Page 138 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

As if my mind objected, the promise of death vanished. Jaycee was back against my stomach, Nathara’s fingers threaded through my hair.

Understanding filled my chest slowly: grief could not exist on a path love hadn’t first paved.

The holes my sisters left behind existed only because they had first impregnated our walls with their unbridled joy. Their heartache. Their jealousy. All of it.

A body that had never known the caress of a good man’s love could not yearn for his return the way mine did.

And in that sorrow, there was a gift.

A gift given without condition—through the highs, the lows, the best and worst of us. And within all of it… we were the same. Had always been the same. Every sense of inferiority had been a projection of my own ego, a shadow too dark to touch this perfect moment—until the prickle of watching eyes interrupted it.

Little Magnolia peered around the willow’s thick trunk, her round face rosy from too much sun.

“Why?” I breathed as my adult body formed beside her. We stared from the cool shade—her longing to join them, me longing to go back. “Why couldn’t I see this before?”

The glade vanished beneath the looming storm, sand reaching like desperate fingers toward those distant stone parapets.

A hysterical sound—almost a laugh—bubbled up my throat. Real. That was real. It had to be… right?

Dirt and bits of stone sliced into my skin as the wind strengthened. I yanked my scarf back over my mouth and nose, eyes lifting to the darkness descending like it had a personal vendetta.

“We chose to ache so others may prosper,” little Magnolia offered sagely. “So, we might forgive them later.”

“Chose?”

“There is always a choice,” she chirped. “We agreed to the burdens before we arrived. You don’t remember that. Instead, you let the judgment of the world crush your spirit.”

Had I? Had I let the weight of living bow my shoulders? “I always felt second-rate.”

“Were you?”

“Not according to Aren.”

“And to you? Now?”

I looked back at the girls. Something settled in my chest, in my shoulders, easing me toward the admission. “It doesn’t seem like they feel that way here.”

“You finally see them clearly?”

Maybe there was truth in that. “Then why couldn’t I exist like this there?”

“You could—you can—but had you always, you never would have learned what you came to.”

A sharp sting sliced across my cheek. I lifted shaking fingers to it and they came away red. The specter vanished.

You never would’ve learned what you came to.

I tucked that kernel away for later and cast my shield just as the storm’s front line slammed into it. My head jerked up in time to see the cracked spires disappear beneath darkness. The force sent my feet skidding, sliding, sinking into the sand. With a roar of my own, I shoved back, pouring magic into the barrier as the world went black.

“Gods have mercy,” I muttered as day became night in a breath, a faint orange glow the only proof anything existed beyond my shield. Debris battered my magic. Terror flooded my mouth with bile as I thrust out my hand and fed still more power into the barrier.

Fuck whoever built this hell.

Fuck Bellpost for the savage attack that made this place necessary. And fuck Adrastos for sending me into it. Was this his godsdamned way of getting me killed? How could the man who saved me be the same one who sent me here to die?

I sent up a silent prayer that the Grayshell party had made it far enough ahead to find shelter. My shield shuddered as rocks hammered the barrier, sending iridescent cracks racing along its edges.

The storm became deafening, but I didn’t dare drop a hand to cast a sound barrier. Didn’t dare alter the shield with the full weight of the beast crashing against it. One mistake and the sand would shred my airways from the inside out.