Page 41 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
It doesn’t work.
Clenching my eyes shut, I try to drown out all else. I fill my mind with only the image of the silver strands of Mind woven about the amulet I clutch against my chest. I imagine unraveling them. I imagine weaving them into a cord. I imagine flinging them across Briarhold, all the way to the Door. Like a lifeline.
My very last.
“Bene, help me,” I exhale, imagining that I’m speaking those three words along the threads I still firmly see within my mind’s eye. I picture him standing on the other end of that connection the way I remember him as a boy.
His silver hair. His blue eyes. His easy smile.
As if from far away, I hear the key scrape in the lock.
Friedemar is back already?
My concentration wavers. My pulse surges.
“Bene,” I whisper again, more urgently this time. My voice cracks. My hands shake.
The door swings open.
Two shadows darken the threshold: Friedemar and a man I don’t know. The latter stares at me as if I am a wild animal and shifts his grip on the long, flat wooden box he is holding.
Even through the wood, golden threads of Spirit seep out, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Their voices float toward me—words I hear but don’t understand.
The stranger: “Should we not contact your…friend, Your Majesty? He will be terribly displeased when he learns we have kept news of this from him.”
Friedemar: “Ifhe learns of it, Horace. No, this stays between us for now. I simply needyouto figure out what is wrong with her for me. She claims she cannot weave, but sheisa Jewel. I know it. She can be nothing else.”
I force myself to my feet, refusing to face whatever Friedemar plans to subject me to next on my knees. The wind ruffles past, tugging at my hair, my gown.
I take a single step backward and immediately crash into the railing behind me. My clammy fingers twitch. I lose my grip on the amulet I still hold. It bounces off the railing and tumbles into the night before I can stop it. My last piece of Bene. My last hope.
Lost.
“No,” I whisper, hating how I nearly whimper the word.
Behind me, somewhere in the distance, a bell tolls. Deep. Hollow.
At the sound, Friedemar frowns.
« Jump, »the voice abruptly whispers.
No warning. No explanation.
“What?” I gasp aloud, earning a queer look from the stranger still lurking in the doorway, clutching the box that makes my skin crawl.
The voice can’t be serious. It can’t truly want me to—
«Jump.»
With trembling fingers, I clutch the railing behind me and ease myself up onto it in a seated position.
My heart thunders. My breath catches.
I will never survive this fall.
Friedemar’s eyes narrow. “What are you doing?”
