CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
G olden afternoon light spilled into the North Tower through dozens of slatted, narrow windows. A Castelguard was waiting on the landing outside the King’s room and ignored Lin—as if he’d been instructed to do so—as she went through the door.
Once inside, Lin felt her heart sinking. She was not sure what she expected might have happened since she’d given Conor the reformulated medication yesterday, but nothing seemed to have changed.
The room still felt close, oppressive and dusty. The papers scattered on the desk had a yellowed look, as if they were becoming antiques. The King was a shadowy, motionless silhouette in his chair.
As she moved across the room toward him, her skirts rustling as if they, too, were old paper, Lin noticed again that the noon light that lay across the floor looked fragmented somehow, like light seen through stained glass.
She remembered, then. The scratches on the windowpane. She sped up her pace, passing in front of the King—who did not seem to see her or react to her presence—and reached the window, a single heavy square surrounded by leaded glass. She dropped her satchel and ran her fingers across the cold surface of the pane, the ridged scratches scraping against her fingertips.
They were on the inside of the window, not the outside.
Without dropping her hand, Lin turned to look at the King. His eyes were fixed on her. There was no expression in them, and none on his face, but he was looking at her. Of that, she was sure.
“You did this,” she said. “Didn’t you?”
He moved slowly, infinitesimally, turning his body toward her. He was draped all in dark cloth, as he always was, and Lin was struck by the awkwardness with which he moved. As if his own skin were a suit of ill-fitting clothes.
He spoke then, but not out loud. His voice echoed inside her mind, just as it had in her dream. She did not even feel surprised by it.
Take my gloves.
Lin blinked.
Remove them, healer. See my hands.
As if she were still in her dream, Lin went toward King Markus and knelt before his chair. His hands lay unmoving in his lap. She lifted one, carefully; it was deadweight. She wondered vaguely if she would be able to manage this without her physician’s training; the sense of something eerie, something awful, pressed at her like a weight. If she had not seen horrors before—snapped bones, crushing wounds—would she have run screaming?
She took hold of the gloves. They felt strangely warm, as if the leather were the temperature of skin.
She drew one off quickly, and then the other, dropping them where she knelt.
The King held out his bare hands, and Lin stared. Her breath felt tight in her chest. She had seen burn wounds before, skin turned to gashes and runnels by blistering fire. Limbs that seemed melted.
This was nothing like that.
The skin of the King’s hands was black and cracked, like a burning log just before it collapses into the fire. Yet it was not ashy but glistening, scarlet veins of breakage crisscrossing the glassy black surface. Bleeding gashes, she thought numbly, but no—as she looked closer, she saw that it was not blood that seemed to bubble under the surface of the King’s skin.
It was fire.
As he moved his hands, turning them that she might see them fully, the skin flexed, the cracks widening, showing the glow of red embers beneath. As for his fingers... Once, she guessed, they had been long and graceful like his son’s. Now they were fused together, reshaped so that each hand sported three curved, angry-looking talons, each one tipped with a wicked, hooked nail.
Claws.
“Oh,” Lin whispered. Her voice seemed to echo in the silence. She could not take her eyes off the King’s hands—if they could be called such. “What happened to you?”
The hands flexed, turned, talons curving inward as the King made two fists. In Lin’s mind, his voice crackled like a bonfire.
Long ago, when I fostered at the Court of Malgasi, I heard whispers in the night.
A picture began to form inside Lin’s mind. A richly furnished room, a young man tossing and turning on a high wooden bed. All around him, a voice echoed, a pleading chant in an unknown language.
They were the whispers of something tortured. Tormented. Begging for my help. I began to see it when I closed my eyes. A shadowy creature, trapped in darkness.
Lin saw it, too. A thickening of shadows, and within its heart, the glow of two red eyes, too flat and monochrome to be human.
At last, I could bear it no longer. In the dead of night, I went to free it, not knowing who or what it was.
The young man, stocky and tall, his face half hidden by wheat-colored hair, made his way silently down a curved stone stairway, carrying a sailor’s glass lantern. It was dark, the walls gleaming with damp. Lin knew he was underground. She saw the dread on his face as the lamplight fell on a cage. A massive golden cage that could have held a man or a great beast, though it held neither. Instead, a burning golden creature the size of a lion, the rush of wings, the curve of a long neck as it turned to look at him...
“A phoenix,” Lin breathed.
The Malgasi had captured and preserved an ancient power. For generations they had kept it imprisoned, in a huge cage below their throne room. It was from this source that they drew their awful power. Do you see?
Lin saw. She saw scars across the golden skin of the great bird, saw that one of its eyes was blinded, saw the dark stains that mottled the cage’s floor where blood had been spilled over and over. How many times had the Belmany bled the magnificent creature to power their Source-Stones? How had they whipped and cut at it until it promised blessings and success? Lin felt the pain of it in her heart—a shattering pity, a rage to see such rarity and beauty defaced, defiled.
Malgasi has never been successfully invaded. The Belmany family has held the country since before the Sundering. It is the power of the phoenix that has allowed them to keep their stranglehold on the land. And in that moment, I realized that, through thousands of years, all their power rested on the torment of this creature. And now it demanded of me that I end its misery.
I found somehow that I had a knife in my hand, and almost against my will, I plunged the knife deep into the chest of the phoenix. The blood covered me, and I felt its fire seeping into my own veins.
Lin saw the knife, the blood. The phoenix crying out in release as it died, its torment ended. A fall of blood like burning rubies.
In panic, I ran to the only person who had ever been kind to me at the Malgasi Court, my tutor Fausten.
Lin saw a much younger Fausten rising from his desk, his expression changing from curiosity to terror.
He feared he would be blamed for having told me of the phoenix, though he had not. But he was one of the few in the Court who knew of it, and they would never believe the phoenix had summoned me itself. So Fausten and I made a bargain that night, and he fled with me, before dawn came, back to my country. To Castellane.
Lin saw the young man, now filthy and disheveled, approach the South Gate of Marivent. He fell to his knees before it and kissed the ground. His wheat-colored hair had turned to a pale yellowish white.
I had expected that as soon as I returned to my birthplace, the Malgasi would take action. Against me. Against my city. They did not. I began to see why when I sensed the changes in myself. I was stronger physically, I healed swiftly from wounds, but my mind wandered often in dreams of the stars and sky, of fire and burning. It was Fausten who told me the truth: Every phoenix dies and is reborn, again and again. The Belmanys had prevented their phoenix from dying and returning, keeping it always alive without rebirth, adding to its torment. It had seen me as its only escape from the hell of its cage—it would not die and be reborn as it normally would, but die and pass its essence into my blood. Over years, through me, it would effect a rebirth through transformation. The Belmany family could not kill me without killing the chance that the phoenix would return for them to reclaim.
It was time for Fausten to live up to his end of the bargain. I had given him safety in Castellane, away from the Belmany family. Now he made for me a medicine that would slow my transformation. I would, he promised, remain human for many years—enough time to marry, to sire and raise a son to follow me.
But Fausten was not loyal. I do not know when he turned back toward Malgasi, or what they promised him to betray me. I know now that he began to alter the formulation of my medicine. My mind subsumed itself in dreams, in the music of stars, in the whisper of wings. I heard them awake and asleep. I began to feel the phoenix stir inside me, and I yearned to let it free.
I nearly lost control of it once, during the Marriage to the Sea. I was out upon the water, and the phoenix called to me to Become, to be free of my mortal flesh. Had it not been for Jolivet, I would have been reborn in flame at that very moment. As it was, my hands were changed; from then on, I hid them from the eyes of other men.
And then the Malgasi came. After years spent lost in fog and dreams, I realized that Fausten had lied to me. He was loyal to the Malgasi Court, not to me. He had promised to return the phoenix to them. It— I —would be imprisoned again. Tortured again. And so I had him executed.
“Yes,” Lin said. “But then there was no one to make your medicine.”
And without it, I began to change. I saw the massacre in the Shining Gallery. I knew the Malgasi had caused it, but I could not speak of it. I can hardly speak at all. I have now entered the phase of transformation in which the phoenix prepares, body and soul, to become itself anew.
“And is this what you want?” Lin whispered. She thought of the King, crying out to her in Malgasi: They are trying to prevent me from becoming what I am.
I? The King’s inner voice was soft. There is no Markus now. I do not think I will ever be Markus again. But yes, a part of me longs for a great, cleansing fire. I dream of the open sky in which I might have the power of flight. I am no longer needed to rule Castellane. My son could take the throne. I could be free.
The ache of longing in his voice hurt. But something else hurt more. Lin said, “But Conor told me you agreed, when he was very young, that he would marry the Malgasi Princess. Why? Why let them touch your child?”
Because if I had not, they would not have let him live. They cannot kill me; I am the phoenix itself. But thanks to me, Conor also bears its blood in his veins. It is a power he knows nothing of—and a power the Malgasi will always believe belongs to them. I always knew he was in danger. It is why I provided for him the Királar. The Sword Catcher.
Lin exhaled sharply. “But Kel cannot protect him from such a force.”
There is more to the bond between a Prince and his Sword Catcher than you know. The Malgasi fear it. And as long as they thought they would have Conor one day, that the Belmany line would not lose all the power the blood of the fire-bird has given it...
“But they know now they will not have Conor. Not through marriage.”
My son is too clever by half. Too clever for his own safety. The voice in Lin’s mind was colder now. The way it spoke of Conor—there was a possessiveness there, but none of the warmth of love. And was it the King’s possessiveness, or that of the phoenix for its own blood?
Lin thought of Conor healing from the whipping, how it had left no scars. She had thought it was her own power. But perhaps it had been his.
And then he brought you to me, said the King—or perhaps it was the phoenix who was speaking now. An Ashkar physician. The great fear of the Malgasi—an Ashkar woman of great power. One who could become the Goddess.
Lin thought of the Exilarch. You must understand the power of legends, Lin. The Goddess is a Goddess if her people believe she is.
“But they still have magic,” she protested. “Elsabet Belmany can wield fire with her hands—”
You know of the Source-Stones. You possess one. The Belmany have a few they keep in their treasury, still charged with the power of the phoenix, but they cannot last forever. Soon enough they will be gone.
The King opened his hands. His palms were a map of a volcanic land, glassy with onyx-black stone, crossed with veins of bloody fire.
In her mind, his voice was a hissing whisper.
Daughter of Sorah, he said. You, like me, are becoming. I need you to become what you are destined to be—for should the Malgasi win Castellane for themselves, they will possess the phoenix again. Only another power that existed before the Sundering can tear their armies apart. They know of the prophecy of the Goddess. It is why they will wipe every Ashkar off the face of the earth, if they have their way. Should the Goddess be reborn, she could destroy them forever.
Lin remembered Aron’s tale of the son of House Belmany who fell in love with an Ashkar woman and learned the legend of the Goddess.
“Is that why you summoned me here with that dream?” Lin said. “Because my trial is today? I cannot promise—”
Hush. I can do something for you, and you can do something for me. Lin could feel the heat that rose from the King’s hands, as if they were burning sticks in the desert. When my blood touched you, I saw into your mind, as you saw mine. I saw the trial that you must face, and I saw your fears. I can give you power, child. Power through my blood that will make your stone glow brighter than any in the Belmany treasury.
Lin lifted her face to his. “But what could I do in return? For you?”
His hands came up; she felt his talons on either side of her face, wands of fire and thorns. Claws scraped her skin gently. Her stomach thumped, half with revulsion, half with desire—not for the King, but for the power promised by his touch. The Malgasi will come. They cannot be held back without great power. You will be that power. You will protect Castellane. You will protect your people. For without the Goddess, all are doomed.
He dropped his hands, his blank eyes fixing on her face. And for the first time he spoke, not in her mind, but aloud, his voice cracking and rusty but still the voice of a King.
“The Malgasi fear a legend,” he said. “Claim your power. Give them something true to fear.”
Kel raced out of the bright sunlight and up the steps of the Castel Mitat, his mind awhirl. However firmly he had told Andreyen that he was unafraid of Conor’s anger, of his sense of betrayal, the words rang hollow to him now. He and Conor had so rarely fought, nor could he remember a time when Conor had been truly disappointed in him. The thought of it—
Was brushed quickly from his mind as he looked up and saw Conor jogging down the stairs. He was clearly in a hurry, his expression distracted, a sheaf of vellum papers under his arm.
They reached each other halfway up the stairs. Conor started at the sight of Kel before casting him a distracted smile. He looked much as he had this morning, though he had thrown on a deep-red cloak, made for ceremonial occasions, with gold Aurelian roses embroidered on the sleeves. Binding his forehead was a heavy gold circlet.
“On your way to the Dial Chamber?” Kel asked.
Conor nodded and shifted the papers he was carrying. “Succession documents for the dye Charter,” he said. “Beatris will be taking over from Ciprian. Not that she’s in much of a state to sign paperwork, but the Law makes no allowances for grief.”
Kel thought of Beatris Cabrol, the way she tended to always find her brother at any party or ball, the way she stood beside him as if reveling in his protection. At least, he thought, Ciprian would not go into the gray lands unmissed.
“I suppose not. What of the tea Charter...?”
“It will go to Artal’s younger brother, Donan. He’s been fostering in Valderan, but a rider has already been dispatched to fetch him back. Where have you been, anyway?” Conor added, looking at Kel curiously. “I’d thought you’d be in the rooms.”
“I went to speak with Lin,” Kel said, taking care with his words. “Her trial is very soon. I wanted to wish her well.”
Conor’s hand tightened on the papers he held. “How is she?”
Kel hesitated. I cannot tell you that she is even now in Marivent. That she is with your father, the King. That when I speak your name to her, her eyes fill with a rare light, just as yours do when you say hers.
Kel said, “She is nervous. But you know how she is. She will not show it.”
“No.” A shadow flitted across Conor’s expression. “She does not show much.” He glanced toward the doors of the Castel. “I should go. They’ll be waiting for me in the chamber. But, Kel—”
“Yes?”
“It seems long since we have talked.” There was something oddly formal in Conor’s tone, something Kel could not quite put his finger on. “Shall I come find you when the meeting has ended?”
“Of course. There are things I need to talk about with you as well. I’ll wait for you in the room.”
Kel could not help but think that the look Conor gave him was a strange one. Perhaps he could not imagine what news Kel might bear. But, “I’ll look forward to hearing about them” was all that Conor said. And then he was gone, clattering down the steps, his red velvet cloak flying around him as Lin’s hair had flown about her shoulders when she ran into the tower.
The Windtower Clock was striking the hour of six as the carriage wound through the streets approaching the Sault. Lin gripped the edges of her seat, readying herself to leap out the moment they arrived.
She had realized, upon leaving the North Tower at last, that much more time had passed while she was inside with the King than she had imagined. The sky had begun to shade over in preparation for twilight, and her test was meant to take place at sundown. She had little time to return to the Sault.
She could feel the Source-Stone in her brooch, pulsing like a heart. The glow of it had been so bright when she left the tower that she’d had to drape the edges of her shawl over it. The color of it had changed entirely, in a way she had never seen before, from a luminous pearl to a hot and burning red, the color of the King’s blood.
She had thought she would need to use her scalpel, but the King had used the claw of his right hand to slice open his own wrist. His blood had resembled molten metal, almost glowing from within. As it splashed onto her brooch, lighting the Source-Stone, she had felt the heat from it and wondered how it did not cause the King agony to have such blood in his veins. There was a hiss as each drop hit the stone, and the smoke within it turned the color of blood and began to swirl under its surface.
She had thought she would need to bandage his wound, too, but it had closed almost as quickly as he had opened it.
“Thank you,” she had whispered, but he had withdrawn into himself again. He only watched her as she caught up her satchel and let herself out of the room, breaking into a run as she reached the stairs.
She did not know when she would see the King again. How would he know if she passed her test or not? If she did, or could, become the thing he expected her to be? You will give the Malgasi something to fear, he said, but she could not now see past her own fear to imagine that that would ever be true.
The carriage was finally in sight of the Sault gates. Before it had even come to a full stop, she catapulted herself from the open door, nearly tripping over her skirts, and raced through the gates.
As she ran full-tilt through the Sault, bits of its familiar landscape seemed to flash into closer focus, as if placed under the lens of a magnifying glass. The House of Women, with its windows of stained glass, scattering rainbows on the pavement. The almond trees by the west wall, where she and Mariam had climbed when they were children. The physick garden, lush under the fading sun. And finally the Kathot, where she had first claimed to be the Goddess. The flagstones were scattered with clusters of saffron jacaranda petals, the dome of the Shulamat glimmering as the setting sun sparked off its tesserae of bronze and gold.
She had half expected the square to be crowded, but it was empty. Indeed, the Shulamat felt as if it were shuttered for the night, everyone asleep, though it was far too early.
As she neared the Shulamat, she saw a lone figure standing on the steps. It was Mayesh. Lin had almost not recognized him in his hesilon. It had been so long since she had seen him dressed in anything but his Counselor’s garb. He looked older, she thought, and more serious as well.
She met him halfway up the steps, almost expecting him to chide her for being late. Instead, he only looked down into her face and said, “I had thought for a moment you might not be coming at all. I had even hoped it. But of course you are here.”
“I am.” Lin’s heart was beating hard against the inside of her chest, sparking an eagerness inside her. She could feel the heat of the Source-Stone, burning against her chest. She wondered if she looked strange, wild even, but Mayesh did not seem puzzled. Only worried. “This is something I have to do, zai. ”
“The test,” he said, and hesitated. “It might not be what you are expecting.”
She looked at him hard. What was this about? She knew better than anyone else how ruthlessly practical Mayesh could be. “So you know what it is,” she said, “and you think I cannot do it.”
For a moment, he looked like the old man he was. “I am not permitted to say what the test might be, Lin. You know that. Only—prepare yourself.”
Lin straightened her back. Above them, the double doors were open, only darkness visible within. She held out her hand to her grandfather, and he took it.
“Walk with me,” she said. “We will go inside together.”
She had not imagined herself ever walking into the Shulamat with her grandfather at her side, even in the unlikely event of her future wedding day. But they went in together now, their hands linked, as if she had been much younger than she was. Mayesh’s face was stern, unyielding in the light of the hundreds of candles illuminating the Shulamat’s interior. They glowed up and down the roof beams, lined the sills of the diamond-paned windows, burned in candelabras placed at the far end of the room by the raised platform of the Almenor.
Ranged along either side of the aisle were the witnesses. Fifteen women, Chana Dorin among them, on the left side. And fourteen men on the right. All wore the hesilon; all bore matching expressions of gravity. Atop the Almenor were three figures—the Maharam, his staff planted squarely before him. Beside him, Aron Benjudah, broad-shouldered in dark blue, a silver circlet binding his brow.
And squarely between them, seated on a wooden chair, was Mariam.
Prepare yourself, Mayesh had said, but the shock was still like being shaken out of a strange dream. Lin had imagined many kinds of tests, but none of them had involved anyone but herself. What was Mariam doing here? She looked up at Mayesh, but he was staring straight ahead, his dark eyes fixed on the Exilarch.
“Lin Caster,” said Aron, his voice carrying through the Shulamat. “Come closer to the Almenor. Mayesh Bensimon, if you please, go stand among the witnesses.”
If you please. It was an order, however politely phrased. Mayesh patted Lin’s hand once before moving to join the other men. Facing the Almenor, Lin moved with slow deliberation down the aisle. She was aware of the weight of the stares on her as she went, curious eyes in familiar faces. The Sault was small; she recognized each one of them. What did they want, she wondered. To see her succeed, or to see her fail?
Just before the raised platform of the Almenor was a cleared circular space, ringed with candles. In the center of the ring was, curiously, a low divan, covered by a white blanket.
“Lin.” Mariam’s voice, thin but strong, cut through the silence. “Lin, I didn’t know. What the test would be.”
Lin looked at her friend, huddled on the hard wooden chair between the Exilarch and the Maharam. Mariam’s eyes were wide and dark in her thin face. She was clutching a pink shawl around her shoulders. “Mari,” Lin said, “I’m so sorry. I never thought they would involve you—”
“It was the choice of the council,” said Aron. “And by that choice we must all abide.”
Lin wanted to be furious with him, but she could see the real regret behind his eyes. He might not show it to the Maharam, to the council, but this would not have been the test he would have chosen.
She could not help but think of Conor, of what Kel had said in the carriage. It’s not because he loves Anjelica that this is all he can offer you. It’s because he loves Castellane.
Just as Conor had to put his people above his own choices, so did Aron. They were not so different, the Prince and the Exilarch.
As she watched him, Aron raised his voice and said, “Children of Aram. We are those who wait, but we have not always waited. Once we had our Goddess among us; once we thrived in our own land. Once we did not live within walls to keep ourselves safe, but walked proudly in our own streets, in our own cities, among our armies and our towers, our ships and fleets, our places of worship and celebration.”
The eyes of the witnesses were fixed on Aron. As worried as Lin was, she could not deny that he had the ability, apparently inborn, to hold a crowd. The words touched something inside her, too. Something deep and never lost—the dream of a true home.
“Now we live in exile. But it will not always be this way. One day, our Goddess will return. One day, Aram will flower again. The Goddess chooses the vessel by which she will return to us. That is why we hold the Tevath yearly; why we invite the Goddess to speak from the mouth of she who holds our Lady within.” His gaze passed over Lin. “Lin Caster has made the claim. The claim that the Goddess resides within her. And we must give her a chance to prove this claim.”
Lin held Aron’s gaze. She would not look away, however fearful for Mariam she might be. She could not show her fear, her concern, in front of those gathered here.
“We must offer to the Goddess the chance to show us the truth of who she is,” said Aron, his voice like honey over thorns. She could not help but wonder who the thorns were for—herself, or those in the council who had chosen this particular test? “The Goddess healed, they say, with a touch. Your test, Lin Caster, is to heal your friend Mariam. Put your hands on her and heal her.”
It was all Lin could do to hide her shock. Heal Mariam? As if everyone in the Sault did not know that was all she had been trying to do for years. It felt like a slap—as if they were saying plainly: You have never been able to do this before. How can you possibly do it now?
And yet. They were also giving her a chance. A chance she would never otherwise have had.
Aron helped Mariam from her chair. He was solicitous, careful as he led her from the platform to the ring of fire and settled her onto the white-blanketed divan. He murmured something Lin could not hear and Mariam lay down, her hands crossed over her chest, her gaze upturned.
Aron gestured for Lin to approach. As she did, she thought suddenly of the Ragpicker King, of the steady sound of his voice.
You can lay your hand on magic, Lin. Concentrate not on faking your way through these tests, or on the time you imagine is growing ever shorter before you. Concentrate on passing the test. I believe you can.
She was standing over Mariam now. Mariam was gazing piously at the ceiling, but as Lin looked down at her, she turned her head, just a little, and winked. And something in Lin’s chest lifted. She took hold of Mariam’s hands and drew them apart, laying her arms on either side of her, and placed her palms on Mariam’s chest, flat, just beside her heart.
She reached down inside herself. Down below her deepest memories of her mother’s laugh, her father’s voice. Of Mayesh lifting her, tossing her in the air. Of the enormity of a dark-orange butterfly landing atop the back of her hand. Of the surge of water spilling into the harbor after a day of storm.
The Source-Stone grew warmer against her chest, and she could feel the energy within it, flowing into her. The burning power in the King’s blood—a power more ancient than the Sundering, a power born in the morning of the world, when wonders were as common as field mice. It flowed into her and through her; it surrounded her. She reached out and easily plucked a word from the void: wholeness. She drew upon it. Contagion rose, and she dismissed it. Other words came that she did not know, but that expressed repair and healing, health and strength. She reached out even further then, as the shape of a powerful word revealed itself—one of the most powerful words. One that the knowledge placed in the highest sphere of words, higher than heaven.
Life.
She caught the word and drew it down. There was a bright, sharp feeling within her. She thought she could see her own bones through the skin of her hands, as if they glowed like torches.
Mariam gasped, and her back arched under Lin’s hands. A dark fluid was seeping from Mariam’s chest—no, not seeping, but pulsing fast, like blood from an artery.
Lin kept her hands glued to Mariam while black fluid pattered to the floor like dark rain. The candles guttered as if in a wind as Aron raced to the edge of the Almenor.
Mariam sat up. She laid a hand over her chest, her expression full of amazement. She looked wildly at Lin. Her face was flushed with healthy color, as Lin had not seen it in years. Lin watched, her heart in her throat, as Mariam took a deep breath—her chest expanding, her mouth opening wide with surprise as her lungs filled. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said in amazement. “It doesn’t hurt—”
The Maharam was pale and staring. From all around Lin came a murmur of rising voices, wonder and horror. They seemed strangely far away, almost muffled.
“Lin,” the Maharam said in a terrible dark voice. It was the first time he had spoken since she had come into the Shulamat. “ What have you done? ”
He was staring down at her hands. She followed his gaze, and what she saw was horrifying. She could see clear through the skin and muscle, to the bones beneath, which burned with a bright-red fire.
She thrust her hands out before her. She could still feel magic pulsing through her body, overwhelming, pressing against the borders of her conscious self as if it wanted more than anything else to break free.
She could no longer see the Shulamat or hear the voices around her. She saw instead a massive dark hall, half lost in shadow. Around her loomed grinning statues with skull-like faces. And before her stood a woman—all in black, thin as a whip—who turned to look at Lin, her cold face unforgiving. Lin had never seen her before but knew immediately who she was.
Elsabet Belmany.
She saw Elsabet’s eyes widen as if in recognition. Her lips shaped the word, You. And then Elsabet was striding toward her and Lin saw the Source-Stone at her throat, embedded under the skin there, pulsing like a second heart. A sneer crossed her pale face. Of course. You would be a filthy Ashkar.
Lin thought of the King, of his last words to her. Of the Wolfguard and the bloody gallows and the terror sowed by the Belmany royals, and she raised her hands, palms out. Fear me, she thought, and the fire that had seemed trapped under her skin broke free. It poured from her like water from a broken dam until everything around her was brightness and heat. She heard the crackle of the flames and the shattering of stone, and the power was fading, it was going away, and darkness came like blindness, covering her vision.