I must stop Thamaos. If I have to burn his bones to dust, I will.
My name is a ghost in the trees. I listen as fiery branches and limbs start to fall, crashing around me.
My rune throbs. Alexus.
The roots seem to crawl as I move, as I try to run toward his voice. I have to get him out of here. I have to get us to safety.
The roar of fire and the groan of wood is so loud though, it soon drowns him out. I keep trying. I just want to see his face.
Ahead, the night splits open, and Fleurie appears. I halt, stumbling over a root, crashing to my knees. When I look up, she’s a few steps in front of me, holding out her hand. The only thing separating us is a ring of fire.
I can’t go with her. I can’t let her take me to the prince.
But maybe I should. Maybe then I could end this. Maybe, with her deal done, she would help me.
“Trust me,” she says. Only the words don’t fall from her lips. She signs them, in my language.
A language she cannot possibly know.
Flames roil through the wood and over the canopy around us both. Her eyes are so sad, tear-filled golden-brown orbs reflecting the light, and her lip quivers, as though her heart is breaking.
“Raina,” she shakes her head, face pleading. “I’m going to get everyone out. Come with me. Just let me try to get you out of here too. I can’t leave you.”
She extends her hand again, and at the same time, my abyss roils to life.
I close my eyes and reach for them both.
VII
INTO THE DIM
75
RAINA
I’m in a vast, dim space that feels like death. If I could imagine what death might feel like. Fleurie is with me, floating and weightless.
I’ve stepped into my abyss many times now, but this time, it feels more like it did when I first came to know it. Like I’m hanging off the edge of the world, ready to drop into nothingness.
The release of pressure is a sudden rip between me and Fleurie. Her eyes go wide, and she reaches for me, but then I’m cast in one direction, her in another.
Whether I want to or not, I begin the fall into a new void, stripped away from everyone I love, unsure where I’m going to land.
I hit the slab of crumbled stone, and the breath leaves my body in a whoosh.
My ears ring, and I can’t see until everything clears—sight and sound—and my breath returns on a gasp that leaves me coughing, the taste of smoke in my mouth.
Trembling, I stare up at a starry night sky. No smoke. No fire. I’d thought of the clearing when Fleurie reached for me. I wanted to be with everyone I love.
This is not the clearing.
Oddly, the night is not cold. It’s balmy, like deep summer, too warm on my burned skin. I roll up and cringe, still coughing. Whatever happened with Fleurie feels like it blew me into pieces. I can’t stop shaking, everything aches, my eyes and throat burn, and there are pebbles and stones wedged into the skin of my back. The worst part is that my right hand and arm are badly blistered from reaching through the fire.
With my good hand, I rub my fingers over my back and knock away some of the stones, even as the world around me swims. It isn’t easy, but I get up and stagger to what’s left of a ruined column and stare out over a torchlit city below.
I’m… I’m in Quezira’s ruins. The other city of ruin. I saw this view from Colden’s eyes, and in Alexus’s dreams. It’s very much the same, practically unchanged.
Min-Thuret sits to my right, the center glass dome lit by moonlight, and in the near distance, I swear I see Alexus’s old home: the School of Night and Dawn, bearing the same three domes as Min-Thuret, only a smaller replica. I hadn’t known it still stood.
