Chapter Five
Thyra
As the blade’s power rages through me, a scream of agony tears from my throat.
Never have I felt so helpless. Never have I been so mindless with pain, not even when I felt the cut of an iron blade or the scorch of Ember fire.
My hand is clamped around the wrapped blade’s hilt, gripping it above the cross-guard, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t let go. I can’t seem to unfurl my fist.
The dagger’s power has locked itself onto me.
I beat my fist with my other hand, trying to knock my fingers open, but it’s no use.
The most I can do is extend my arm, trying to hold the blade as far from my body as possible, but it brings no relief. Agony continues to strike through my arm and into my chest, radiating through every part of my body.
It’s paralyzing, stripping me of my own free will.
Just as I’m certain I’m about to pass out, the cloth begins to uncoil. It starts at the tip, an unraveling that sends my senses into an even greater spiral.
With every swish-swish of the unfurling cloth, it’s as if another blade is scraping at the surface of my heart, shredding pieces off it, peeling layers away, attempting to dig right down to the core of me.
I might still be screaming, I can’t tell. I might be groaning. I might be silent. I’m doubled over, my arm locked in an outstretched position, and all I know for certain is that the light is surging again.
This time, a single thread like molten gold shoots up my inner arm, all the way along the inside of my biceps, lighting up my tunic sleeve as it disappears beneath the material, and then I can’t see the light’s path, can only feel its path like a burn as it snakes up the side of my neck.
A moment later, the blade’s power hits me again, but not like before, not mindless pain.
This is sharp. Purposeful.
Everything around me disappears: the workshop, my father’s body, the pebbled area, and suddenly—
I’m covered in iron dust, tearing at chains wrapped around me. I’m burning from the inside out, and I’m screaming, but not with pain. Every inch of me is alive with a need I can’t identify and can’t seem to quench—
I gasp against the ground, coming back to myself to discover I’ve collapsed onto the pebbled path, sprawled on it, my heart pounding and my breath rasping in my throat.
My eyes are wide, my throat dry, and the need I felt shudders through me, a trembling ache, an overwhelming heat.
Amid the whirl of confusion within my mind, the push and pull between pleasure and pain, only two things are clear to me.
One is that the agony the blade was causing me is gone.
Oh, blessed relief.
But it brings me no peace, because two…
What I just experienced was not an Oracle vision.
My father described clearly to me what would happen. The Oracle’s visions start with a flutter in their chest. When I asked him what that felt like, he said it’s as if a bird lives within our hearts and it would awaken, stretch its wings, and beat them gently against our ribcage.
He commanded me never to ignore this warning sign, because I’d have less than a minute before the vision started.
While I’m having a vision, I’ll be vulnerable to attack.
If I can, I must get to a safe place first. During the vision, I’ll be aware of my surroundings, and I can even speak, but I’ll have minimal ability to move, if at all.
What I felt just now didn’t start with my heart. There was no fluttering. No gentle sensation of wings against my ribcage.
It consumed me entirely. I had no awareness of my surroundings, no ability to speak. As for moving, well, I collapsed to the ground without any awareness that my body was falling. My father never collapsed during a vision.
My focus flashes to the blade, now partially unwrapped, the tip of its golden edge exposed. There’s no doubt in my mind that the ‘vision’ I saw came from the blade, carried on a golden thread of magic to my mind.
Father said he didn’t know what the blade would do to my Oracle visions or what manipulations I might experience once I unwrapped the blade.
And now I can’t seem to let it go.
Desperately, I fight the fear flooding my body. It’s only been moments since I picked up the blade, but the threat of being captured or even killed by the highborn has only increased.
My chances of surviving an encounter with them will be very low if one of these visions…these blade-induced visions…takes over me while I’m trying to escape.
I grit my teeth with a savage clack. I need to release the blade, even if I have to break my own fingers to do it.
It’s a good thing I’m located beside a carpentry workshop containing an array of hammers.
I push myself back to my knees, determined to hurry inside the workshop, find a hammer, break my fingers, and then find some sort of metal or wooden receptacle to carry the blade that won’t require touching it again.
I haven’t even made it back to my feet before the golden light surges again, and my stomach sinks.
A second thread of magic shoots along my arm, this one moving faster than the first. I barely have time to take a breath before another vision hits me—
I’m immersed in snow, chilled to the bone, pushing against the weight of an emptiness that has drained my heart of all love and all hope, and yet… I feel everything. Every part of my body is awake and yearning for the stroking touch of heated hands—
I come back to myself, discovering that I’m now leaning against the carpentry wall near my father, but at least I’ve somehow made it to my feet.
Groaning with effort, trying to make my legs obey me, I push away from the wall, attempting to stumble past my father.
The blade is relentless. It glints again, another brief flash. Another golden thread of power shoots up my arm and into my mind.
A third vision strikes me—
Fire brushes my skin, as alluringly soft as feathers stroking down my arms, sliding around my waist, descending to my thighs, triggering a burn between my legs that grows until my back is arching, and I’m begging for release—
My legs give way, and I drop to the ground, my arm falling, the blade scraping against the pebbled path.
Oh, please.
A mess of heat and ice and iron dust and chains fills my mind, a torment of need and power that pins me to the spot.
Please, no more.
I try to push through it.
I have to push through it.
If I’m going to have any hope of escape, I have to move. If my father’s memory is to live on, it has to be with me.
I have to live.
I scream at myself to move. Move, Thyra!
The moment I push myself upright again, my boots clacking against the pebbles, every breath filled with determination, another sensation fills me.
A gentle flutter within my chest.
Oh.
Tears of relief spill from my eyes as the soft, calm, comforting feeling washes through my heart, and now I understand why my father described it like a bird waking up. It’s like flight is being born within me, unwrapping its wings, promising to take me wherever I need to go.
I calculate how many seconds I might have to move inside the workshop and out of sight before my very first Oracle vision comes to me, but it seems I won’t have time after all.
The fluttering sensation intensifies, and every instinct in my body tells me to prepare myself right away.
Exhaling a breath, I settle back into a kneeling position, resting the Dragonstone Blade across my knees since my hand remains clamped about it.
All I can do is pray that I won’t be discovered here before the vision passes.
I stiffen as it takes hold, my body frozen, but my mind remains aware of my surroundings as I watch, as if from outside myself.
I’m running away from the village, sprinting toward the enormous rocky crevices at the village’s far northern end. Thousands of years of ocean waves have worn caves into those rocks, and I know which one I need to hide in.
My pounding heart calms as I slip inside the cave to shelter within its darkness. The highborn won’t find me here. I’m safe.
But that’s when my Sight takes me back to the village, away from the cave where I’ve found protection, and to the destruction I’ve left behind.
I can’t close my ears to the villagers’ screams as the Frost, and Ember, and Iron Fae tear their homes apart, cutting down every innocent fae in their path, their furious shouts chilling me to the bone.
“Where is she? Where are you hiding her? We won’t stop until we find her.”
I gasp as I come back to myself, my heart sinking at the awful realization: Running was only ever a viable option when my father and I were ten steps ahead of the highborn.
It only worked when we were so long gone from a place that there was no chance the highborn would even think to look there in the first place.
If I run now, this village will pay the price.
Blinking back my tears, I consider my father, all the hopes he had for me, the freedom he gave me for as long as he could.
I’m grateful for it.
But fate has challenged me to choose a different path now. The way out will smear my hands with blood. The way forward could kill me. But I know which path I’ll choose.
Settling my resolve, I take a final breath, filling my chest with the scent of fire and ice. One last breath of freedom.
Then, I take a step away from the carpentry wall and position myself in front of my father’s body.
I fight a moment of chilling fear as I prepare to sweep a lifetime of hiding into the past.
Lifting my voice, I scream as loudly as I can. “I’m here! I’m the one you want.”
I have no guarantee the highborn will hear me, and if they don’t arrive soon, I may have to walk right through the flames. Whatever it takes to get their attention.
Drawing another deep breath, I try again, roaring as loudly as I can, “I am the Oracle. Come and get me!”
I don’t need to shout again.
Three figures creep toward me through the smoke on my left. It must be the three Frost Fae, judging by the gleaming whiteness of their hair and the silvery flashes of their damaged armor through the haze.