Page 120 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

I hurried outside for a better look, and my heart stuttered when I saw the vastness of it. The Green House was situated on a hill along the capital’s perimeter, a normally lovely vantage point that was now horrific. Towering clouds, black with tinges of purple and green, loomed over the city, spitting sheets of driving rain and torrents of hailstones. The wind howled, churning like some great herd of beasts stampedingacross a plain. The clouds blocked all daylight, making it impossible to tell how much time had passed since I’d fallen asleep, but I could still see everything as clear as day, for the air crackled with lightning. Bolts lashed out of the clouds, a whole bright forest taking fiery root among the city’s sparkling towers and winding streets. The thunder was deafening, immediate. I watched the destruction in horror. Lightning tore through the streets, knocking down buildings and carving the university’s lush green parks into canyons. This was not ordinary lightning; these bolts were weapons, unleashed with intent.

And then, in the midst of the clouds, a shape unfurled—a great bird, wings spreading wide as if to envelop the entire city, with flashing eyes and a gaping chasm of a beak that roared wind and fire. It shifted as it flew across the sky, breaking apart and reforming. It was a bird, then a thunderhead, then a monstrous chimaera with reaching human arms and a long serpent’s body.

My blood ran cold as I stared down the hill at its grotesque hugeness, the unthinkable horror of it. Ankaret’s words rang in my mind, clear as bells.They call him storm, they call him He Who Is All, they call him…

Kilraith.

The storm reared up high and then dove into the streets, flooding them with darkness. I couldn’t hear anything over the fury of the rain and thunder, but I could imagine the screams underneath it from the people now trapped in their houses, pinned beneath rubble.

I didn’t go back for Ryder. What could a wilder do, even an Anointed one, against such a thing as this? He would see it well enough for himself if he hadn’t already, and I didn’t want him to try and stop me.

I ran out of the garden and down the hill, each step a fight against the confused maelstrom of wind whipping the air into a frenzy. My body screamed in protest, still tender from the trip to Mhorghast, but Iran as hard as I could until my cramping side forced me to stop. I bent over, hands on my knees, and caught my breath at the edge of one of the university parks. Massive trees lay uprooted, scattered across the ravaged grounds. I climbed on top of one, perched unsteadily on its charred trunk, and began to sing.

In Mhorghast, I’d thought of deception, clarity, defense. I’d held each concept in my thoughts, three stones in the ceaseless river of my voice, my breath, my power. And now I did the same, this time thinking only one simple command, as I’d done in the forest that day when I’d run at Ankaret:stop.

What would happen, I didn’t know. Was the storm truly Kilraith, or was it simply a magical tool he was controlling? Either way, if the awful thing yielded to my voice, what then?

But these questions were useless, mere distractions. I focused hard on my voice, calling my power to rise within me. At first, even my voice was no match for such a fury. The wind swallowed my every note. The ground shook as if from distant explosions, nearly knocking me off my precarious perch. I thought of pulling Ankaret’s feather from my dress and using it to summon her at last. But I had only one feather and a whole war stretching before me. First I would try singing.

Somehow I managed to remain standing, to draw deeper breaths. I lifted my face to the black sky and sang from every part of me—the soles of my feet, my clammy palms, my shaking knees.

The storm’s attention turned to me with a shift in the air and a sudden rush of heat. I cracked open my eyes, the wind knife-sharp on my cheeks, and saw darkness bearing down on me like a black wave rising out of the sea—relentless, cresting, threatening to break. Something whipped out of the churning sky—a tendril of shadow frosted with rain—and slammed into my stomach, knocking me to the ground. The blow disrupted my song; I huddled in the mud, myhead reeling. Darkness slithered across the ground like snakes, wound around my torso, and lifted me up into the air.

I choked in the storm’s cold grip, managing only a thin thread of song, a mere unsteady hum. The storm brought me up to its bright unblinking eyes—each as large as a door, rimmed with ribbons of lightning—and inspected me. And then, the storm smiled, a bright arc of lightning so piercing it felt like a blade carving into my skin.

Suddenly I was back in that awful house by the sea called Farther, fighting to sing as Gemma tore the Three-Eyed Crown from Talan’s head. It was the same feeling crowding at my fingers, nipping at my throat. The same angry, hungry violence. But this time, I faced it alone. I had no Gemma or Mara, no Ryder or Alastrina.

Stop.I held the thought frantically in the crumbling grip of my mind and drew another ragged breath, but when I sang, I couldn’t hear my own voice. Thunder boomed in my ears, lightning crackling all around me. There was a distant rumble of low laughter, and within the laughter, something like a voice, calm as a storm’s eye.Why, hello again.The words rang in my head, more a feeling than anything.I know you.

I didn’t want to let in the word, but it flooded my thoughts anyway:Kilraith.

The pierce of his smile deepened, peeling me open. A horrible pressure was tightening around my body. My ribs would crack; they would puncture my lungs. The realization came to me in a desperate burst of panic, just as it had in that long-ago house of smoke. I was going to die.

Then, a streak of brilliant light shot through the storm, sending darkness flying like shattered glass. Kilraith lost his grip on me, and I fell, gasping, expecting the end. I was too high in the air; the impact would crack open my skull. But something caught me: a softness, bright and warm. Dazed, I found myself in one piece, once again onmy hands and knees in the mud. I looked up, squinting at the dazzling radiance of whatever now stood between Kilraith and me. Inside my soaked bodice, pressed against my skin, Ankaret’s feather bloomed to life, warming me.

For it was she, towering over me with wings of her own—a bright pillar of light and feathers and fire. A low moan shook the air, a sound of despair.No, came an agonized plea. It was Kilraith, I thought, the thunderous boom of his voice vibrating against my skin.Wait, beloved—

But if it was Ankaret he pleaded with, she did not listen. She rushed at him with beating wings, her every feather outlined with blazing gold. She drove him up into the sky as if he were a mere piece of rubble being swept along by the tide. The immensity of him shrank, no longer mighty, a weak cyclone of shadows. The sky cleared, twinkling with stars. Dazed, I watched as she rammed into him again and again above the city’s scattered fires. Time moved both slowly and quickly; I felt as if I were watching an eerie dream unfold.

As Kilraith trembled before her—a mere blot on the sky now, faint tendrils of darkness reaching up through the blaze as if to entreat her, placate her—Ankaret reared up. Her wings spanned the entire breadth of the ruined parks, the white clusters of university buildings. She dove, engulfing him. A churning current of fire and shadow rushed over the city and outward in all directions, as if someone had dropped an impossible stone into an impossible sea. A great heat blew past me; I curled into myself, hiding my face as best I could. A thick blanket of silence fell and then was gone. In its wake, I heard distant screaming, desperate wails, urgent shouts.

I dared to lift my head and look around.

Kilraith was gone, as was Ankaret. The sky was clear, the air calm.

I pushed myself to my feet and staggered toward the university, not really understanding where I was going or what I was doing. I feltonly the urge to see, to understand. I pressed my palm against my bodice and nearly cried with relief to feel the warmth of Ankaret’s feather. I took it as a sign that wherever she was, whatever she’d done, she was still alive.

But then I came to one of the cobblestone university courtyards, where on any other day you would see students gathered around their books or bustling to their next classes, professors arguing spiritedly over their lunches. On this night, it was chaos. A great furrow had been carved into the ground, and people were rushing everywhere, ashen, sobbing, holding each other. I hovered at the courtyard’s edge and watched them, my skin icy with dread. I heard their whispers, caught pieces of their desperate conversations.Gone. Disappeared. Shadows.

Taken.

For a moment, I couldn’t move. I kept listening, as if to convince myself that what I was hearing wasn’t real, that all these panicking people were wrong, that I was in fact still asleep in the Green House.

Someone across the courtyard, hidden from me by the rubble and the frantic crowd, howled out their grief. The sound shocked me into action. I spun around and left them all, hurrying back to the Green House as fast as I could. I couldn’t run, could hardly walk. I was bruised, wobbly-kneed, lightheaded. But the fear flooding me was stronger, and by the time I reached the Green House, I hardly even noticed that I had a body. I was pure terror, pure pounding heart and cold sweat. I dragged myself upstairs and burst into the parlor, Ryder’s name hoarse in my throat.

But the room was empty. His boots stood at attention, untouched on the carpet.

Ryder was gone.

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