Kael’s hand tightens on the chain, pulling me forward while the guards take their stance.“Stand in the centre,” Riven demands.
I look to the small dais waiting for me.Kael leads me beneath the chandelier, its spiderweb of light glinting over my face as lines of script wind across the floor, faint as veins.
The scholars murmur, heads bowed as they scribble frantically on their parchments.Kael steps to the outer circle of the dais.The chains clink against the stone as he clips the lead into a metal loop at my feet, anchoring me to the floor.
“Are you ready?”he mutters.
“For wha?—”
“Begin!”Riven’s voice booms from behind the panel.
I fix my eyes on the muscles in Kael’s throat; they jump and contract, struggling against the words lodged there.“You will attempt to call your shadows,” he says.
“What?I don’t knowhow?”I plead.
They don’t want obedience—they want proof.
The air feels thin; every breath is a shallow gasp.Cold sweat breaks on my palms, and I clench my fingers, trying to wipe it away.The voice in my head screams, but the manacles sear my skin, demanding submission.
I close my eyes and reach for the place between sleeping and waking—that seam in the world I keep falling through.Lavender.The pale-haired lady.Table.Rod.Visions flash and vanish, flickering like a failing lamp.
Heat rises in my chest where the crescent usually rests, and the runes on the floor stir like something waking under golden ice.
The manacles brighten.Light burns through my eyelids, making the red lines of the drawings in my mind glow fiercer.My shadows twirl around me, reaching a tendril toward my face, only to be slammed against an invisible wall.A high-pitched shriek knifes through my ears, followed by the sensation of hot, wet oozing liquid leaking from them.
Pain flares up my arms and legs, converging at the centre of my chest.Above, the chandelier purrs to life.Its lenses catch the glare, sending a prism of agonising colour through my closed lids.
My eyes squeeze tighter, my jaw clenching until my teeth grate.Slowly, the pain begins to recede, replaced by a cold numbness that offers an empty reprieve from the fire.
I force my eyes to open, blinking against the clinical brightness of the room.
“Again!”Riven shouts to the scholars.
I curl my fingers, waiting for the impact.My gaze remains on Riven as the world I slip between rushes to the forefront.The memory of his fingers trailing over my skin makes my spine curl and my breath hitch; my fingernails dig into my palms until blood pools.
Heat builds within until a scream erupts from my throat, echoing in the hollows of my mind.I am no longer myself, but a vessel for the fire.I let the room fall away, focusing only on the pulse beneath my sternum—my last anchor to life.I think of the first altar and the map burning behind my eyes.The pale-woman’s voice—silk over a blade:That’s it my girl.Set the fire ablaze and burn them all down.
The shadows answer like a first breath after drowning.
A heavy rope of muscle drags across my hip—mine, yet not.My shadows.
The chill starts at my fingertips, an icy ink blooming in water, fighting the fire within.Two opposing forces claw for dominance.Another scream pierces my ears; it comes from my throat but I can no longer tell if it’s mine.
“Hold,” Riven orders over the deafening pound in my skull.
“Enough,” someone else shouts.
High above, the chandelier gives a thin, crystalline whine.A hairline crack catches the light like a silver thread.The hum wobbles; panels clatter to the ground.
“Contain!”a voice cries.
My eyes snap open, the inferno now an icy chill.I stare through two solid blocks of frost: scholars scramble over the floor, guards close in, and Riven’s face is a swollen, blood-red mask of fury.
The shadows flare in a circle, slamming into the floor like a physical heartbeat.The runes beneath my feet flash and invert—then something snaps at my wrists.Sharp.Bright.A pain like ice.
I look down.The manacles are split—a fracture in the metal.A clean seam, as if something inside them decided to become two.The chain lies slack at my feet like a shed skin.
I didn’t break them.Something inside me did.
