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The Roizan opened its maw…
It froze, a bellowing screech piercing the air. Cora and Mareleau scrambled back. It shook its head as smoke wafted from one of the four faces—Ulrich. In the next moment, the fleshy visage blackened and charred until it sloughed off the creature in a puff of ash.
Morkai muttered a curse. He stood before his tapestry, studying it with intense concentration. The red threads continued to climb, but they were slower now.
The Roizan thrashed, bellowing in rage as the next face began to blacken.
Cora’s pulse quickened, but not with fear. Hope bloomed inside her. Morkai’s blood weaving must be using too much of the Roizan’s magic.
With a deep inhale, she pushed her panic down and focused on the grass near Morkai’s feet. On her exhale, she extricated herself from Mareleau, rose to her feet, and took a step through space.
Morkai leaped back at her sudden appearance. Before he could react, she touched his cheek and called Teryn’s name.
* * *
Returningto his body felt like torture, his every muscle aching, his stomach turning with bile. Yet Cora’s voice cut through these sensations, bolstering him, giving him the strength to fill the space of his body. His hands became his own again, his legs under his command.
Wincing, he kneeled over his unfinished painting. His hands shook as he gathered up the discarded reed, dipped it in the sorcerer’s blood, and picked up where he’d left off. His vision blurred, his lips chapped and bleeding. Every move he made grew increasingly heavy. Despite his efforts to deepen his breaths, his lungs felt shallow, uneven. His heartbeat failed to keep a steady rhythm, his pulse slowing with every second.
“You’re almost there.” Emylia’s gentle tone entered his awareness. It sounded wrong to hear her voice with his true ears now that he was back in his body. Or was it still his ethera that heard her? She crouched beside him, the edges of her form wavering as she watched his progress. “You’re so close, Teryn. You can do this.”
“Why can I hear you?” He spoke the words, but they didn’t leave his lips. “Why can I see you?”
Her mouth tugged into a frown. “Morkai’s spell is almost complete. With every strand, it fights to sever you from your body, fights to trap you as an ethera for good. Even though you’re in your body, you straddle the line between life and death. Your feelings for Cora are all that keep your connection to your cereba intact, linking it to your heart-center.”
He felt Cora’s hands then, palms against his cheeks, but it wasn’t his flesh that felt her touch; it was the buzzing resistance of his ethera. His name left her lips over and over like a mantra.
The Roizan roared again, and Teryn felt a stronger tug, fighting to wrench him from his body.
“Teryn. Teryn. Teryn.” Cora’s voice kept him in place, while Emylia’s urged him to keep painting. Don’t lose focus. He was so close.
So close.
Cora said his name again, and this time it ended on a sob. He was vaguely aware of the blood dripping down his chin, tingling the surface of his ethera.
“One last line,” Emylia whispered, the sorrow in her tone mingling with Cora’s cries.
“Teryn, Teryn, Teryn…” Cora continued to chant, and he felt her lips press against his cheek, felt her cradle his face, her tears mingling with his blood.
With a final surge of intent, he painted the last line and closed the pattern in a slash of red. Then, with all the waning strength he had left, he lifted the leather strap from around his neck and shoved the crystal into Cora’s trembling hands.
“I love you,” he said, but the words left the lips of his ethera, not his body. “I love you,” he repeated, and this time he managed a garbled whisper before his hands slipped from the crystal.
* * *
Cora stared down at Teryn,limp in the grass before her. Blood stained his lower face, trailed down his neck and over the puncture wounds that had been left in the collar’s absence. His hair was now entirely silver, skin so pale she could see blue veins beneath it. She didn’t dare look at his chest, couldn’t bring herself to note if it still rose and fell.
The man she loved was dying, but there was still more work to be done.
She swallowed down her sorrow and turned herself over to logic. Safety. The anchoring element of earth cradling her knees, her legs. Breathing in, she called on the element of air to guide her intellect. The growing flames fueled her resolve. Her strength of will.
The watery realm of grief would have to wait.
“Where is your dagger?” she said to Mareleau, but the other woman’s eyes were locked on the Roizan. It had ceased its attack, and now a third face sloughed off into a puddle of ash.
King Verdian.
Mareleau was too distracted to pay Cora’s question any heed, but she needed something to break the crystal with. If only she could find the dagger and slam the stone with its hilt. Her eyes flicked to the pattern that was suspended in midair. It continued to slowly weave, which meant they still weren’t safe. So long as the crystal was intact, no one was safe from Morkai.
