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Fordham nodded. “Thank you for your help. I’ll wait here with her.”
“If you aren’t in training, your absence will be noted.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Then, make an excuse for me.”
“You know what they’ll think if you’re gone. You can’t afford it.”
“I’ll stay,” Clover said, putting a hand on Fordham’s arm. “You can trust me to look after her.”
He deflated and nodded before departing. Helly and Clover exchanged a look once he was gone.
“How bad is it really?” Clover asked.
Helly sighed and shook her head. “We’re lucky she’s not already dead.”
53
The Spiritcaster
Kerrigan spun in a circle. She was in the spirit plane.
She wanted to scream and scream and scream. To fall to her knees and weep for what Mei had been forced to do to her own people. All this time, she had been told that the House of Shadows had been contained for their own good. A thousand years of isolation for their part in the Great War and the sin of wanting to continue with slavery. But it had all been a lie.
A pretty lie spun by the winners, as so often happened in history.
The truth was much worse.
The Society had been ready to bring down the mountains and kill everyone inside—men, women, and children. They decided it was easier than continuing the war with such high casualties. And they even asked the ambassador to the House of Shadows how best to do it.
After her years in Kinkadia, with a daughter and her lover in the Society, they believed she would choose them first. But she defied them all and put up the boundary around the House of Shadows to protect them.
She’d done it, knowing it might kill her. Knowing it would leave her daughter orphaned and her lover empty.
What she hadn’t known was how the spell would morph. Yes, it was to keep their location secret from the invading army. To have the Society forget where exactly the boundary to the House of Shadows was. But it had an unintended consequence—trapping the House of Shadows inside.
And Mei hadn’t meant for it to stay up forever.
Kerrigan couldn’t even fathom it. Mei hadn’t been a talented spiritcaster. She hadn’t had proper training, but she had to be at least twenty years older than Kerrigan, and she hadn’t lost her mind yet. Why then was Kerrigan suffering from this magic sickness so young? Why then was she stuck here?
She turned around again. She was still on the spirit plane. Still stuck in her head. She tried to drop back down into her body, but the drop never happened. Her body was unresponsive. Scales!
Never before had she been unable to find her way out of the spirit plane. It had become such an easy shift that she could almost pop in and out effortlessly. Why then could she not move?
She tried again and again with no success.
Eventually, she gave up. She wasn’t getting anywhere with that. She might as well explore this world.
The spirit plane usually appeared to her as clouds, as if she were walking on high. When working with Zina, she’d been able to step out of her body and look down at it, but she preferred this visage when she did it herself. It was comforting to soar above the clouds. As if she were flying. No need for a dragon at all.
She pushed off from the cloud and found that she could soar instead of walk. She hovered over the clouds with her hands in the air and kicked out like she was swimming. She propelled forward, staring down at the clouds, rolling over to see the sky far above. The sun beat down on her face. It was a perfect day.
And yet, it wasn’t.
“Hello?” she called out.
She thought she had seen a flash of black against the sky. Almost like a bird. But she’d never seen anything else on this plane. Just herself.
“Is something out there?”
She didn’t see anything, but she couldn’t shake the unease. She couldn’t escape the plane. She didn’t want to find out if something else was here.
Still, she was too curious to ignore it. She pushed off a cloud and soared toward the speck she had seen only a moment ago. But as she came around another cloud, she didn’t find anything at all.
Kerrigan crossed her arms and landed on the cloud, puzzled. She turned in a full circle. She’d been certain there was something. Then, just as she finished her turn, a raven appeared. She gasped, putting her hand to her chest. It had come out of nowhere. Just popped into existence before her face. It tilted its head and cawed.
Kerrigan stepped back. She’d been helped by ravens on the spirit plane during the tournament, but that didn’t mean anything. It hardly meant this one would be friendly.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
