Stark shock moves across her face. I edge closer, my hands clasped in supplication, the same stance we use for prayer. It’s blasphemy to appeal to her this way, but I don’t care. In this moment, she’s my goddess. The one with the power to grant me peace or despair, as she wishes.
Not Ishanna. If Ishanna even exists.
“Please,” I say, my voice breaking into pieces. This one word seems to be all I have left. “Please.Please.”
A frozen moment passes in which I’m sure she’ll refuse, but to my relief, she nods. Faintly, and without conviction, but it’s enough.
A cry bursts from my chest. I spring up, taking her by the hand and pulling her up the stairs.
We fly, yet every moment lasts a lifetime. The passing moments collapse to a whirl of swishing skirts and straining limbs. Of frantic footsteps. Sunlight glaring off the metal sconces lining the corridor.
I run, Carina’s hand folded firmly in mine. Her fingers feel so thin, so delicate, but they hold the power to remake my world.
We round the corner and burst into my room, where I stagger to a stop. The slap of my boots echoes against the floorboards, heavy with finality.
No.
No.
No.
The door is gone, the Book of Disciplines toppled, its open pages staring upward. Betrayal gushes through me, because Ishanna and her Book have failed me even in this. Now Amriel is miles away, dying on the ground. Alone and in pain, when that was the one thing he didn’t want.
My knees hit the floor, then my hands. Pain ricochets through tendon and bone, but it isn’t enough. I want to hurt like Amriel does. I want the gaping wound scissoring through my chest to swallow me completely.
Gasp after gasp fills my lungs, but nothing relieves the spots dancing in my vision. A cruel hand wraps around my throat and squeezes, and?—
“Sariah?” Carina shifts beside me. “What’re we doing? How do I get there? Not the same way you did, right?”
I turn my head and blink at her. Blink again. The same way I did? The same?—
Goddess help me.
In the next second, my hand is in my pocket, pulling out my gyre. I still have one ring left. A one-way trip for a single person.
I crawl toward my sister, thrusting the gyre into her hands. She takes it, but her eyes flare as she backs away. She handles the instrument like it might burn her.
“Think about Amriel,” I blurt, my voice scraped raw. “You’ve met him. You remember. Just think about him, and nothing else. He’s on the ground, in front of a castle, in Velindra, and I need you tothink, Carina. Think about going to where he is.”
Her bottom lip trembles as the gyre flares, that single functional ring spinning, leaking light. I shuffle closer, too weak to stand. The gyre is only meant to take someone to Velindra from the Wildwood, not all the way from Aethrolia, but it’s notthatmuch farther, and I have to believe this will work. I pile all my hope into a single, splintered plea. “Please. Save him. Make him live. I’ll do anything.”
The gyre’s whine pitches higher. Carina whimpers, her eyes finding mine. She thrusts out the gyre. “Sariah, no. I’m sorry, but I can’t?—”
The air detonates. The whole room shakes. I pitch forward, my fingers pressing into the cold wooden floor.
I stay like that for long moments. Long enough to swallow the sobs marshaling in my chest. To remember how to breathe.
When I look up again, Carina is gone.
Chapter 27
My sister doesn’t come back.
Not in a minute, or ten, or even in an hour. I lie sprawled on the floorboards, staring at the empty span of air she went through, not caring that a splinter jabs into my knee or that my feet have gone numb.
I only care about Carina returning. About Amriel stepping from the air with her, safe and whole, his gyre glimmering in his hand. About him aiming those dimples down at me, smirking like he always does, then taking me away to Velindra forever. Whisking me back through the door I longed to go through.
Except he doesn’t. Nothing happens at all. Seconds crawl over me like worms while shafts of sunlight move across the floor. I swallow and swallow and swallow, but nothing can budge the collection of razorblades lodged in my throat, a new one every minute.
