Page 47 of Invocation

Run. Without him. He wouldn’t be able to keep up.

“I can’t,” she said.

His voice took on a warning tone. “Novikke, you promised me. Run. Get to the ruins and fix this. Ravi is with you.”

“I—” She trembled, unable to shake the impression of invisible walls closing in around her. What if she let go of him and he never woke up again?

“Go.” He squeezed her hand hard and gave a weak smile. “I’ll see you again soon.”

And then he let go of her hand.

She reached for him, but he had already dropped to the ground and gone still.

Asleep. Or dead. She was too frightened to check to find out which one. She stopped breathing. A dark ocean of despair swirled around her, pulling her down. She stared at him, frozen.

“Novikke!” someone said. She looked up, drawn out of the darkness.

Neiryn looked down at Aruna, alarmed, then at Novikke. “Go!”

She looked down at her hand, watching the vapor curling off it, and something warm and strong grew inside her, pressing against the Panic and pushing it away.

She wasn’t alone. She had the spirit of a goddess with her. And she had a task to complete.

She turned and ran through the trees toward the ruins.

She crashed through the brush, vaulting over a log and continuing without slowing down. Branches whipped her and tore at her skin. Vissarion flinched as she passed him, shouting something that she wasn’t paying enough attention to understand. His sword flashed toward her and grazed fabric, putting a rip in her cloak.

She angled to the side of the group, trying to circle around them before they could react, but they moved to block her. She swung her sword wildly, hitting nothing but forcing a few of them back.

Someone moved in behind her, and she dodged sideways. Something hit her side, and she cried out. She felt warm blood dripping down her hip. She whirled to face the attacker and swung until she hit something. As her blade cut into flesh, she felt the wound at her side healing itself.

Someone pulled at her cloak and she fell, landing in the dirt on her back. Vissarion stood over her. His sword shone above her in the moonlight. He opened his mouth to say something, and Novikke’s hand tingled with the unmistakable energy of magic.

Before he could speak, a cloud of black, like ink in water, billowed up from her hand and engulfed him. He jumped, trying to wave it away. Novikke saw his mouth open as he tried to shout, but no sound came out.

She scrambled to her feet and kept running, leaving Vissarion cringing and clutching at his throat. Another soldier reached for her, and another rush of blackness shot out of her hand and shoved him back.

White stone appeared beneath her feet as she ran. The obelisk at the center of the ruins towered ahead. Shouts rang out behind her. She heard Neiryn yell something, and a flash of flame illuminated the ruins.

She didn’t stop. She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t turn around.

She skidded to a stop at the obelisk. The center of the ruins. She’d reached the place where this had all started—where Theros’s device had opened the well of magic in the ruins and set the forest on a path toward extinction.

“Now what?” she asked the air breathlessly.

Something quivered within her as if trying to escape. She didn’t know how to release it. She dropped her sword and knelt on the stones, gripping her wrist.

“Come on,” she whispered to it. “Do something.”

Footsteps hit the stone and pounded toward her. She looked up, and soldiers were approaching. Vissarion had freed himself of shadow. Behind them, there were more flashes of fire. She saw Neiryn, and then Kadaki wielding her magic alongside him as they fought the incoming group of archers and swordsmen. In the jumble of figures beneath the trees she spotted Thala, sword up, holding back two of the soldiers.

And Aruna—he was the only one she didn’t see.

She grasped the wrist of her marked hand, willing it to do whatever it was supposed to do. “Please,” she said. “Please, do something.”

On an impulse, she raised her hands and pressed them against the obelisk, beseeching.

For a moment, nothing happened. And then a faint golden light, like the glow of the tree in the temple, grew beneath her fingers.

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