She told me she could hear a shrieking sound, and I can onlyimagine it was the same spine-chilling shrieks now piercing my hearing.
The screams are coming from behind me.
As fast as I can, I twist to the screeching sound, my knees grinding in the dust.
The breath catches in my throat.
“Thyra!”
She’s here!
I launch myself forward, only to hit an invisible force, my legs sinking deep into the dust, bogged down while I push against whatever energy is keeping me back.
Thyra floats in the air only five paces away from me, her eyes closed.
Asleep? Unconscious?
I can’t tell, and it’s filling me with dread, a sensation I shove away with all my might.
Behind Thyra’s floating body, an enormous tree rises up, its trunk so vast that I have to turn from side to side to take in the full width of it.
Likewise, the tree is so high that even when I tip my head back, I can’t see the top of it, more so because ashen-brown boughs stretch out above me, twisted and gnarled, the largest branches I’ve ever seen blocking my view.
The air around the tree churns with gray ash.
But that’s not all.
Shadows move around the tree’s trunk and flit across its branches.
Blurred shapes. Fae, maybe. Beasts, maybe.
A group of forms has gathered along one particular branch—the branch directly above Thyra.
Whatever they’re doing, their sharp movements tell me they’re working furiously, and the harder they work, the louder the air screams.
“Thyra!” My roar barely breaks above the shrieking.
I punch my fist forward, as hard and as fast as I can, trying to break whatever invisible force is keeping me from her.
Unlike the shadowy forms, Thyra’s shape is sharp and clear. A bright spot in the darkness.
Her face is turned toward me, and her hair wafts around her head. She’s wearing a white dress I’ve never seen her in before, which clings to her slight frame, plastered to her curves.
Ivory ribbons slither around her waist, chest, ankles, and wrists, trailing through the air around her body.
She’s wearing her highborn face.
Is she having a blade vision right now?
But…is this where she is? Or am I within her vision?
I shake my head, trying to cut through my confusion.
Stellen has her, but this isn’t the Frost Kingdom, and in the time that’s passed since he took her, there’s no way he could have traveled into the far east.
Assuming this is the far east?
Fuck, but I don’t have any answers.
