That. That was what I was fighting for.
I lifted my star-metal arm.
The energy poured out of me, and ithurt. The crack in my neck tore wider. I felt the golden divinity leaking faster now, not a seep but a run, hot against my collarbone. My human leg trembled. I locked my knee.
But I kept singing.
The star-metal essence wove outward from my hand, strand by strand, building a structure. It wasn't a bridge this time. It was a dome. A hemisphere of interlocking gold and violet light that arched up over the plaza, over the fountain, over the cluster of souls and the dissolving fountain and Master Theron with his book.
The Devourer hit it.
The impact was silent but devastating. It crashed against the dome like a wave against a breakwater, and I felt every ounce of the impact travel from the lattice, up through my arm, into my spine. I staggered, catching myself on the lip of the fountain. My vision went white at the edges.
But the dome held.
Inside it, something extraordinary happened.
The air changed. The smell of wet paper retreated. In its place, carried inside my song, the scent of rain bloomed. I could feel the souls breathing it in, the shock of recognition on their faces.
The grey palette shifted. Not fully, not permanently. It was a candle flame in a storm. But inside the dome, the cobblestones briefly remembered they were gold. The ruins of the nearest palace flickered, and for three heartbeats, it was whole, white, and gleaming in a light that remembered the sun.
Three heartbeats only. Then the Devourer pressed again, and the vision dimmed.
But the souls had seen it. They had felt it. I watched their faces.
An old soldier straightened his back. A young woman pressed her palms flat against the cobblestones, feeling the grain of the stone that was suddenly real beneath her. A child, dead far too young, looked up at the dome of golden light and said, very clearly, "Oh. I remember now."
Master Theron rose to his feet. He pressed the book to his chest with one hand, and with the other, he reached up toward the dome. His fingers stopped just short of touching the light.
"The meadows," he said softly. "Ink on page three hundred and twenty-two. 'The fields of Elysium smell of clover and clean water and the specific warmth of late afternoon.'" He turned to look at me. "I always thought it was a flourish. An indulgent editorial choice." He paused, tears tracking in the grooves of his old face. "I understand now."
I could not answer. I needed every scrap of breath for the song. My throat burned. The crack in my neck burned worse. The dome was beginning to vibrate, the Devourer's patience a slow-building structural assault.
I could hold it for minutes, not hours. And there was still the Soul-Well. There was still the core. There was still the fight that mattered most.
"Listen to me," I forced out, dropping the song to its lowest register, enough to maintain the structure while I spoke. "I can't hold this. We have to move. All of you. Can you walk?"
"Where?" a woman asked, her voice hoarse from the humming. "Paradise is gone."
"Paradise was always temporary," Master Theron said, unexpectedly firm. He looked at me, his scholarly gaze full of something that transcended the academic. Pride, I thought. "Where are we walking to, child?"
My legs were shaking. The golden light pouring from my neck had reached my jaw. I could feel it in my teeth.
"North," I said. "Follow the Princes. Don't stop moving."
The Devourer hit the dome again. Harder.
I dropped to one knee. The fountain's edge caught my elbow. I heard Thane roar my name from across the plaza.
The dome held. But when I checked the star-metal in my arm, three of the deep-set runes had gone dark.
Empty.
I hadn't known they could go empty.
FOURTEEN
Elias
