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I paid no mind to the glass knife scraping across the altar, that high-pitched screech echoing shrilly off the walls. Carex screamed at his minions for iron, for rope, for something to bind me with.
Screamed while he looked at me like he would eat me alive.
I gazed through the wide-open ceiling, where Soul Reapers circled lazily above the Citadelle’s highest spires, the blue and silver of the royal colors still flapping merrily in the wind for a king and a court that no longer existed.
Outside I scented the healing land, the smell of death turning lush and green, the faint sound of wings in the air. Birds. Butterflies.Life.
This realm was alive once again.
I did that. Not of my own volition, and in a barbaric, horrendous way, but this whole realm was alive. Carex motioned the mages closer, then they all looked at me. I pushed myself into a sitting position, fighting my rising panic. Before they restrained me or bound me in iron, I would have to strike, and I could not hesitate.
Carex would die first, then the mages, then the Mistress, I decided.
The Reaper-infested soldiers I’d leave for last, and then I’d…burn this city down, providing there were no innocents left. One slow breath in, another breath out as I tried to plumb the depths of my magic, layer after heavy layer, estimating how much magic I had to work with.
Too much, given how desperately this power strained inside me, how thinly my skin was stretched over bone and flesh, as if I was on the verge of being torn apart.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
Imagine what it will feel like when this is over and we are all safe.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
Carex shouted an order and the soldiers picked me up and tossed me on the altar, knocking my head against the stone, black dots dancing in my eyes as they wrestled me into place, trying to capture my flailing hands and feet as I kicked and fought.
Carex and the Mistress were too far apart, but I had to at least try. I reached for my magic, dragged my starry power up like an anchor from the depths…
The keystone flew out of my pocket.
My stomach clenched in horror as the relic shot through the air like a piece of slippery soap, the soldiers’ cruel hands hauling me closer to those crippling iron shackles as the rock clattered and spun across the floor.
The squealing of the knife stopped.
“What treasure did you bring me, daughter?” The king scuttled forward like a crab, breath hitching when he saw what I’d dropped.
His eyes gleamed with pure greed. “One worthy of a king.”
“So I’ve been told.” I angled my head, torn between dismay at losing the stone and watching how cautiously the king inched forward. Even the enormous skull throne seemed to wait to see what happened next and a sense of foreboding shuddered down my spine.
This was the fifth skull.
The world was a puzzle, a maze of threads and paths that crisscrossed and ran parallel. Some never to meet. Some meant to intertwine, as though fate itself wove them together.
That the stone began its journey hidden inside a dragon’s eye, only to end up here, in front of my father like a gift, could not be an accident. “It’s a keystone,” I explained softly, no longer fighting the soldiers pinning me down. “I haven’t yet discovered what it’s for, but I have been told it’s worth a fortune.”
This was the moment Torin foresaw.
This was the moment when I’d know if I could trust the High Seer…or if she was another one of the Oracle’s pawns and had played me for a fool.
Carex reached for the stone, his blackened fingers barely brushing the white surface when the entire wall of books exploded and my ears hollowed out.
* * *
Blue-black magic swarmed the room…thenstopped.
Everything in the room froze, as if time itself halted. My ears were ringing as I ripped out of the soldiers’ grasp, scooted off the altar, and jogged toward the stone gleaming on the floor.
Carex, the Mistress, the mages, the soldiers—everything in the room—was frozen in time. Even the wall was caught mid explosion, an arrested burst of dark light showing me where the explosion began, yet the air inside this room was so very still.
