Page 11 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Once her lungs stopped aching from lack of air, she pushed herself to her knees. Chills wracked her body. She shivered violently. She grounded herself by firmly pressing her fingertips into the rocky floor below.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She spent several minutes repeating the mantra to herself. After the sweat dried upon her skin, and her stomach stopped rebelling, she sat back on her heels. She pressed her stray hair back into its messy braid.
She was okay. Everything was okay.
The corner of the offending journal caught her eye. She must have flung it aside in the throes of…whatever that state had been.
Internally, she cringed at her carelessness. The Hallie she’d known did not mistreat books like that. But this new Hallie was something else.
She inspected her hands, where power still tingled like pinpricks upon her skin. No visible wounds except where she’d cut herself with the glass shard, and even that had scabbed over already. Nothing to represent whatever power she’d unwittingly unleashed.
Madness. There could be no doubt.
With shaking hands, she fetched the journal and opened it to the page she’d coated in her blood. The paper was clean; no trace of scarlet stained it. But the tingling didn’t stop.
She snapped the journal shut and stuffed it back into her pack. She would deal with it after she ate something. An empty stomach was the last thing she needed on top of crazed visions or cuts that healed in seconds.
She stood and stepped toward the entrance, but her legs sagged, threatening to fail. She staggered a little, catching herself on her cot.
Steady. Steady. Loss of blood, perhaps… or a loss of power. It was hard to tell. Both ideas made her feel a little woozy.
Especially since she hadn’t lost all that much blood.
The chicken and dumplings waiting outside the tent made for a perfect distraction. She sat back down with the crude stone bowl and spoon, both carved from the same stone that made up the cavern.
The townsfolk of Stoneset were certainly resourceful. Guy had put a system in place: if you wanted to eat, you had to work. Some people oversaw the gathering of food from the gardens or hunting for meat. Another group washed and mended clothes.A third prepared food. The last patrolled the surrounding areas. The children were tasked with more menial chores, of course, such as fetching water from the underground river or the nearest well. Others ran messages between the busy adults.
Hallie had yet to be assigned a job at all, but Guy had told her he’d give her a few days to recover first, and then they would talk.
Hallie would be long gone before that time came. Hopefully.
She ate her dinner, which was delicious and perfectly savory, if a little lukewarm. But that was her own fault.
She tapped the spoon on the side of the bowl. Maybe going out and joining the others by the firewouldbe nice. She could manage thanking Ms. Vella for the meal and probably avoid having any meaningful conversation with Niels. Some of the younger girls even wanted Hallie to tell them about the capital. They’d come around twice to ask her about it, and—
Thunder boomed outside the tent.
Not thunder—the blast of a flashpistol.
The sound ricocheted through the caves, followed by screams. Hallie slapped her free hand to her ear, the other pressed into her shoulder.
Shouting. More flashpistol blasts.
She didn’t hear the bowl as it hit the stone floor, nor did she bother with the food that splattered on the canvas wall.
The screaming. It was exactly,exactlylike what she’d heard before coming out of whatever trance she’d gone into earlier—the one with the voices and the darkness.
It didn’t end within a matter of seconds.
Instead, the screams grew louder and more frantic. Running, pounding footsteps. More pistol fire. They all rose to a deafening cacophony as they echoed off the cavern walls.
Hallie ripped open the tent flap to meet Niels. His frame took up the entire entrance, blond hair mussed, eyes panicked. He had a pack on his back and a flashpistol in hand.
“What’s happening?” Her irritation with him couldn’t drown out the relief that he was okay.
“Cerls.”
