Page 32 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

Still.

Please.

My eyes burned, but I had no tears left to shed.

Focus, daughter. Find an anchor.

That voice. That ancient, immortal voice. The same ethereal tone that haunted my dreams. Close, then. If I could burrow a little farther, a little deeper…

I rolled my neck, reaching into the depths of my mind—my magic—in search of a light bright enough to use as kindling.

But it was always the same.

The shriek of Kenna’s laughter as she bolted from that fountain, Aideen on her heels. Jaycee dancing with Sorin and Zehra. Smiling as Barry drew a landscape up her arm—an artist with his canvas.

Down, down, down, I burrowed through the familiar ache in search of the promised refuge.

At last, the laughter of my fallen sisters faded beneath the wailing of a voice both here and not. Ancient. Otherworldly. The one that had haunted my dreams for as long as I could remember.

Goddess, lost soul, or demon—I’d never known.

But she was my constant companion.

Like plunging through a hole in a frozen lake, my winding descent came to an abrupt, jarring end. Icy blue settled around me, holding me prisoner as the ancient skittering whisper of ice beneath boots reverberated through my mind.

There.

Within the glacier, where the echoes were loudest, I found familiar blue eyes set into pale skin untouched by the sun.

“Hold steady, daughter of the fallen. Queen of the forgotten.”

“I cannot.”

I wasn’t sure whether it was a whisper or a sob. Whether I spoke aloud or only to the woman woven from light.

“Steady,” she breathed as the skitter of ice deepened, as though I’d burrowed so far into my power that it swallowed me whole. “Light, and only light, may outshine this darkness.”

And, as always, it did that—she did that.

My protector.

An angel, perhaps?

Whatever alternate dimension my magic had gifted me seemed to vibrate as that effervescent being glowed within the blue—a sun poised to burst as it grew and grew until nothing remained but the cold… and the light.

I had no memory of the captain entering my room, as he always did, or of the long descent through the castle that followed.

No memory of the guards who surely snickered, hurling jeers like rocks at a witch damned to the pyre.

Or of the cell gate creaking as it ground across stone.

It wasn’t until the captain’s hoarse whisper pierced my mind that my eyes pulled away from the ice and toward the horrors it shielded me from.

“Sunspot.”

The tang of iron assaulted my taste buds first—so thick in the air that it saturated my senses.

And that wretched word?