The old man with the snake tattoo up his cheek looks from me to his adopted daughter, and I’ll give him credit for acting quickly. He gets out of bed and throws on a robe without saying a word as he processes the situation.
When he turns to me, he says, “Tell me everything. And quickly.”
I nod to him, and he opens the door. We hurry to his study, where I already know he has his laboratory, and I tell him what happened as well as about the crystal that rests in my pocket.
He doesn’t interrupt or ask questions as I speak, but when we get to his study, he stops me. “Give me the crystal,” he says.
I do, my teeth clenched as Fiona’s shaking slows. Gods, she’s almost gone. He holds the crystal up to the light. It’s glowing with a pure white light unlike the crystal that had been in the Hunter’s breastplate who had killed Nyxthos. That had been as black as pitch.
“I can infuse her with this power,” he says slowly, “but that won’t bind the power to her soul. That won’t replace Nyxthos’s power. I… I don’t have the skills to infuse souls with power.”
Dragons can manipulate souls.Inni says the words in my head, and suddenly the wall behind Rhaskar melts as if someone had poured hot water on a wall of ice. All five dragons stand just outside his study, their heads poking through the hole in the wall. Ainslee and Rhion stand beside them. Vyran must have brought them all here. Rhaskar’s arm shakes as though he’s trying to remind himselfnot to use magic against the dragons, that they aren’t the enemiescurrently.
“Inni put my soul into my body when I was born,” I say. “She says that dragons can manipulate them.”
Rhaskar takes a moment to stare at Inni before saying, “Why didn’t you release Vesper’s soul? It would be as easy as breaking the crystal, wouldn’t it?”
Vyran is the one who speaks. “No, it would not. Breaking the crystal would simply release her power, but her soul would be stuck within the shards. She would never become a swimmer again. She would never return to the Endless Sea to be drawn into another body.”
Rhion speaks up, a little uncertainty in his voice, and his eyes move to Sidon as he steps into the room. “Couldn’t you use enchanting to draw her from the crystal just like I’d use it to pull power from spellstones?”
Sidon looks to the King of Steel and cocks his head. “It could be done, but the energetic release would be explosive. Everyone in Stormhaven would die instantly if it were done now.”
Rhaskar steps toward the massive dragon and Rhion. “What if the power was anchored? What if it were tied to a soul, if it were tied to a body?”
Sidon’s head whips toward Rhaskar, and my heart races as I see the excitement on his face. “It could work. But there is no way to bind power to a body like that within the enchanting discipline.”
Rhaskar smiles. “I do not do enchanting. My limitations differ from yours. Individually, I don’t know that either of us coulddo this, but together… together we might.” His smile grows as he takes control of the situation. “We will need to work quickly because there isn’t much time left…”
I sit beside the bed where Fiona lies motionless. Her eyes are wide open as she stares at the ceiling. The sheets are covered in blood from her newest Mark which won’t stop bleeding. I hold her hand, not daring to leave the room as everyone waits to see what happens. I’m no enchanter, nor am I a Priest, so when Sidon, Rhion, and Rhaskar started describing their plan, I stepped out of the way. As long as they knew what they were doing, I wasn’t going to interrupt. There wasn’t enough time as it was.
But now, everything hinges on my little Priestess rather than dragons and Fae. Now, the only thing we can do is trust. She was supposed to die tonight; that much is clear. A god, probably Saelira, had told her the night we’d been so close to becoming something more than allies. It’s why she’d pulled back as much as I had. Knowing her, she was doing it to protect me.
I changed things by breaking that glass bead, by pulling Caeldra’s power to that specific spot at that specific time. At least I hope it did.
Now Fiona is fighting for her life and her soul. It was breaking, falling apart after Nyxthos’s magic began to fade from it. She hasto hold on to Vesper’s soul, to bond with a dragon similarly to how Inni and I are tied together.
She is strong. She will survive this. Sidon is sure that they have done everything possible.Inni’s voice isn’t as reassuring as she thinks it is, though. I can hear the wavering tone in it. She’s hopeful, but she isn’t sure.
I squeeze Fiona’s hand tighter. “You will come back to me, Little Priestess. You do not get to leave me. Not now. Not ever.”
Chapter 60
You shall find any trace of magic, and you shall bring it back. Magic is the universal evil, and you shall liberate every world and its people from it. It is your holy duty to do so, and any that try to stop you must be purged of its influence. It is not wrong to kill if it betters a world.
~Edicts of Elthir
Fiona
Everything is pain. It’s like I’m bursting at the seams, like the inside of me is too much for my body to hold. I’m being ripped apart by whatever is inside me. I try to scream, but how can you scream when your throat is in tatters?
There’s a darkness that wriggles its way through everything I am as if I were a quilt made of humanity with the pieces held together by shadows. I can’t exist without that darkness. It’s the only thing holding me together. More and more of it is forced into my alreadytoo full body. It rips me apart and stitches me back together, time and again.
The seconds pass and seem like hours as I’m stretched beyond possibility. Being burned alive would be more pleasant, and still, I can’t move. I can’t think. I can’t even escape it through death because that darkness wouldn’t allow it.
Then it stops. The pressure forcing that darkness into me evaporates. I can breathe. I can almost think. I’ve survived. The fullness isn’t gone, but it doesn’t hurt as much. The shadows which reinforce my body and mind seem to be strong enough to hold it.
I exist in that strange twilight land between waking and dreams, and I see the strangest thing. Nyxthos being impaled on a sword. Soldiers in plate armor like Rivena’s Riders, but these have crystals in their breastplates.
