Page 92 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

The wind shifted a little when I braced my hands on the gravel to push myself up, the snow near my hands suddenly began moving, gathering around my fingers. Then I felt something against my palm. Like a pulse. A heartbeat. It began echoing so loud around me that every other sound muted.

It turned oddly serene. The bubbling mess in my chest suddenly disappeared. It was like I was floating. Like my heart was beating outside of my own chest. Like I was free from it.

Someone spoke behind me, the words entirely slurred and overpowered by the heartbeat. Many shadows fell over me, and the voices grew many and louder, none that I could properly hear, all were muffled.

A hand touched my cheek and I jerked, the sounds returning, the pulse disappeared from under my palm, the only thing I could feel against it was the gravel uncomfortably digging at my skin. “Rora,” Malik called, brows pulled together in a scowl. “This isn’t fucking funny anymore. What’s going on?”

“Can’t you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“The heartbeat.”

As always, he didn’t doubt me, putting a hand beside mine and feeling for a few moments. When his brows began slowly pulling together, I felt the pulse beneath my palm quicken.

“Tell me that you hear it.”

“I can’t, but if you are hearing it, it must be there.” His face was clean of any expression. Either because he was trying not to frighten me or because he really couldn’t hear or feel anything. It was the first. “Do something for me,” he said, his eyes blackening, dark spidery veins spreading over them. “Use your magic. As much of it as you can.”

“Here?”

He nodded. “Try not to kill me. Or at least do it gently.”

“So not funny,” I muttered to myself, standing and moving away from him.

It was easy to draw magic, not as easy as to undraw it back to me now that the gates that used to control its flow are left for me to close myself instead of the seal. It was even harder considering I didn’t only need to seal it inside myself. I had to seal the gates that flowed back to the earth.

Wind howled, ice broke and buried everything under its stiff cold coat. An entire hurricane surrounded me, ice and wind, wind and ice dancing around one another. Wherever they met, frost would splint into thousands of tiny little crystals that reflected entire rainbows around me.

Across the white of my magic, I saw his black one. Shadows that resembled black fire surrounded his body, swirling around him and then diving towards the earth fast, breaking through it with furious speed.

When his shadows began dissipating, I pulled back, too. Wind and ice disappearing.

“When?” was all he asked.

“Night before my wedding. Just…lately, it has gotten louder.”

“How lately?”

“The day of the funeral was when I heard it clearly,” I said, walking towards him. “What’s wrong?”

“After Oryn and Visha removed your seal, I think your magic has been feeding something else beside the land.”

I blinked fast. “Like?”

“Something. I just know it is now clinging to you somehow.”

Trying not to gag and shiver, I murmured, “Like a…leech or something?”

“Yeah. A silent leech who has decided to show itself all of a sudden,” he said, giving me a strange look, as if he was trying to see right through me.

Nausea travelled up my throat and I gagged a little. “Take it off me. Kill it or something.”

“Why haven’t you said anything?”

“Because of the way you are looking at me right now.”

“Put your jacket on and let’s go.”