie still, trembling.
“Are you okay?” he pants.
It’s all I can do to shake my head a millimeter. I’m sinking deep within myself, allowing the Talent to take over, to rush through my limbs and heal what’s been broken. I don’t know how long it takes, but the healing exhausts me. So much harder to fix things than break them. Seconds pass, filled with Cygnus’s tense and shallow breathing.
“Lyria?” Cygnus drops beside me. “Lyria, talk to me.”
Gradually, the pain eases. The fire in my blood recedes as the magic ebbs from my system, until finally, I can sit up and examine my surroundings.
We’ve fallen into an underground lake. The only light comes from a tiny shaft in the ceiling, some inestimably vast distance above. Blinking up at the opening, I’m reminded of the stained glass window in the chapel where I met Davina. It has the same greenish glow, except the light behind it shimmers and swirls. The glow is unlike sunlight, or firelight; it’s something else entirely, something I only recognize because it puts form to what I have always felt flowing through my veins.
The light comes frommagic.
The cavern is huge. You could put the whole of Rodrick’s castle inside and the tallest tower still wouldn’t scrape the ceiling above us. As I tear my eyes from the portal, they adjust, and the otherworldly landscape clarifies. What I initially mistook for pitch-blackness is actually a mesmerizing mixture of dark purples, blues, and greens. The stalagmites tower higher than Ironwood trees, some bedecked with pale bioluminescent fungi.
I look behind at the lake. In order to reach the portal we just fell from, we’ll need to cross the lake, climb a boulder field, and then traverse a rocky cliffside. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.
Where the hell are we?
“Lyria? Are you all right?” Cygnus asks.
I blink, coming back to my body.
“Lyria. I need you to answer. Can you hear me?”
I pounce. “WHAT—IN—THE—ETERNAL—HELL—” I hit any part of him I can reach. Head. Shoulders. It’s too dark to see clearly, so I whale aimlessly. “WAS—THAT?”
Confusion and reactive fury blast through me, and my primal self takes over—that small and scrappy part of me that’s determined to stay alive. Cygnus is a threat. He’s always been a threat.He is the enemy, that desperate inner part of me roars.
“I can explain!” Cygnus seizes my wrists. “Lyria, listen to me!”
