Page 15

Tell anyonewhat?

If they found out, she would be hunted.

No, that was whatVelahad told her, about being a Lightweaver.

Right?

“I’m going mad in this heat,” Talasyn said, because she was apparently in the habit of talking to herself now. “Absolutely stark raving.”

The jungle was gradually plunged into darkness. The trees grew close together here, and not even the seven moons could penetrate their leafy roof. Talasyn’s light-woven cutlass now served to illuminate her path in addition to slicing through the vines that blocked it. She had hoped to catch a break from the sweltering heat by nightfall, but no such luck. The evening was muggy,sticking to her form in moist, warm sheets.

But she pressed on, deeper into the damp jungle. She could feel the Light Sever. The nearness of it.

As the ground sloped steadily uphill, the cutlass in her hand burned ever brighter, as though the magic that she had coaxed into this shape was being amplified tenfold. A strange taste blossomed on her tongue, weighty and metallic like ozone, or blood. Thorny shrubs scratched at her arms as she quickened her pace, but she paid the shallow cuts no mind. There was power here, old and vast, overwhelming her senses until she felt drunk with it, her skin prickling with goosebumps and her heart thundering against the bones of her ribcage, until, at last—

She gave a start of confusion and disbelief when the jungle parted to reveal a shrine. Perhaps one like those that Lightweavers had built all over Sunstead. And, just like those, it was in ruins. It looked as if it had been in ruins for centuries. Moss-covered slabs of sandstone jutted out haphazardly from the riotous undergrowth, their rough edges catching the moonlight. There were no signs of life.

Had Nenavar’s Lightweavers suffered the same fate as the ones on the Continent? Had they all been eradicated?

Talasyn cautiously walked beneath a vine-entangled, half-toppled entrance arch and down a cracked passageway lined by pillars etched with intricate reliefs that she would otherwise have paused to examine, but she was focused on the nearby nexus point. Its pull on her soul was magnetic. It called to her like the monsoon winds.

The shrine was vast. A complex rather than a single building: snaking halls and rubble-strewn chambers, the doors of which had collapsed long ago. She negotiated her way through the debris and stepped out into a courtyard the size of a stormship hangar. It was open to the sky but already reclaimed by the wilderness, dozens of those enormous old-man trees having anchored themselves firmly in what was left of the stone facade,their thick roots and myriad grasping arms choking out the paved floor and the surrounding walls and rooftops. The seven moons circled the heavens, raining down a light that was as bright as day.

She ventured further in. At the center of the courtyard, amidst the tangle of shrubs and tree roots and overgrown grass, stood an enormous fountain, which was the only structure that appeared untouched by the passage of time and whatever destruction had befallen the complex. It was carved from sandstone, built around a depression in the flooring as wide as several trees clumped together, its spouts fashioned to look like snakes—or maybe dragons, she realized as she peered at it more closely.

This was undoubtedly the location of the Light Sever. Talasyn’s every instinct screamed that it was so. The magic sang to her veins from behind the veil of aetherspace. She just had to wait for it to break through again.

“There you are,” a familiar voice rasped behind her. The unmistakable shriek of the Shadowgate flaring to life shattered the still air.

Talasyn didn’t freeze even as the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t waste a single second, transmuting her cutlass into a poleaxe and spinning on her heel, leaping straight at the tall figure clad in black and crimson standing several paces away. Her wide blade caught in the prongs of a shadowy trident, light to darkness, the resulting sparks glinting off Alaric Ossinast’s narrowed silver eyes and his obsidian mask carved into a wolf’s fanged snarl.

They’d met like this on the ice floes a fortnight ago, and he’d been a tight coil of menace and determination while she had been scared out of her wits. But this time was different—this time, she wasn’t afraid.

This time, she wasangry.

Talasyn set upon the Kesathese prince in a barrage of short, quick strikes that drove him backward even as he deflected with masterful swiftness. She was hoping to corner him against one of the pillars, but he managed to sidestep around her, bringing the trident down over her shoulder. She slanted her own weapon at a defensive angle, and her teethrangfrom the force of his blow.

“You’ve been practicing,” he told her.

She blinked at him through the haze of their intersected magic.

“There is some improvement in your combat technique, I mean,” he clarified.

“I know what you meant,” she snapped. “Do you make it a habit to compliment everyone who’s trying to kill you?”

“Not everyone.” His eyes flashed with a hint of amusement. “Just you. And that washardlya compliment—I’m merely relieved that you’re much more interesting to duel now.”

She pushed against him with a newfound burst of strength, sparked by her ire, and she managed to slip free of the blade-lock. Once more they waltzed, in flashes of gold and midnight, over the stone and the roots, through the warm moonlit evening.

Talasyn didn’t want to think about how she was almostenjoyingthis. There was something to be said about letting her magic run free in this wild and ancient place. There was something to be said about testing her mettle against a man like Alaric, and making him break a sweat even as she fought for her life.

But she wasn’tsupposedto be feeling anything remotely close to enjoyment. He was in her way; he was wasting her time.

Their weapons caught and held once more.

“How are you evenhere?” she demanded. She wasn’t enthused about how shrilly the words emerged from her lips, but she was soannoyedwith him. And he was standing incredibly close to her. “How did you find me?”

“You have a traitor in your ranks.” He said it matter-of-factly, and that was somehow so much worse than if he’d been smug. “Your people are switching sides because they know that the war is already lost.”