Page 119 of Kissed By the Gods
Vaeloria and I were with Ryot on Solmire Island. My dreams aren’t dreams. They’re not visions or hallucinations or desires or grief.
They’re real.
“Oh, my gods!” I shout, trying to jump to my feet. I fall back into the shallow water with a splash and try again. This time I manage to get to my feet, though I stumble as a drunk would. “We left him there! We left Ryot on Solmire to die. We have to go get him!”
Vaeloria stumbles, too, coming to stand on trembling legs. She unfurls her wings, shaking the water off her beautiful feathers. Even like this—battered, drenched—she’s still breathtaking. Still trying. And my heart breaks in two. I cannot ask her to fly me to Solmire, though I can see clearly that she would try. We’re a full night’s ride away from the coast, and Solmire is far beyond that. It’s a journey that, in this condition, could kill her.
But I can’t leave Ryot there to rot.
I snap my fingers. The sound is muted thanks to my shriveled, waterlogged hands. “I’ll try to take us there like I did last night. Through … through the darkness.”
She shakes her head at me, telling me it’s not possible. Because we’re too tired? Because I’m not tired enough? I don’t know, but I pull my scythe free from its holster and scrape it through the air—nothing. Again and again, I try to cut a hole in the fabric of the Veil but every swipe ends in silence.
“Godsdammit!” I shout.
My head throbs the instant I move. I drag my trembling hands down my face, fingers automatically finding the scar at my temple, tracing it like it might unlock something. A door. A key. Anything.
“Can you make it to the Synod?” I ask Vaeloria. “They’ll send someone after Ryot.” I’ll make them if they don’t believe me.
Vaeloria nods, chuffing impatiently.Let’s go, she seems to say.
Wait. She spoke to me on Solmire, with words. Now she can’t. Why?
I stomp over to my pack. It’s the only thing not covered in ash. It didn’t make the trip with us to Solmire. Why?
Or, by far the better question, how did Vaeloria and I end up in Solmire?
But they’re questions that will have to wait.
I mount Vaeloria and she launches into the sky with a hoarse cry. She stumbles once, and then her wings beat a frantic rhythm, each stroke driven by sheer will. We cut through the night with a speed that should be impossible. Even during sky drills, when the faravars and their riders are pushed to the edge of endurance, I’ve never seen anything like this. She flies as if the wind itself is trying to catch us—and failing.
Sweat slicks her coat, her breath heaves. I lean close, pressing a hand to her neck, murmuring fierce words—praise,gratitude, love. All I have to give. She doesn’t stop to rest, she doesn’t falter.
She knows the urgency, maybe better than I.
Ryot and Einarr—if they haven’t already—are running out of time.
“Of all the magics that trace through my bloodline—healing, oath-binding, velvet-tongue, fury, shadow-binding, light-bending, illusion-weaving, firecalling, stormshaping, pathfinding, rotcraft, mindreach... and so many more?—
The gods gave me nothing of value. No, the gods cursed me. They named me a veilstrider.
But whatever the priests may say, the Veil is no bridge, no curtain, no sacred divide between the mortal and the divine. It is chaos. It is a place where emotion takes form and time forgets itself. There is no path. No map. No logic. Only feeling. Only fragments. Only fear.
I do not understand it. I do not want to understand it.
I just want it gone from me.”
Personal journal of Aerion of Fellsworn, the last veilstrider
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“You don’t understand!”I shout.
“Clearly,” Archon Lyathin snaps back, voice clipped with exasperation. He looks as frustrated as I feel.
