Gently, he touched a hand to her face, tracing the sharp curve of her cheeks with his bloodstained fingers. Her eyes were closed, lashes dark and thick as the stroke of a brush on an oil painting. He pushed her hair back, his vision fading in and out, his head growing light. His fingers trailed down the edge of her jaw to her neck.
Andthere,faint as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing.
A pulse.
Relief spread warm across his chest—or perhaps it was his own blood. He couldn’t tell anymore, and it no longer mattered.
Ramson tipped her face to his. In his imagination, her eyelids flitted open, deep brown eyes meeting his.
He smiled. “Hello, Witch,” he mumbled. “Must we always meet in the direst of situations?”
He exhaled; the world grew black.
Linn flung open the doors to the Temple of the Skies to piercing sunlight and winds that screamed of chaos. Most of the courtyard bore traces of battle, clay-brick rubble strewn everywhere. There were bodies, too—the guards, their pale shifts now stained red. Of the dozen or so Linn had seen, there were only a few left, trading blows with the Cyrilians.
In the midst of it all, strolling unhurriedly toward the battle as though it were a morning walk, was Ying shi’sen, the Shadow Master. In the daylight, his hair was dark, streaks of it hanging in his face. He kept his black cloak wrapped tightly around him like armor.
Several Cyrilians looked up as he approached. Their faces twisted in snarls. One of them stepped forward, a man with hair almost as pale as his skin.
There was only a flick in his eyes, and the earth before them shifted to sand, twisting into columns that lengthened into sharpened, hardened spears.
They flew at Ying shi’sen.
The Temple Master spread his arms, opening his cloak. Darkness exploded from him—it was the only way to describe it ashis cloak seemed toexpand,shadows enveloping the sky. For a moment, Linn’s vision went black. When it cleared, Ying shi’sen stood exactly where he had been, utterly still but for the smallest ripple across his cloak as it fell back into place. The sand swords were gone.
For once, Linn’s place was not in this battle. She touched a finger to the token that rested against her collarbone. She knew what she had to do. Her gods, the threads of fate, whatever it was, had set her on this path, and she’d made a promise to an old man who had saved her life.
Action, counteraction.
By the time Linn arrived at the Bei’kin Bookhouse, its doors had been smashed through, ancient wooden frames and delicate carvings that had withstood the tides of dynasties destroyed with a single smash of a sword.
Rage simmered in her veins.
She palmed her blades and stepped into the dark.
The interior of the bookhouse was silent, the air heavy with centuries of knowledge perfumed in the scent of wood and scrolls and ink. Pathways wound into the heart of the building, the ceiling-high shelves forming a maze of walls. In the dimness, Linn could make out books, scrolls, and even the most ancient of stone tablets stacked neatly on shelves throughout the hallway, like the scales of a long, winding dragon. Here was where, to preserve the sacred relics, light did not reach.
The jade tablet that Gen had told her about lay in here.
And it must not fall into the Cyrilians’ hands.
Linn flared her Affinity, stretching her consciousness into winds that wove a map of the bookhouse in her mind, and stepped into the darkness.
A few turns later, she felt it: a tremor in the air down the next right. Several bodies, their breaths stirring ever so slightly against her Affinity.
Linn flattened herself against a shelf, inching toward the end of the corridor. Lifting her dagger, she peered out.
There was nothing there. Shelves looming out of the near pitch-black, ridged edges of books lining them. Yet…her winds traced to her an outline of someone standing there.
Linn crept forward, squinting.
And then drew a sharp breath.
In front of her, the narrow maze of shelves opened into the center of the bookhouse. Even in the dim lighting, Linn could make out a marble pedestal; on it rested a slab of rock that pulsed with a green hue.
The jade tablet.She closed the distance to it, reaching a hand out—
Her fingers swept right through it, as though there was nothing there.
