CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
C HAPTER F IFTY- S IX
The woman once named Farra stands alone in the middle of the Glacian palace, thirty years after she last escaped it. She feels every one of those years like weights chained to her feet. She has dragged them along behind her long enough.
When she closes her eyes, she sees her child in the only phases of life that she had known him and the gaps she cannot fill feel like a curse, a punishment.
Next, she thinks of Thaddius, but not for longer than the time it takes to reconcile that whatever love they had exchanged had created a warrior.
Last, she thinks of the Ledge.
She thinks of how it must look now, empty of its prisoners, as it should be. It brings a smile to her face.
Farra hugs her arms to her body and relishes the gooseflesh rising along her neck. The cold is alive. It is a faceless enemy easily thwarted and its grip cannot hold her.
She opens her eyes to the pool’s enduring glow, and it speaks to her. It whispers promises of peace in death. It sings to her of rivers that will deliver her to soft endings. It lies and schemes and lures her toward it.
But she has long since stopped listening to bodiless voices.
The iskra within her stirs restlessly and she finally allows it passage through her extremities, into her palms. It waits obediently for her direction. It waits to serve its last.
Farra shuts out the world she should have left long ago and has rarely felt as still, as restful.
“Vey ty sosud yerd iskra!” she calls, and the walls ring with the strength of her voice.
The substance in the pool spills over its edges, seeping into creases of stone. Its silvery glow trails over the floor of the Glacian palace in small streams, diverting and then intersecting at the soles of Farra’s feet.
She feels it as it seeps inside her, filling her quickly. Like the ocean, it is a current she cannot fight against. It gathers on all sides and thrusts her one way and then the other, until the pool runs dry, and she contains every inch of magic within.
Farra screams.
Every inch of her is stretching, splitting. She is nothing but dark matter in a vessel too small to contain it, but she cannot break apart.
Not here.
She turns toward the great oak doors, but topples. Her body does not obey her. It belongs to the iskra now. And she cannot make it to the tunnels, she cannot make it to the lip of the Chasm. The iskra tears her at the seams from within and there is little she can do but roar in agony, beg for mercy.
She sees Phineas kneel before her, though her sight is darkening, the iskra clouding it. He says nothing as he lifts her from the floor, despite the way she thrashes. Despite the ear-splitting cries she emits.
“I’ve got you,” he tells her, over and over. “I have you, Farra. Hold on.”
He carries her out of the palace, onto the ice. He stumbles beneath her weight as they near the lip of the Chasm, and just as Farra’s sight blackens altogether, she sees the Ledge.
She sees the tops of the pine trees, ordered in their lines. She sees the gleaming face in the distance, black as night.
And then she sees nothing at all.
“I’ve got you,” Phineas says, one last time.
And then they are weightless. They are falling.
Phineas’ arms remain wrapped around her as Farra splits apart.