Whether you accept me or not, the world will burn. It is foretold. Why fight against me when I only make you stronger?
How do you expect me to not be afraid when you say things like that?I ask her.
My question is met with taciturn silence. Then, in rapid flashes, images of the sun blacking out in the sky, of fire scorching the cracked earth fill my mind. Fear crashes over me before the heaviness in my limbs slowly recedes, leaving behind nauseating apprehension.
A more familiar presence enters my mind, then a voice gently pours over me like cool summer rain, eradicating the unbearable heat.“Carys?”
My pulse races, but this time it’s not out of fear. “Durvla?”
My heart yearns for a glimpse of her gentle smile and ridiculously perfect curls—to know that she’s truly there in my dreams and not just a figment of my desperate imagination. But at the same time, I don’t want her to see me. Not like this.
“Carys!”There’s relief and the tiniest hint of laughter in her voice. “I can’t see you, but I’m here. Are you alright? Are you alive?”
“Yes.” But that’s all I let her know before I fight against the urge to remain in her comforting presence.Wake up,I tell myself.Wake up, wake up, wake up.
I jolt awake, flames licking along my palms as my heart hammers. I press my hands together, and tiny embers leap off my skin and onto the furs on the large bed. “Shit,” I mumble, patting out the embers just as they begin to grow.
Swinging my legs off the bed, I press my bare feet against the wooden floor beneath me and close my eyes. That cold presence, that voice in the very back of my mind whispers something incoherent, chilling me. Since leaving Erleya, the enchantress’s voice has been muddled, as though the magical burnout I suffered back in Paramount has also weakened her.
For a few heartbeats, I inhale and exhale shakily, trying to slow my pulse, trying to keep that voice out of my awareness. Calling Alys’s grounding techniques to mind, I focus on the feel of my feet against the floor and my arse against the soft bed. The room reeks of earth, leather, and lard. The sound of the crackling fire reaches my ears, and when I open my eyes again, I’m confronted with the dancing flames in the long firepit at the front corner of the room.
I draw in a breath and wave my hand toward the fire. It dies down to barely a flicker, and the room fades into darkness.
My heart pounds as my mind plummets back into that dark cell beneath Paramount. I can still feel the sting of Eefa’s blade against my face and the agony of her betrayal. Of Iywan’s betrayal.
My memories are painted crimson—Ellynne bleeding out from the dagger in her abdomen, Callum’s throat slashed right in front of me. The sickening sensation of congealed blood on my hands, in my hair, and on my dress returns, and I press my hand over my mouth to suffocate a gag.
They’re both dead by Eefa’s hands.
But it might as well have been by mine.
I fling my hand toward the firepit again and flames roar back to life. The power of it blasts outwards and startles me out of bed. My body hits the wooden floor with a loudthud.
It takes but a moment before the hanging tapestry that functions like a makeshift door is thrown open and Odgar emerges. The deep rumble of his voice resonates in the space. “Are you?—”
I lurch to my feet as I realize something that hangs nearby has caught on fire, the flames eating away at it. “Shit! Fuck! Sorry!”
Odgar just flicks the back of his hand toward the fabric, as if shooing a fly, and the flames are doused by his waterweaving. Small billows of grey smoke linger in the darkness.
I spear my fingers through my hair, having forgotten for a moment just how badly Eefa mangled it. And that was theleastof her torture. All so that the Zenith could use me for this very power that I cannot control.
An entiremillenniumhas passed since Enidwen’s demise, and her spirit chosemeof all people to manipulate.
That says a lot, doesn’t it? I’ve always known that something was detrimentally wrong with me.
“Carys …?” Odgar speaks as though I’m a wild horse in need of taming.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” I snap.
“Well, I’d rather not shout at you when everything in here is flammable. I’m fairly attached to the Great Hall.”
I level him with a simmering glare, and he holds his large hands up.
“I was just checking on you.” The depth of his voice—his singsong Uldaran accent—resounds like the gentlest ballad.
Yet I lash out at him like a provoked adder. “I don’t need you checking in on me.”
His brows disappear beneath bronze curls that glow red in the firelight.
