Chapter Twenty-Five #2
It warps. Pulls thin. The notes twisting into something raw and jagged that scrapes against my skull, like nails on a chalkboard, until I can’t tell where the music ends and the screaming begins.
But the screaming isn’t hers.
It’s mine.
It’s Mums.
And I swear I can feel it now—the magic, the juice, the dragons, whatever this is—sliding beneath my skin with a kind of hungry awareness and suddenly I’m not in the clearing anymore. I’m at the door.
Her door.
“Mum,” I choke, as time and space warp around me, hours folding into minutes as I pull and pull. “I’m sorry, I didn't mean to—”
But my hands are too small and my nails break against the hot wood while her screams continue to pour into me, flooding my veins, tearing through every Thread until there’s nowhere for them to go except out through the tears burning down my face.
Panting through the smoke clogging the air, night and day begin to smear together until time stops meaning anything at all, and then suddenly the door flies open.
But she’s not behind it.
There is no room.
No body.
Only the Citadel courtyard, stretching endlessly beneath a red sky.
No. No. She was there. I was so close. I could have reached her. I could have saved her.
My eyes stinging now, I blink against the blistering heat as the blaze circles me on every side.
Through the courtyard, I can see the moat that encases us, only the dark water has been replaced by flames, spilling over the stone edge, bleeding like melted gold and spreading through the four Veins of Power into the realms beyond.
At first, I think it’s dragon-fire.
Then I look down to see Threads lashing from my trembling fingers, bright and wild.
No.
No, no, no.
I shake them, willing them to stop, but they simply grow, stoking, feeding the inferno higher and higher.
In the distance, a clock starts ticking, a brutal, erratic rhythm that matches the pulsing in my chest.
Somewhere in the smoke, Ezzy wails and the stone blade is heavy and cold in my grip.
But Talen’s hands are warm around mine.
“Don’t make me do this,” I beg, ash and salt flooding my mouth as tears stream down my face. “Please... don’t make me do this.”
His lips brush mine and for one shared breath, everything stops. The fire. The screaming. The whole burning world. There is only him—his heat, his body, the unbearable softness of his mouth against mine.
Then his grip tightens, and he pulls the blade forward.
My eyes fly open and I bolt upright.
Cold air tears into my lungs, too fast, too thin, everything in front of me blurs as my heart bashes against my ribs and I claw at the ground beneath me, trying to make sense of what’s real.
Moss. Stone. The clearing.
I’m in the clearing.
I’m still in the mountain clearing.
It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s over.
The frantic beating behind my ribs slowly starts to settle as my vision returns, and when I turn to the side, I realise everyone else is still here with me, sprawled on the ground.
But as I look back, my lungs stall as I find the Shaman crouched in front of me, her wrinkled face so close that, between the folds of her skin and the rolls of cloth wrapped around her, I can barely tell where one ends and the other begins.
“No bond,” she mutters, the smell of sulphur rolling off her breath as she shakes her head at me.
The words hit harder than the hallucinations, and I notice that her pupils have blown so wide there’s barely any colour left in them.
“What?” I demand.
She shakes her head again, faster this time. “You. Fire. No Bond. No. No. No.”
Inhaling, my lungs drag in air too fast to do anything useful, and I grab at her wrist before I can stop myself.
“What are you talking about?” The words come out cracked and desperate. “Tell me what’s happening. Is it over? Where’s Ahria? Has the Blood Moon finished?”
The Shaman jerks back, pacing away from me, all the while her head still shaking as she mutters the same words over and over.
“No bond.”
“Fire.”
“No bond.”
Sweat gathers at the back of my neck as the sun beats down relentlessly, and around me the others are still lying down, eyes closed, faces slack, still trapped somewhere inside themselves.
I don't understand. It's been hours. It should be night. Did I not bond? What's going on?
My gaze drops to my watch as the second hand ticks past twelve.
Just past midday.
The same as before.
No. That can’t be right. It doesn’t make sense. I lived an entire lifetime inside those visions.
“Wait,” I call after the dragon lady, as I push myself up, but the ground tilts beneath me. “Please. What does that mean? What’s happening?”
She keeps walking away.
Or at least tries to.
Her body melts with the movement, stretching too tall, then too thin, her back hunching, shoulders splitting, something dark and wet blooming from her spine.
“No, please stop, please.” I squeeze my eyes shut, but the darkness doesn’t save me.
The shapes follow me in.
Claws. Teeth. Fire. Mum’s door. Ezzy’s scream. Talen’s hands. The blade.
But I already did this. I already saw the past, the future. It should be over.
Then a voice slips through the chaos, one I haven’t heard since the Citadel, but one I know all the same.
“Oh, my little Threadweaver,” Serrane murmurs through the visions. “It has only just begun.”
Cold bleeds through my trousers as I sit up, bile rising with the movement and a wave of nausea rolls over me. Coughing against it, I rub my eyes.
God, what time is it?