Page 88 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
“It is all right,” I insist, even as my stomach sinks when I look upward and realize how far away the single window is from our current point. I have never climbed anything beyond a staircase or a ladder before.
Let alone while wearing an evening gown and high-heeled slippers.
Bene needs me, I remind myself.I can do this.
I may not be a great warrior, nor a great weaver, nor a woman trained for any manner of physical pursuits.
But that does not make me helpless.
I am the daughter of Mira and Giles Weaver. I am the daughter of Liora, Queen of the Flora Vale.Na sol Therya’fey. Na sol Therya’kai.
Rough stone scrapes my fingertips as I jam my hands between bricks, finding purchase within the crumbling mortar. My feet soon follow. Sucking in a deep breath, I begin my climb.
The wind picks up, tugging at my skirts, my hair. Suddenly, I wish the strands were braided rather than fluttering loose beneath my mother’s circlet, getting in my eyes and my mouth.
Muscles I have never used before in my life flex and strain.
Threads of Air woven by Velda wrap around my waist and tug me upward, allowing me to focus more on finding secure handholds and footholds rather than struggling to hold aloft my own weight.
But still, it is slow going.
Still, my body trembles.
Still, my skin grows clammy beneath my gown.
Still, I wish I could weave a pair of wings for myself and simply fly up there like Velda can.
A sudden thought strikes me. “Velda?” I ask as I hoist myself up another few inches. “Why did you not just wake Bene yourself?”
My right hand reaches upward, fingertips scrabbling at the lip of the ledge jutting out from the window. We are almost there. I can hardly believe it, but we are truly almost there.
“Because,” she pants, clearly just as exhausted as I am, “the weave is too complicated for me to unravel on my own. It will require both of us to undo it.”
“What?” I gasp, shooting her a look. “But I cannotweave. I cannot break a sleeping curse.”
“You must,” she breathlessly urges, tugging harder on the Air wrapped around my waist, straining to help pull me the rest of the way. “Please. You must try. For Bene’s sake. And my sisters, too. You are stronger than you know. And besides”—she barely manages to exhale the words as she collapses onto the ledge—“curses are meant to be broken. There is always a way.”
Shaking, I grasp the edge of the ledge with my left hand and haul myself upward until I’m finally able to peek over the edgeinto the room at the top of the tower. Until I can finally see Bene for myself through the grime-coated window, lying on the floor.
Malice didn’t even have the decency to give him a proper bed.
Hope swells within me against my better judgment.Na’theryn. There he is—so close, I can almost touch him. He is here. Alive. Even through the glass, I can see his chest rise and fall. I can see his body twitch in his sleep.
But I can also see the weave overlaying him—threads of gold and silver and even a hint of black for all that Velda and Bene both insist dark magic does not exist. The strands are woven together into such a complicated design that I cannot see where one thread begins and the other ends.
My mind races. My muscles quiver. My grip on the ledge begins to slip.
Doubts rush in.
What if I can’t do it? What if I make it this far simply to fail right at the end?
“Yes,” a voice purrs from the shadows lingering about the edges of the tower’s roof. “What if you fail? Or, more importantly—what if youfall?”
“Aurelia!” Velda cries, too late.
My heart seizes as Malice’s hand shoots out of the darkness, as his long fingers wrap about my throat and lift me clean into the air as if I weigh nothing at all. Slowly, he rises from his gargoyle-like crouch, bringing me with him.
How long has he been there? How long has he been within my thoughts?
