Page 13 of Heart's Escape

“I’m s-sorry,” Alindra whispers beside me.

I freeze. For a shivering heartbeat, I’m almost afraid to meet her eyes.

“Your magic,” she continues. “I never should have—”

I turn to face her, expecting some trick, some further cruelty. But she’s watching me with wide eyes, shivering against the cliff face, looking like nothing more than a woman whose entire life has just shattered at her feet. Some low, angry part of my mind growls that she’s a magician, damn it, that her entire life is a deception, but I can’t reconcile that angry whisper with what I see. Not while I’m clinging to the side of a mountain, at least.

“Shhhh,” I hiss. “Climb first. Talk later.”

She nods, and I turn away, pulling myself up the mountain, my arm and legs burning with the effort. The wind brings occasional snatches of voices to swirl around my head, but they don’t seem to be getting any closer. The treeline hovers just above us, tantalizingly close. And memories pummel the inside of my skull, memories I thought I’d buried forever.

My father’s polished black boots. Bending on my knees before him as he ripped the magic from my body. Watching him do the same to my mother, even as her belly swelled with the child who would become my little brother Rowan. Screams and tears and his cool, indifferent smile.

My father had never once apologized.

Chapter8

Alindra

HOW DO WE FIND AN OLD GOD?

I’m going to die.

I picture my own death, over and over, as I force my arms and legs up the mountain. I imagine slipping on the stone, grabbing frantically at nothing as the weight of all the stolen gold in my bag pulls me backward. I wonder if I’d close my eyes as I fell or if I’d leave them open to stare at the brilliant blue sky while my body plummeted to the ground. I imagine Malron’s voice, the scraping, self-satisfied shout he’d make as he spotted me, the lance of magic he’d use to pierce my chest or the jet of flames he’d send up the canyon walls to embrace me. I imagine falling, burning, screaming—

And then, suddenly, it’s over.

I’m on my hands and knees in the dirt. Pine trees whisper above me. Thick bands of golden light fall across the gently sloping forest floor. I glance up to see Phaedron standing in the shadows adjusting the ridiculously large sword at his side. He tilts his head as if he’s telling me to get away from the edge.

My entire body trembles, and I find I’m not quite ready to stand. Honestly, what I really want to do is to throw myself on the dirt and kiss the stars-blessed ground beneath me, but some small and insistent part of me doesn’t want Phaedron to think I’ve completely lost my mind. So I crawl forward, dragging my bag along the ground, and then press my back against the base of a tree. I only just stop myself from wrapping my arms around its rough trunk.

Phaedron lifts his head and stares at the treetops. The scent of illusion is gone from him now, and I try not to stare as the afternoon light filters through the pines to paint his features. Perhaps he’d seemed a bit softer with his illusions, a bit healthier and happier. Or perhaps that was just because he thought I’d be able to get him home.

I turn away, but my eyes catch on the tangled knot of Phaedron’s right sleeve and my mind races with questions I know better than to ask. What under the stars happened to this man? And why was he trying to hide it?

Phaedron makes a sound in the back of his throat that’s almost like a cough. I rip my gaze off his missing arm and onto the pine needles at his feet as my cheeks burn.

“Where are they expecting you to go?” Phaedron asks.

His voice is soft and low, almost intimate. I rub my hand across my face and blink, trying to make sense of his question. Phaedron crouches down on the pine needles until his strange, pale eyes are almost level with mine.

“Your people,” Phaedron continues, in that same low voice. “Where will they look for you? Where should we avoid?”

My people. My eyes sting. I’ve never thought of King Grathgore’s magicians as my people, but he’s right, isn’t he? The other magicians are as close to my people as anyone will ever be.

And where will they expect me to go? Stars, where do I expect to go? This was my entire plan, to throw myself into the anomaly just before it closed and vanish forever in the Lands Below. That was the only plan I had.

And it was terrible. I open my mouth.

“Home,” I whisper.

The word raises the skin on the back of my arms, as though a ghost has just walked over my grave. Phaedron nods at the interlacing tree branches above us, and I slowly realize that isn’t much of an answer.

“Over the plains,” I say. “Past the Kingdom of the Summer.”

Phaedron nods again, then comes to his feet. He shades his eyes against the late afternoon sun as he looks out over the canyon, almost as though he can see the jumbled collection of buildings and corrals and stables that had once been my home. Then he turns back to me with what might be intended to be a smile.

“Then we should avoid the plains,” he says. His voice is still soft and low, like he’s trying to break bad news.

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