“Like you’re ever scared of anything,” I mutter.
“You’d be surprised,” he says dryly. “Especially lately.”
Keeping hold of my hand, he starts into the field. I reluctantly follow, the burned plants cracking and snapping beneath our boots.
The light from the amulet intensifies as we walk until I have to shade my eyes against it. “Okay,okay, but what do you want?”
Neither the gem nor the goddess answers me in words, but the beam of light stops pointing into the distance and shifts to aim at the ground in front of my feet.
“I have no idea what’s happening,” I say, turning in a circle to look around. “What is important about this spot?”
Kaelen shakes his head. But I see his hand is on the hilt of his sword, and his body is rigid with tension as he scans every direction for potential threats.
“Ow!” The amulet suddenly weighs so much that my neck can’t hold it up. I try to pull the chain, which is digging painfully into my skin, over my head, but can’t lift it. “Help, Kaelen! The amulet—something happened!”
Buthe doesn’t understand what I mean. Before I can explain, the weight pulls me down off my feet. I drop into a kneeling position on the ground, bent over so far, I’m afraid I’ll smash my face into the soot of the burned plants.
“I guess it wants us to be down here,” I manage, breathing hard, but before I can think of what to do next, the weight vanishes, and I can sit back up, rolling my neck in relief at the cessation of punishing pressure. “But why—”
I stop speaking when my fingers begin to glow.
My fingersare glowing.
“Uh, Kaelen?”
“I see it,” he says. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I can definitely see it.”
An overwhelming sensation of warmth suffuses my body, and I suddenly, somehow, know what to do. I throw my hands out to my sides and turn my face up to the sky, still kneeling right there in the ruined field. The glow spreads from my fingers to my arms and up to my shoulders. Then it washes through me, and I can tell from Kaelen’s awed expression that even my face is glowing. I see my reflection in his eyes, which shine purple ringed with gold, and I’m …glowing. Even the strands of my hair are shimmering with golden light.
My ability to handle this level of surreal is nowhere near strong enough.
“What’s happening to me?” If I’m going to die, I guess death by warm glow is better than immolation, but the result will be the same, and I’m not sure my corpse will be any happier for the gentleness of its demise.
Before the prince can answer me, I gasp, because the energy—themassiveamount of power—of the amulet sears through me until it bursts from my fingertips in the shape of golden swaths of light that illuminate the fields as they travel over them. I cry out, and Kaelen reaches out to touch me or hold me or help me, I don’t know which, but the light knocks him flat. He jumps back up immediately and crouches in front of me.
“Soli,” Kaelen says quietly. “Are you okay?”
“Idon’t know,” I gasp. “But it’s probably not a good idea to touch me right now.”
“I can touch you later?” His smile might make me think wicked thoughts if I didn’t know he was trying to distract me from my impending death.
Then I can’t talk at all, only feel, and what I feel is immense power—the vast, amorphous shape of it, hovering over me as if afraid to channel itself through me. As if the power is far too much for a mere mortal to bear.
“Please, no more,” I cry out.
With one last surge, the light blazes into an inferno of sparkling golden ribbons, and then it vanishes, leaving me bereft. Kaelen is on me the moment the light fades, wrapping his strong arms around me. When I look up into his huge, dark eyes, I can only think of one thing to say.
“Now,” I say. “Touch menow.”
Nobodycan grow crops out of season.
—Recorded Conversations of the Oracles: Twelfth Cycle
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Idon’t have to tell him twice.
Kaelen bends his head and touches his lips to mine. So gently, almost featherlight, as if asking for the permission I already gave. As if asking for the trust he already won.
