Chapter 61 Ancient Bones #3
“Yes! Silver, that’s it! Whatever you’re doing—keep doing it!”
Levan, his name.
Serious and tender, soft and kind and tormented, devastatingly smart, a Healer, a dragon nerd, a gifted writer, a tortured little boy, a mage with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He was so many things, but above all else, she wanted him to be hers.
She wanted to feel his heart beating through the warm skin of his chest as she rested her head against it.
She wanted to feel his fingers stroke her hair, wanted to press a kiss against his temple, his branded heart.
Wanted to love him.
Loved him already.
Enough to hold on.
Now the cord of soul magic was not just halted—she was tugging it, inch by painstaking inch, back into herself. And it hurt, Saints, it hurt to go against nature, to go against what the animal of her body so craved, to beat back oblivion, to tap into her higher mind, her higher purpose.
Purpose. Purpose had brought her here.
Her hand found the wooden pendant resting between her collarbones.
She thought of her mother, her father, her home in Lunes, how badly she wanted to go back.
The brush of her father’s lips on her forehead as he carried her up the spiral staircase, after she’d fallen asleep by the fire following a long illusion-practicing session.
Her mother’s laugh as she danced around the kitchen, tipsy on honeywine and on life.
The swoop in her own belly as she careened around the village on a flying carpet, the whooping and hollering of the Sleeping Wolf’s patrons as they cheered her on.
The weeping silence of that same tavern following her dead parents’ jeweling ceremony, the new weight of the pendant around her young neck.
The cord was flowing back into her now, and so too were her desires.
She wanted to be back in the Order, she realized.
When she unmade time, and brought back her parents, she still wanted to become a Silvercloak.
To relive that year at the Academy with her cohort, with Nissa and Auria, Sebran and Tiernan and Gaian.
To graduate, to wear silver. To make the world better, safer, so that no other children would ever have to go through what she did.
She wanted it all. Her family, her lover, her friends.
To save the world.
With a huge wrench, she hauled her soul, her will, back into her body, and felt the cord tying her to the Sordai shudder and snap.
She staggered backwards—had she been standing? When did that happen?—and fell to the rocky ground, pain jolting through the heels of her hands, reminding her she was alive.
She had done it.
She had fought a Sordai and won.
Perhaps this was what Sarcane had counted on—not that the right mage would know exactly how to defeat the creature in open battle, but that they would have enough strength of character, enough sense of self, enough raw want to fight off its attacks.
To keep their will, their soul, firmly inside their body.
Miret had not been so lucky. He was old, near the end of his life, with little except rote faith and academic curiosity propelling him through his days. His will was ripe for the taking, and he had relinquished it with little resistance.
And Levan was weakened by loxlure, by pain, by the weight of his endless grief. Saffron could not let the Sordai’s evil rope of magic lasso him. He might not have the strength to wrangle free.
She climbed to her feet, gasping, shaking.
Across the cave, Levan’s shoulders slumped with relief.
The Sordai lost a little brightness, a little shape, as though its corded attack was a charge it had used up and now had to start fresh. Once again it began its pursuit of Levan, diving and dancing around him, forcing Saffron to keep casting her spellshield—which it then drank.
“We have to starve it of magic,” Levan yelled at her.
“How? I need to protect you.”
“To what end, Silver? Sooner or later, you’ll run out of magic and won’t be able to cast the shield. It’ll plunge into me and do whatever it’s done to Miret. What it almost did to you. The only thing we can do is try to escape.”
Desperation flared inside Saffron.
They had to run, but how could they leave Miret?
“Miret!” Saff yelled, right after flinging another bronze spellshield over Levan’s body. The Sordai fed hungrily, as though drinking directly from her very well. Her whole body shook, weakening by the second. “The chest! Is the wand there?”
“Umpf,” replied Miret helpfully, forcing Saffron to cast a glance over.
He was holding up the relic wand.
Relief coursed through her, mingling with desperation and fear.
At least this had not all been for nothing.
If they could just get out of this hellforsaken cave, even if they weren’t able to destroy the Sordai…perhaps it wouldn’t be able to follow. Perhaps it was weak to daylight, perhaps—
Another sound came, more terrifying than even the Sordai.
A trickle, then a rush.
Realization crashed into Saffron like a physical thing.
“The tide,” Levan called hoarsely, heaving with exertion. “The tide is coming in.”