Page 104 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth

All was a twisting, awful agony, and a rush of dark wings.

She burst upward, away from the mirrors and the chains, through the rock and earth of the mountain, up and up and up, hurtling through the dark, through a door in a tree.

The Circle of Time seethed before her, all color and glitter and show. The pools of memory wheeled by her, but she didn’t even turn her head. They couldn’t stop her. Couldn’t even slow her down.

She flew up and up, and burst through a door into a whistling dark emptiness that pulsed with hunger, with wanting. She could see definition in the darkness, feel the ache, ache, ache. But she had no pity to spare for Death. It had had its time, and it had had its fill, and it was just a stop along the journey, now.

She hurtled onward, the strength of sorrow searing every part of her.

On and on, through one last door into the darkness of the mountain, then up and up, her body boring through the very stones of the world.

She screamed with a voice that was not her own.

And then—

She broke through rock and earth.

Beyond was sky.

Stars.

Air.

But still the sorrow clung to her.

She was free of chains and mirrors. She was free of the Mountain. She was free of Death and Time.

But she was not free of Sorrow.

It twisted through every ounce of her, engraved on her very being.

She screamed at the sky.

It listened, and shrank from her.

Chapter Forty-Five

SHE HAD NEVER FELT SO STRONG,THOUGHthe strength twisted through her with the bite of knives. She was pain and fury and rage.

She could brush the stars with the edges of her wings, and swallow the world with her power.

Herwings.

What was she?

She flew through a dark sky, the blur of trees beneath her.

She wanted, sheached.

Her body had stretched and grown and changed.

The sorrow had made her something else, something more.

Dark feathers.

A heart filled with fire.

She wanted to hurt everyone who had hurt her. She wanted to make the world bow at her feet. She wanted to pour her sorrow and rage into the stones of the earth.