Chapter 24 #2
Raana stared at her open palm, her hands shaking beyond her control, making her wonder when exactly her magic’s reserves would run out. Darkness slid along her fingers, welling in her hand, the shadow a swirling, ebbing mist.
“Keep an eye on him,” she whispered to it. When she dropped her arm, the darkness remained bobbing where it had been.
Thankfully, the room’s door opened on silent hinges, and Raana stealthily slipped into the hallway.
She paused, turning her head left and right, embracing the quiet, cool darkness as the shadows danced on the walls from the lit sconces.
For a moment, she swore she saw shapes, movement, and heard the faintest of hollow murmurs.
See the unseen. Hear the unheard. That’s what Cassius had once told her of her power. Shadows held secrets, chronicled the past, and harbored knowledge they seemed eager to share with her. If only it wasn’t in tongues that she didn’t understand—the most she could do was sense feeling.
Save for some modern updates and alterations, this palace, with its arches and cavernous corridors, could’ve been the twin to the one behind the Wall. Luckily, this hall couldn’t change its structure on a whim. At least, she hoped it couldn’t.
Spirits, if only these places came with maps. Though maybe there was an option here that she didn’t have back in the Wilds.
The dark magic of Phobos’s cursed Pack Hall made the shadows too difficult to sift through, too difficult to trust not to rip her apart as she moved through them. But here?
Raana tucked closer to the stone wall behind her and caressed the darkness with her fingertips. “Take me to the throne room,” she spoke softly to them. “Or show me the way. Please.”
A coolness snaked up her legs, arms, and shoulders. It kissed along her cheeks, threading over her ears—a lover’s embrace, pecked by whispers in unknown tongues.
They were easy, almost relaxing, until they grew louder. Until they were screams that nearly shattered her consciousness, wrapping around her neck and strangling her, shaking her, violently begging her to know.
Raana thrashed and coughed, but the moment she opened her mouth, the darkness swept in, pouring into her and icing her insides.
Stop!
Her shout went nowhere. The shadows heard nothing, only spoke, trying to get her to understand. Finally able to be understood. And from one blink to the next, they swallowed her whole.
This… was not a throne room.
Sprawled on a rug on the floor, a weary Raana craned her neck to observe dusty, partially tarp-covered furniture—a large mahogany desk, bookshelves, some chairs, easels with scribbled-on maps, and a dry bar.
The shadows had carried her where they wanted her. Her vision was fuzzy, her ears ringing and hollow from their shouting that had blissfully stopped once she’d been spat onto the floor.
Shaking her head, she rose onto her hands, sputtering out a shadow-laced cough. They tasted like smoke and the tang of dread and terror. On her inhale, the hair on the back of her neck stood, and she lifted her head higher, a gasp spilling from her lips.
In wonder, she fell to sit on folded legs, her neck straining as she looked up at the ceiling spanning the vastness of a stained-glass window. The window that could be seen for miles.
She was behind it.
Why would the shadows bring her here?
Without much moonlight, the colors of the window reflecting onto the floor were muted. Still, a wondrous sea of blues, purples, and near-blacks. Raana ran her hand through the ripples, swearing the moonbeams felt heated. So, this is how glorious the window in Phobos would have been.
Raana’s eyes fell on an outline in the glass, some kind of door. Drawn to it, she rose and trekked across the expanse of beauty, the rays tickling her skin until her hand was pressed to its cool surface, feeling a slight jolt to her arm.
Iron.
She pursed her lips. Though iron, it wasn’t warded. So, she weathered the pain and pushed.
“Spirits,” she murmured into a rush of wind as she became one with the skies, staring down at the full glory of the city: its lights, distant crystals, hills, and the river, the way mountains cradled it like offering hands.
She’d never seen something so wondrous, spellbinding, and beautiful. Ethereal.
There was a sudden pull at her wrist, and Raana glanced down to find a shadow slithering around her skin, coiling near her iron bracelet.
Not touching; it couldn't. But it wanted something.
Unconsciously, Raana reached for it, hissing against the flare of the always-present pain when she found the latch.
When it fell away, she gritted her teeth.
Her power and the shadows rushed at her in full force.
She gripped the rail in front of her tightly. This wasn’t as intense as it had been in the Wilds. Her power hadn’t been confined very long. But it still nearly brought her to her knees.
Breathing hard, she glanced down at the starlight glow of her fingertips as it crept up her arms like long-sleeved gloves. Her tongue ran over the points of her teeth, and she didn’t have to touch her ears to know. No glamor at all.
The world had become so loud, so vivid, that even the air tasted different. The lingering taste of dread and terror was so potent she nearly retched.
Straightening, Raana drew her eyes up to look back at the sky and nearly fell over again.
Those wheeling stars, all that pressure she’d felt earlier staring up at them, had ceased.
Now, beyond the clouds, within the silky, gem-crusted velvet, she found an entire new world.
A swirling, ebbing cacophony of existence that she could just barely see, barely touch.
A world that felt like power, felt like fear, felt like… home.
A whisper of a wind slid over her skin, a shadow from the ones that had once more become her cloak sliding over her ear.
Turn, child.
Raana did.
Spinning, she peered into the colors of the window and her reflection amongst them. Peered at the stretch of darkness that stood at her side. Her breath caught as she turned her head, but nothing was beside her. Not a shadow, not a person.
But she didn’t panic as she felt another pull forward.
Fixed on the writhing ebony, Raana didn’t stop walking until her nose was nearly pressed to the glass, squinting up in that darkness that seemed to change form, beginning to clear.
Lifting a hand, she pressed her finger to the glass.
And beneath her touch, it cracked.