A Soul Like Glass (Kingdom of Betrayal #4)

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

T hat afternoon, I kneel in front of the little girl’s cage again.

This time, I’m alone with her, but I also have my hammer and toolbox with me.

Over the course of the day, Thaden told me everything he knows about the blight, the way it feeds off death, and how dangerous it is to travel near it. He told me about his human mother, although he refused to name her, and the way Tamra shook her head indicated she doesn’t know his mother’s name, either.

He also explained how he traveled from here to the wasteland the first time—and again this morning.

It’s a journey I’ll experience again soon.

I’ve asked Tamra to come back with me, but she has yet to make a decision.

As for my choice to raise Galeia, it doesn’t feel as overwhelming as I thought it might. I raised my siblings until they were nine years old and were separated from me. I know how to care for children. And I won’t be alone. Erik is the only other person in this world who will understand Galeia.

I won’t force this choice on him, but I know his heart. He won’t turn her away.

I’ve prepared myself for the journey back to him, right down to the weapons harness I’m wearing, but right now, I have a much harder task in front of me.

“Child,” I murmur to Galeia as I settle down on the hard rock. “Come out of that cage.”

I don’t expect her to understand me. Thaden made it clear that Galeia lives by her instincts. If Erik were here, things might be different, but I’ll just have to do my best.

Of course, Thaden could bring her out of the cage to me, but I need her to trust me.

I need her to choose to come with me.

If she doesn’t, I have no hope of surviving her claws if she gets frightened.

I breathe out my anxiety because, damn, I’m putting my life on the line.

Galeia’s forehead crinkles at me from where she sits in the middle of her cage. One foreclaw has speared through the arm of a straw doll, pinning it to the floor.

She doesn’t budge, but that’s okay. I have a plan.

Very carefully, I open the lid to my toolbox and make a show of peering inside it. She won’t be able to see its contents from where she’s sitting.

As I hoped she would, she cranes forward, trying to see what I see.

I have to be careful not to touch any of the dark metal inside the box, but I reach into it as if I will pull something out.

She darts forward, pressing her face to the bars, inhaling deeply again.

Her green eyes are suddenly even brighter than before.

She makes an urgent growling sound in the back of her throat, and I do my best to interpret it.

I tip the box toward her so she can see into it. “Something you want?”

She moves much faster than I was expecting. So fast, I nearly drop the box in shock.

With astounding speed, she shreds the bars in front of her, her black claws slicing through them as if they were nothing but air before she leaps at the box.

I’ve barely caught my breath before her little hand darts into it and then retracts again. She’s now crouched right in front of me, her fist closed around whatever she took. She presses it to her heart, making another growling sound that begins with force but ends plaintively.

The corners of her mouth are turned down, and she looks up at me with that same forlorn expression she gave me when she pressed her cheek to the bars earlier today.

I don’t dare make any sudden movements.

She’s out of the cage, which is what I wanted, but my task only gets more dangerous from here.

A piece of metal that was still clinging to the bars behind her falls to the ground with a clang , but I don’t react.

I swivel my eyes to the box, taking a quick look at its contents. The device that was in Erik’s heart is the only thing missing.

She holds it up to her nose, inhaling deeply, and I make out the wolfish faces in its design.

“I can take you to him,” I murmur, keeping my voice low and very slowly gesturing to her closed fist before pointing to myself. “You can come with me.”

She leans toward me, inhaling deeply, dragging in my scent before her focus falls on my hammer. She crouches lower to sniff that, too, but she looks puzzled, tilting her head at me.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what she wants, but I take a risk, carefully brushing my fingertips against the hammer’s handle.

Light glows around my weapon, and I’m aware of the way my skin and hair and body light up with it.

Galeia’s eyes widen. She takes a quick breath, another deep inhale, blinking rapidly before she looks at me again.

She sneezes. Her little nose wrinkles. Then she edges toward me, and I stay very still as she climbs onto my lap.

My heart beats hard, not only because of the danger she poses to me, but also because she’s holding the dark device near me—a device made out of metal that Graviter Rex warned me never to touch again.

But she keeps it pressed against her chest, her fist closed around it.

I’m certain this is the best I’m going to get.

Very slowly and carefully, I lift my hammer and slide it into the scabbard at my back.

I’m concerned that once my light is gone, Galeia will move away from me, but she snuggles more closely.

My arms close around her before I very carefully reposition her on my hip.

I’m relieved when she nestles into me as I stand.

I’ve left my toolbox on the floor, so I use my foot to close its lid. I won’t take it with me. This dark metal stays here. I’m saddened to leave my grandmother’s pin behind, too, but it also touched the dark metal, and I can’t risk that it’s been contaminated.

I would have chosen to leave the device Malak used on Erik, but it seems Galeia has other ideas.

Now that she’s safely tucked into my arms, I don’t delay, striding from the room and along the tunnel, past the Einherjar runes to where Tamra and Thaden are waiting for me.

What I didn’t see the first time I passed through this tunnel was another opening opposite Thaden’s forge.

It leads into a chamber that’s only a little higher than Thaden is tall and barely wide enough for three people to step inside.

The walls have been carved with the same sequence of symbols that Thaden formed with his medallion before he brought me here.

The woman who was watching over Galeia—a woman who has evaded every effort I’ve made to find out her name—stands at the entrance. During the day, Thaden explained that it was she who told him how to carve the symbols, tapping into the dark magic needed to transport him instantly to the wasteland.

With a grimace, he told me how it didn’t work to plan the first time. He had intended to take his tools with him. With them, he could have snatched me up and brought me back here right away.

It explains why he had looked at his hands and cursed so loudly when he first appeared to me in that blast of lightning.

Everything he did after that was improvised.

Now, his relief when he sees Galeia in my arms is palpable. “She came with you.”

I wait for him to reach for Galeia, to kiss or hug her, but he doesn’t.

“I can’t hug her,” he says, his eyes filling with tears. “I took on the soul of the dragon that tried to kill her. If I step near her, it triggers her fear.”

“I’m sorry for your pain,” I whisper.

He shakes his head rapidly. “I’m grateful, Asha. You can protect her in ways that I can’t. Sending her away is hard, but knowing she has the chance of a life free from the past means everything to me.”

I blink away my own tears, turning to my sister, but she, too, is crying.

I can read her decision in the way she presses her lips together.

“You’ve decided to stay,” I say softly to her.

“I’m needed here,” she replies. “I may not be able to use my power, but I can help these people.” She bites her lip. “If I go back out there, I’ll only be used as leverage against you.”

Just as Gallium will be.

“I’m safe here,” she says. “The blight is growing so much that even the dragons will think twice about coming here, and if they do… well… we’ll be ready.”

I thought I was prepared for her decision, but it turns out that I’m not.

I try to keep my voice steady, fighting the burn behind my eyes. “I’m going to miss you.”

She purses her lips, softly blowing out a breath as tears trickle down her face. “I miss you already.”

She leans into me, pressing her cheek to mine.

I’m certain she would hug me, but for the little girl I’m already holding. As Tamra stays beside me, Galeia reaches up with her free hand, brushing her fingertips through the tears trickling to my chin.

The corners of her mouth turn down, and she makes a sad, growling sound in the back of her throat.

I close my eyes, trying to hold on to this moment. “I promise you, Tamra, I will find Gallium. I’m fighting on my own terms now, nobody else’s.”

“I know you will,” she says. “You have always kept us safe.”

I don’t want to say goodbye.

I promise myself it won’t be long before I see my sister again.

Forcing myself to move, I step back toward the chamber.

The older woman gestures inside it. “I’ve modified the symbols,” she says, pointing to one that sits lower than the others. “The dark magic should now take you to the wolf who holds your heart.”

She doesn’t sound confident.

“‘Should’?” I ask.

She grimaces. “Dark magic serves only itself. Even when you think you control it, you don’t.”

I consider this carefully. “Is that why Thaden’s hammer remained behind the first time he used this chamber?”

She nods. “Undoubtedly.”

I try to exhale my anxiety as the woman steps away. Anything could happen once this magic takes hold of me. I could arrive without my hammer, or worse, Galeia could end up in a different place than I do, or?—

I take a deep breath and stop my thoughts in their tracks because this is still the safest way for me to travel.

Thaden reaches for me. “Asha, thank you.”

“I will look after her, Thaden,” I say. “No matter what happens. I promise you. She will have the life you couldn’t have.”

I want to believe it, and, in this moment, I’m certain of it.

He swallows hard, giving me a nod, and that’s all before he rakes his forefinger against the small blade embedded just inside the entrance to the chamber.

His blood spills across the wall, splattering the side of the first symbol. It lights up, quickly followed by the second, each one seeming to trigger the next in sequence, all of them glowing and sharp.

But I’m unsettled to see that it isn’t a golden light this time, not bright and dazzling like the burst of lightning around Thaden when he first arrived in the wasteland.

A dark light presses in on me, growing blacker with every heartbeat.

I catch a glimpse of Thaden, where he startles outside the chamber before the light closes around me.

His eyes are wide with alarm and his shout is panicked as he lurches toward us. “ No! ”

Then, the magic takes hold.

I flinch against the freezing cold darkness, instinctively crouching low, holding Galeia close to my chest.

She gives a cry, filled with fear, a second before sharp pricks of pain across my arm tell me she’s extended her claws.

For the shortest moment, my heart stops.

So, too, does my ability to breathe.

Then the pressure lifts, and I open my eyes.

I take a breath, but in the next instant, the air is filled with ash, and all I inhale is dust.

A scream rises to my lips.

I’m crouched in the center of a vast plain. Tornados of dust whirl around me. Hard things crunch beneath my boots and when I look down, there are bones protruding from the ash.

In the distance, monstrous forms crash against each other, the impact thudding through me.

I was prepared to arrive somewhere other than Erik’s location, but I was not prepared for this.

We can only be in the heart of the darkness and the pull… Oh, the pull …

Pain stabs at my side. Galeia’s claws are digging deeper. I try to hold her closer even as she screams in terror, her cries whipping away in the shrieking wind that drowns my thoughts.

I promised I would keep her safe.

I promised I would help her.

I promised Erik we would never break.

From within the swirling darkness up ahead, a figure takes shape, dust, and ash drawing together into a form I refuse to recognize.

The whisper that reaches me across the distance chills me to my bones.

Come to me, Asha. You don’t have a choice.