“I am sorry. I’m not to ask you.”
I didn’t like the mix of guilt and fear in her tone, but what I liked didn’t matter. “How can I help?”
She flickered, disappeared completely, then appeared again. “I don’t have the strength to return to the Aetheric.”
And if she couldn’t do that, there would be nothing left of her. There would only be Oblivion, the eternal Nothingness. There would be no more Luna.
Her true death was absolutely not happening on my watch. “Tell me how to help.”
“I need you to open a doorway.”
I stared at her. “To the Aetheric? Like the Aetheric practitioner?” Luna was asking me to manipulate Aether. “I can’t do that. I don’t know how.”
“For this, I can help you. I’m sorry,” she said again, “but I need you to try.” She flickered again, her eyes wide and sorrowful. “It is this or Oblivion.”
I couldn’t think of a reason she kept apologizing, except…“Will it hurt me?”
She nodded, her gaze dropping to my chest where the scratches were finally healing. “It may. But not in the way it did before. It was not the Aether that hurt you.”
It sure felt like the Aether had hurt me, but I only nodded. “It doesn’t matter,” I said before I had time to give it too much thought. It couldn’t matter because there was no other choice.I could bear pain; I couldn’t bear her eternal absence. “Tell me how.”
“I will help you connect to that place,” she said. “You need only allow the door to open. Get ready.”
When I nodded, she leaned forward and put the flat of her hand against my chest, her strength so diminished that I felt only a whisper of warmth. That warmth met the place broken by the Aetheric practitioner, and the fire in my chest ignited again, hot and jagged about the edges.
It had been days since I’d felt that magic, burrowed as I was in the palace, and I gasped from the sharp shock of it. My instinct was to move away, to put space between myself and her and the pain, but I knew better. I squeezed my eyes shut, remembered the voice that had told me to breathe—that seemed so long ago now—and focused on forcing air in and out of my lungs.
I couldn’t scream. That would alarm the guard outside, and he’d push his way in or call the prince. They’d interrupt, and this had to happen, even if it hurt me.
“I am sorry,” she said again in a faint and scratchy whisper. Her hand dug further, as if she was reaching into my soul to claw out a piece of it. The pain was exquisite, bright and hard like she’d plunged a fire-hot poker into my chest. My body buckled, sending me hard to the floor. This pain was worse than what the Aetheric practitioner had done. Sweat blossomed across my body, which felt like it was burning from the inside. The stone, at least, was cold, and it had wisps of steam rising around me. I had been ignited. I was aflame. I would burn to ash.
“I can stop.”
I managed only the tiniest shake of my head. The rest of my concentration was spent on staying conscious and quiet.
“Only a bit more.”
There was another burst of fire, like nails scratching through my soul, like it was being ripped away one bit at a time. My body bowed, my eyes flying open at the staggering heat. The fire would tear me apart, and there would be nothing left.
And then something happened.
Something in my body shifted, rearranged. What the Aetheric practitioner had broken, this seemed to soothe, to smooth. And then a door was opened to a different place, where a different kind of fire burned.
Through that doorway, the Aetheric waited. Watched.
I braced myself for the pain I’d felt in the gambling hall—the breaking of my body.
Just as before, Aetheric fire roared into our world. But this wasn’t the flaming stars that had settled into my chest that night. This was fluid, but strong. More powerful than I could comprehend, but gentle. It was the warmth of sunlight on a chilly day, of a lover’s embrace, of a beautiful smile. That warmth spread through me, smothering the fire ignited by the Aetheric practitioner—the friction of things he’d broken now gone.
My eyes were closed, but I stared through that doorway. I could see nothing, but I could hear it, and I could feel it. It pulsed like the heartbeat of the world. It was the next step. The corridor. The hallway. It was change and adaptation. It was what came next.
It wasn’t the realm into which I’d been born, but it was a realm my body understood. I wanted to stay there, to settle myself inside that place and let it pulse around me, where I’d be safe and quiet. I would never be alone. Not here, where souls gathered.
“Come back,” I heard Luna say. Her hand lifted and the drumbeat slowed, my body cooled, and the connection closed.
I opened my eyes. She smiled at me, her eyes soft and full of emotion, and her body no longer transparent, but bright and clear. I was drenched in sweat, and I felt both better than I had since arriving at the palace and completely exhausted.
“It worked,” I said. “Glad.” Now I was the one who couldn’t spare the words. Very slowly, very carefully, I sat up. “I heard a rhythm. I didn’t want to leave it.”
