The flames pulsed, sensing her desire. Elena reached out and they curled around her hand, ready to leap, but instead of sending the inferno toward the mine, Elena made a fist. The flames flattened, hissing in displeasure. She did not care. She opened her palm, and the flames peeled back as she began to run again.
The cabin.
She headed south, the fire following. Her legs burned and every breath felt like a sharp stab in her chest. The cabin’s tunnel still lay several miles away.Skies above, it’s so far.Elena skirted around a pine when her foot got stuck in a root. She yelped, falling onto her knees.
Suddenly, something brayed.
Elena gasped, looking up.
There in the distance were three brenni. Three brenni with soldiers on them.
She scrambled to her feet, trying to hide behind the tree, but it was too late.
The soldiers had seen her.
One shouted, and a pulse smacked into the pine. And then they were all shooting, shredding the trunk, filling the air with the horrid screech of their pulsefire.
Elena winced, covering her ears. She couldn’t outrun them, not when they were on brenni. Maybe, when they were out…
There came a click, and the pulsefire stopped as the soldiers went to recharge the chambers. With a cry, Elena hurled the inferno onto them. The fire rushed down the slope, picking up speed, hunger. She spun, forming a spear of fire in her hand. She flung it on a soldier, who screamed and fell from his brenni. The other steeds bucked, violently. One soldier fell off while the other remained in his seat. He charged up the slope with a snarl, shooting. Elena looped the fire around, and his brenni, ever the wiser, screeched and bucked him off.
“Come back here!” the soldier cried, but his voice was lost in the roar of the inferno.
Elena grabbed the reins of the brenni as it rolled its head. “Easy, easy, the fire won’t hurt you,” she said.
The brenni brayed but held still as she jumped on. She urged it forward, and the flames swept back, clearing a path for them.
Elena ran for it.
The blaze had reached the cabin before her. It crackled along the edges, the phoenix knocker gleaming in the glow of the flames. Seeing it, her heart cracked, but Elena did not have the luxury to weep. Not now. She cantered to the cropping of pines that Yassen had shown her and jumped down. Her brenni took off without so much as a goodbye.
Look for that thin pine.Elena whirled around.
Where is it? Where is it?
She stumbled and fell on the tangles of roots. Got to her knees and crawled forward, searching as the inferno hissed. Suddenly, she saw it. The thin, tall pine with a flaking trunk. She scrambled to it, searching for the knot bigger than her fist. She recalled how Yassen had followed the roots of the tree; how he had pressed his pale hand into the knots; how the mountain had listened and opened for him.
Her throat tightened, but Elena forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. Her fingers brushed over the rough bark until she found the large knot.
She pressed it.
The ground rumbled, and Elena scrambled back just as the floor beneath the pine slid away, revealing darkness.
Elena hesitated. The forest groaned as the fire ate up the pines, the molorians, the neverwoods, everything. She thought of the cabin and the crystal and the family frozen within. She thought of the boy who now lay somewhere on this mountainside, dead or alive, to buy her time. And she thought of Ravence. The ever-shifting, singing dunes. Her father sitting on the bench in the garden, watching the birds. Ferma challenging her in a duel, her smile easy and wide. The expectant faces of the crowd when Elena had stepped to the podium and hushed them with her raised hand. Ravence lay at the other side of this. Ravence was waiting for her.
Elena jumped into the pit.
She plunged deep into the mountain, wind rushing past her ears, stone scraping her elbows, before she hit the ground. The impact shocked her. Elena moaned, rolling onto her back. Above, she saw fire dancing over the opening of the tunnel, so far away.
Slowly, she sat up.
The darkness was so vivid, so textured that Elena almost thought it was alive. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out jagged stones and a path snaking from the ledge she stood on. She did not know if it led south, but it was the only path she had.
She took it.
It was as if she had stepped into a different world. The shadows weren’t shadows. They were pools of black liquid that rippled as she walked. A spider as large as her hand scuttled over a rock. It stopped and watched her with a hundred inky eyes as she scooted past it. Large, sharp obsidian jutted out from the bowels of the mountain like frozen innards. Perhaps it was the darkness playing tricks on her, but the rocks seemed to glow. Elena peered at them and realized with a start that, actually, they were glowing.
Everything was.
