After I nearly slip for the third time, I feel the telltale tingling around my eye—Sesca trying to lend her vision to me.
I stop and shut her out, shaking my head to fend her off.
Stubborn and foolish, maybe, but I need this reminder that I’m capable of walking down a path on my own, no matter how slippery it might be.
I don't have to go far before I come to the place where they're keeping her—a relatively large, sunken area of smooth stone surrounded by clusters of scraggly pine trees. Dozens of soldiers stand watch around her, weapons drawn and bodies tense.
Sesca’s tail is raised, prepared to whip toward a soldier who is attempting to adjust one of the many chains binding her, but she lowers it at the sight of me and goes perfectly still.
We stare at one another for what feels like an age.
It’s as though we're strangers again, and I’m brought back to the moment we first truly locked eyes with one another, deep in the forest after I freed her from the Mouren camp—back to the sight of her bleeding into the water, her wings broken, sides heaving. The sword shaking in my hand. The fire burning in my chest.
I consider turning and running now, just as I did then.
But I keep still.
Leave us,comes a voice. Her voice, though I've never heard it sound like this before. Like a command from the heavens themselves, absolute and ancient, and I can tell by the reactions around me that she's spoken it for everyone present to hear.
Some of the soldiers run for the cover of the sparse trees. Some back away slowly, awe and fear warring across their faces. A few linger, either out of shock or ignorance.
A strange mist rises from the ground, curling around us, thickening until the camp beyond disappears entirely. It’s like we’ve entered another realm—a divine plane filled with pale light, quiet and soft at the edges, and the ground beneath my feet is neither solid nor absent, but just present enough to hold me. Only the two of us are here, and for a moment I don’t care where we are; I’m simply relieved to be free of the weight of being watched.
Then I remember all the things that have brought us to this place, and the anger that rises in me is so fierce and sudden that it forces the words out of me before I can think: “You knew he was alive.”
Sesca’s golden eyes regard me without blinking for a long moment. Steady. Unapologetic.
“You kept it from me. Why?”
You would have sought him out if you knew.
Somewhere deep beneath my fury, I understand her unspoken meaning: that she was trying to protect me from him.
But I don't care. I never asked to be protected. Iwouldn'thave asked for it, if I'd known that protecting me just meant I would be lied to, manipulated, left in the dark.
“I am so incredibly tired of the gods and their dragonsand their games,” I say, voice strained and on the verge of breaking. “I never wanted any part of this.”
I know.
“So why did you come to me?”
Because you called.
I shake my head. “No. I didn't.”
An image of Emberfall flashes through my mind once more. Everything burning. Collapsing. My body lying in the flames, writhing in pain—but not a physical pain.
Because something protected me.
“You saved me that night, didn't you?” The question comes out like an accusation, soft and bitter.
She dips her great head, slow and deliberate.
“Well, you came too late,” I say quietly. “You saved me but let thousands of others die.” I struggle uselessly against the chains behind my back. “You should have let me die with them!”
She goes still for a long moment.
The air darkens and the mist thickens, clinging to my body like a damp blanket. My eyelids grow heavy, forcing me to blink. One, two, three blinks, and then I'm in Halvgate again, watching the flames climb higher and higher.
