My steps sounded too loud, each fall of my feet like the strike of a blasphemous bell, an insult to the temple’s forgotten god. The darkness within the temple watched me through the gap between its gates, waiting, deciding if it should crush the trespasser or allow me to approach.
My teeth chattered.
Remember why you’re here. You’re trying to keep Kair Toren from burning and Rellas from eating itself. You’re doing it so Ramond doesn’t have to fight a bloody war and Clover, Kaiden, and Matheo survive . . .
My pep talk wasn’t working. I wanted to run away screaming and keep running into the night, all the way home.
I reached the stairway and stepped on the first step.
A cold wind tore from inside the temple and fanned my face, flinging the stench of decay and wood rot at me. Cold sweat broke out at my hairline.
One step. Two. Three.
The bundle of rags was right there.
A flicker of blue light pulsed in front of me. I stopped. Another step and magic would electrocute me.
This was it. Do or die.
I cared way too much about these people to let their lives turn into a nightmare.
I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and checked it again. I had written the incantation down from memory. Every other time I tried to reproduce something from the books, I was able to do it exactly, but the incantation in the books wasn’t in English. It was in Sareso, spelled phonetically in English letters. So it was basically two paragraphs of mystical-sounding nonsense. I had tried my best, but I was only ninety-five percent sure I had recalled it correctly.
Right now five percent seemed like an enormous margin of error.
The paper in my fingers trembled. The longer I stood here, the more danger I invited. I just had to read it and get out.
“Osor dor mi Damaes!”
Magic clamped me. Each syllable was an effort, as if I were hitting a wall made of rubber as hard as I could, and the impact of it reverberated through my body.
Something stirred in the temple, deep in the primordial darkness.
“Re braste ca!”
The rags flew aside. A woman jerked upright, her body rigid, her mouth open, a filthy mass of red hair swirling around her head as if she were underwater. Her eyes rolled back into her head, the stark whites glaring at me, unseeing.
“Sonta mih perss, cro su geñi . . .”
A blue glow gripped her, pulling her off the steps up into the air. The knot of power inside the temple slithered toward me. Every word hurt.
“Mimpro bo ullu taprin . . .”
My jaw locked open. I strained, trying to make my mouth move.
An enormous hand, each finger as tall as me, reached out through the gap and grasped the side of the stone door. It was translucent and black glyphs slid over it, like ghostly tattoos. My mind refused to process it.
A second hand stretched out of the darkness, then two more, another pair, another . . . They grasped the doors, sliding over each other.
My jaws still wouldn’t move. My heart hammered against my ribs, my blood pounding through my head and throbbing in my ears. An invisible cord of magic connected me and the woman in the air. I felt her through it, like a fish on the end of a line.
The phantom hands pushed. The stone slabs of the door slid a couple of inches. Something in me knew that if those doors opened all the way, an unimaginable horror would seize all of us and pull us into the darkness. I had to finish it. I had to do it now.
Something crunched in my mouth. The salty taste of blood washed over my tongue, wetting the words as they tore out.
“Galbir os re cuar!”
A column of bright neon blue light burst out of the woman, turning her mouth and eyes a pure, brilliant white. A ring of light pulsed out of her and smashed into me in an explosion of heat and radiance, as if a star had burst into life in front of me. Magic sizzled on my skin. The light hit the temple doors and slammed them shut.
