Page 104 of The Cruel Dawn
I reach for her.
Elyn shouts,“Don’t!”
Nimith closes her eyes and becomes one more body we step over.
We reach the holding cells down in the bowels of the abbey.
“I’ve protected myself but…” Elyn grabs me right before we approach the first jail cell. She whispers, “In my name, be shielded now. No plague or poison shall claim you.” She touches my cheek.
A sheet of ice prickles across my face, down my neck, and spreads across my chest, arms, and legs. My moth’s thorax glows and pulses like the light from Elyn’s dove.
“We don’t know,” she says, her eyes bright with tears.
Fear.
My breath catches, and I whisper, “Thank you.”
We creep past the jail cells, the light cast by the stewards like Nimith dancing across the cold, jagged walls. That glow twists and then disappears and is replaced by sickly blue light that doesn’t come from Elyn.
I exhale—no cold clouds gather around my face. No, there’s something else in the air, and even with Elyn’s protective ward, it pushes at me like insistent smoke.
She and I exchange worried looks before she shouts, “Jadon Wake Rrivae.”
Silence and then… “Yes?”
We exhale with relief—but it’s short-lived.
He sounds…bigger, thicker, muddier.
Elyn and I forge ahead, stepping cautiously, hearts in our throats, as we near that strange watery light like a pond reflecting shadows in a cave.
Jadon sits behind locked bars, resting on the edge of his bed. He’s the center of that underwater light, and his tunic and breeches look tight against his frame.
Is hegrowing?
“How do you feel?” I ask him.
He looks at us with dull eyes and lifts his right hand.
The tattoo there—those circles and the elements within them—has returned. Worse, that tattoo has spread to his wrist. That watery glow…it comes from his inked right hand.
Elyn steps back. “Oh, no.”
My throat closes. “It didn’t work.”
Jadon shakes his head, and his dulled eyes glow brighter.
“We should return to Agon,” she says.
“Don’t leave,” I tell Jadon. “We’ll be back. I promise.”
Elyn and I race past the dead and dying: Vepaz Sirhhen, senator from realm Oron, Sielel Bezal, senator from realm Reilaph. Idwant from…
The door to the aerie is open, and younger monks congregate around Agon. Barefoot, they wear simple green robes and cropped hair. They speak in hushed tones as their eyes dart between Agon and each other.
My uncle spots Elyn and me, and he shakes his head. “Even in death, Celedan Docci is more powerful than we imagined.” The remains of the Keeper of Knowledge—silver dust again even though his body had completely dissolved—glow on the worktable, now surrounded by ten Raqiel guards.
“How is that possible?” Elyn asks. “We destroyed him.”
