This is the only obstacle between me and freedom.
I grab the rail and haul myself up.
Whichever idiot decided that the Claw should be a tower deserves to die. By the time I burst through the door at the top, I’m exhausted and dizzy.
Too exhausted to keep my grip on the spirit realm.
I pop back into the world with a gasp just as the Lady’s light floods over me. The Moon is high in the sky, her crescent of light bathing me.
“Mother,” I gasp. “Help me.”
It’s not a sophisticated prayer. It lacks the right words to actually do anything.
But still, I feel the slightest touch of power.
A reassurance that the Goddess is there.
I take a deep breath, force myself to stand up straight, and raise Glenna’s athame so that the silver blade points at the Lady and then whisper the words.
“Moon Mother, grant me your power.”
The sigils on my back, which make up the Mark of the Goddess, light up like an icy flame and the dagger in my hand begins to glow with white fire.
Of course, that acts as a beacon to the guards patrolling the walls.
I don’t have much time. All I can do is hope that most of them are too busy dealing with the inmates below.
I wait until the athame is shaking in my grip. Until my fingers are numb from clenching onto it and my blood feels like it’s icing over in my veins before I point it down at the tower and whisper the final piece of the prayer.
“Goddess of destruction, cleanse this place.”
The white fire shoots down from the blade into the golden stone of the tower with the force of a bomb blast, sending me flying up and back over the edge of the roof and into the air.
It takes everything I have not to let go of the blade.
The power is so bright it makes it hard to watch as I tumble through the sky. It even sticks to my skin, coating me in the same pale glow, and it doesn’t take long for my eyes to start watering.
Still, I can’t look away.
The white fire pulses through the tower in a wave of moonlight, then bursts outward.
The Claw explodes in a flare of energy and sound that knocks me even farther from the prison. The walls are razed by the Lady’s magic, the inmates and guards fighting below bowled over by pulse after pulse of destructive energy.
Chunks of rock whizz past me, battering my already bruised body as gravity takes hold and sends me plummeting.
Straight toward the ocean.
But I’m too far gone to care. I knew that using the athame was a dangerous option, but when I managed to hold on to the power, I convinced myself that maybe I was going to be fine.
I was wrong. Directing that power has taken every last bit of energy I had. My whole body suddenly feels soheavy.
My eyelids flutter. Slip shut. Then, nothing.
Rysen
We reach the beach at the base of the cliff just as the first specks of moonlight touch the top of the infamous tower above us. The scent of Nilsa’s blood led me here, but even my bloodlust isn’t strong enough to stop me from staring as the fiercest beam of light I’ve ever seen blasts through the imposing prison.
The boom which follows is deafening. We’re close enough that my ears ring, but I shake it off in favour of watching in horror as the Claw breaks apart under a wave of pure Moonlight.
