The blade is relentless. It glints again, another brief flash. Another golden thread of power shoots up my arm and into my mind.
A third vision strikes me?—
Fire brushes my skin, as alluringly soft as feathers stroking down my arms, sliding around my waist, descending to my thighs, triggering a burn between my legs that grows until my back is arching, and I’m begging for release?—
My legs give way, and I drop to the ground, my arm falling, the blade scraping against the pebbled path.
Oh, please.
A messof heat and ice and iron dust and chains fills my mind, a torment of need and power that pins me to the spot.
Please, no more.
I try to push through it.
Ihaveto push through it.
If I’m going to have any hope of escape, I have to move. If my father’s memory is to live on, it has to be with me.
I have to live.
I scream at myself to move.Move, Thyra!
The moment I push myself upright again, my boots clacking against the pebbles, every breath filled with determination, another sensation fills me.
A gentle flutter within my chest.
Oh.
Tears of relief spill from my eyes as the soft, calm, comforting feeling washes through my heart, and now I understand why my father described it like a bird waking up. It’s like flight is being born within me, unwrapping its wings, promising to take me wherever I need to go.
I calculate how many seconds I might have to move inside the workshop and out of sight before my very first Oracle vision comes to me, but it seems I won’t have time after all.
The fluttering sensation intensifies, and every instinct in my body tells me to prepare myself right away.
Exhaling a breath, I settle back into a kneeling position, resting the Dragonstone Blade across my knees since my hand remains clamped about it.
All I can do is pray that I won’t be discovered here before the vision passes.
I stiffen as it takes hold, my body frozen, but my mind remains aware of my surroundings as I watch, as if from outside myself.
I’m running away from the village, sprinting toward theenormous rocky crevices at the village’s far northern end. Thousands of years of ocean waves have worn caves into those rocks, and I know which one I need to hide in.
My pounding heart calms as I slip inside the cave to shelter within its darkness. The highborn won’t find me here. I’m safe.
But that’s when my Sight takes me back to the village, away from the cave where I’ve found protection, and to the destruction I’ve left behind.
I can’t close my ears to the villagers’ screams as the Frost, and Ember, and Iron Fae tear their homes apart, cutting down every innocent fae in their path, their furious shouts chilling me to the bone.
“Where is she? Where are you hiding her? We won’t stop until we find her.”
I gasp as I come back to myself, my heart sinking at the awful realization: Running was only ever a viable option when my father and I were ten steps ahead of the highborn. It only worked when we were so long gone from a place that there was no chance the highborn would even think to look there in the first place.
If I run now, this village will pay the price.
Blinking back my tears, I consider my father, all the hopes he had for me, the freedom he gave me for as long as he could.
I’m grateful for it.
