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I spun my mind through a long list of fears. Snakes and heights, falling and pain, betrayal and loss. None of them seemed big enough to kill me. I had an answer for each.
Sleep deprivation and dehydration were worse on the last day. I fought against sleep the hardest, resorting to pacing like a caged wildcat to keep myself awake, which only made my body ache more. The warlord watched me from behind her veil the whole time, offering nothing but water and hot coals.
Eventually, the shimmers of heat and steam in the air came alive. I thought I could hear music coming from somewhere deep underground, the rhythmic thrumming of strings and drums. The fire surged up, licking at the hot coals, forming shapes in the shadows. Armies made of steam and heat clashed before the fire reached up to swallow both. Faces appeared in the stones, faces that I knew. I saw a faraway kingdom with its palace made of glass. The throne sat empty, the crown unclaimed, a river of blood flowing beneath it.
I saw a barren snowy landscape, and a broken black fort looming high up on the mountainside. One side of the fort had been blown away, leaving blackness yawning, ready to swallow me whole.
Then I saw a palace made of gold and white stone. A hundred servants waited behind its doors to welcome me home.
I saw dragons sweep out of the sky and lay waste to the world, one breath at a time.
Warlord Chinua stood, and the vision faded. “It is time,” she said and went out the door.
Outside, dusk shadows bathed the world in shades of red, pink, and deep blue. Cian was waiting for me, a black robe in hand, Hellion at his side. Harif was there too, waiting silently. Without a word, Cian came to me, dressed me, his touch a gentle question that he could not voice.Are you okay?
I could not touch him back except to accept the cord of white rope he offered for my waist. I let my fingers linger over his just long enough to say what needed said.Yes,I love you.
I caught Hellion’s eye, and they nodded once. I swore I felt the shadow of their fingers in my hair, and the whisper of their words in my ear.The pressure makes you stronger.
They were right. Like shards of broken iron in a crucible, the heat and pressure of the last few months had made me into something new. Something stronger. Someoneworthy.
Chinua and Harif led me out into the grassy plain where a large flat rock marked the spot where the rite would take place. There, another fire waited, set in the ground. On it sat an iron pot full of bubbling red liquid. Harif drew out the liquid carefully, filling a black drinking bowl he offered to me.
The tang of blood and magic tickled my nose as I took it. After barely eating for nearly three days, my stomach recoiled at the idea of swallowing, but I brought it to my lips anyway. The second the hot blood potion hit my tongue, I doubled over, gagging.
Harif and Chinua waited.
I wished for Hellion’s steadying hand, or Cian’s words of praise, but they weren’t there. This I would have to do on my own.
Swallow. I willed every muscle in my throat and tongue to obey.Swallow!
The hot blood magic slid down my throat in a thick trickle.
“You must drink it all,” Harif said, his hand going to the handle of a curved black blade at his side. He had told me before that there was no going back once I entered the lodge. It was victory or death now, either at the hands of the magic or at his blade.
I brought the bowl again to my lips and drank deep, draining the contents as fast as I could.
He grunted his approval and took the bowl back.
Chinua made me lie down in the grass next to the rock. As I lay on my back, grass tickling at my skin, she began to sing. Not with words, but with a rumbling note deep in her throat.
The black sky came alive with veins of stars in thick streaks of white light rushing across the sky. Heat spread from my core and into my limbs. At first, it was little more than a light tingle, but each wave that followed the first was hotter, more intense. The next wave rolled over me and the world became agony. Every blade of grass was a razorblade in my skin. The tiny pebbles and clods of dirt became angry fists. Even the whisper of wind on my skin burned with the heat of hot iron.
I tried to curl up, but found myself paralyzed. My breaths quickened with panic and pain, the only possible expression of the torment wracking my helpless body.
Chinua knelt beside me, dipping her fingers in another bowl of the blood magic drink that Harif held for her. Still chanting deep in her throat, she drew searing lines and circles over my forehead. She used her fingers, but whatever symbol she drew might as well have been cut into me with needles. The pain only intensified when she pressed her thumb against the symbol and said, “Sleep.”
The command pushed me out of my body and into the ground, weightless. There, the world spun on itself, turning upside down. The sky became ground, the ground became sky, and stars became eyes. Blades of grass writhed into winged snakes, flapping their wings, and moving into formation like birds headed south for the winter.
Heavy breaths of wind pushed me higher, lower, east, and west until the Veil of Somnis sped beneath my feet. Mountains rose and crumbled around me. Rivers flowed and ran dry in the blink of an eye. I flew through time and space, watching as empires built great walls and temples one moment only to fall the next. Suns and moons raced across the sky in an eternal chase until…
I stopped, floating in front of a disc of black shadow. Arms of hungry sunlight twisted at the edge, burning with fire so loud the sound sent shock waves through me. The eclipse shifted, changing into a great copper eye, pulling me toward the center.
I screamed and fought against the force pulling me in, but I was nothing compared to that eye and its paralyzing power. Fingers made of blue fire reached out from behind the eye, grasping me, forcing my mouth open to let the flame flow down, down, into my veins in an all-consuming fire.
“Nevahn, Maelstrom, dragon rider, traitor-prince.” The voice was everywhere and nowhere, as if the very fabric of the world had deigned to speak. “Murderer.”
“No! That’s not who I am!” The roar of fire drowned out my words.
