Page 89 of Heart of the Shadow King

She does not answer me at first. It’s as though my voice must reach across a vast distance before finding her ears. Then she shifts. Her eyelids lift, slowly, heavily. At last, shining gold eyes peer out at me, whorling with raw magic.

“What is this?” I demand and try to rise. Her hands hold me in place; I cannot move her.

“Wait,” she says. Her voice is hollow. A voice of hard, unyielding stone. She moves her arms. A huge weight shifts above her, tumbling away, an avalanche which should have buried me beneath it. She moves again, slowly lifting her hands from my shoulders, at last allowing me to sit up.

The cell is destroyed. One wall is completely caved in, and the door is partially buried. Thelorststone is long gone, but there’s light still. A gentle pulsing light. Coming from her. Her livingurzulbody.

I don’t understand. My mind simply will not fathom what I see. I knew her gift was powerful and complex. But this? Nothing could have prepared me. Surely, I’m dreaming. Or mad.

“How did this happen?” I demand, the words strangled in my throat. “Faraine, why didn’t you . . . how could you . . . ?”

“When we joined,” she says, still in that hollow voice. “When your spirit opened to mine. It awakened me. I could feel theurzulagain.”

None of this makes any sense. I open my mouth, my addled brain unable to form a coherent question. Before I can get a word out, Faraine utters a low moan. She falls to her knees. Her crystal coating cracks, shatters, and drifts away in a flurry of glinting light.

Then she topples to her side, unheeding as I bellow her name.

37

FARAINE

There’s too much weight.

It crushes me, smothers me. Makes me other than I am meant to be.

And what am I meant to be?

A being of air.

Of light and movement.

Of speed and grace.

A being of fire, dangerous and dancing. Like the heat of a living sun.

I’m not meant for this stone. This heaviness enwrapping and entrapping me.

I must shake it off. Must stretch out my wings and take to the skies once more.

But . . . but . . .

Without the safety of stone . . .

I remember.

Pain.

Fire.

Rage.

Death, death, death . . .

Poison roils in my gut. I belch it from me in great noxious clouds.

Lifting my vast head, I open one roiling eye, and—

Fire burns in my throat as I suck in a breath. Fire in my throat, poison in my belly, stone pressing on my limbs. But none of it is mine.

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