Page 14 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

But what was Soul?

King Filip knelt beside them and checked Niels. “His pulse is very weak.”

He then put a hand to Niels’ cheek, a glow emanating from his fingers. Hallie scrambled toward him. “No! Please!”

So much for not overreacting.

The woman grabbed Hallie, keeping her from leaping forward. She looked to the king. “Do not overburden yourself.”

Filip took his hand back. Niels’ face was still pale in the wan light, but he was no longer the same color as the snow patches beneath his bloodstained trousers.

He’d…had he helped Niels?

“What did you do?” she demanded.

“He is no longer in immediate danger of succumbing to injuries, but it is a temporary solution. You did well up to the end.” King Filip stood and straightened, looking back as the fire on the other side of the lane abated.

“I merely allowed his body to take a portion of Soul to aid his natural healing. But with the bullet still in there, it will be painful to walk.”

Guilt slammed into Hallie like an avalanche. “Will I be able to fix it once I can…” She didn’t know exactly how to ask, but the King seemed to understand.

“I am unsure, but it would be unwise for you to attempt it again now. You need more control, and we cannot risk the Essence power you wield being reborn.”

“Why?”

Boots crunching through the snow and debris interrupted them. Correa appeared behind the King. Dark smudges streaked across his cheeks, his hair mussed and unkempt. He walked with a pronounced limp. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened as he squinted. “Because Jagamot is here now.”

Hallie recoiled, stumbling back involuntarily. It had been too much to hope the fire would kill Correa. The sparks only had so much kindling to devour with the melting snows.

The woman caught her, but it wasn’t her touch that made Hallie’s blood run cold. She shivered as she met Correa’s eyes. Before the recent firefight, he’d ordered her to kill Kase with her own power. He’d tortured them both before Hallie had been able to take the Essence. He was a monster.

“Excellent work, Your Majesty,” Correa said, a small dip of his head.

It was an odd scene, knowing what she knew now—that Filip was his nephew.

She briefly wondered if it bothered Correa to bow to someone so much younger.

“But I would argue that your methods are still too tame for the task ahead of us.”

“I am your sovereign.” Filip’s drawl was lazy and bored—different than it had been moments before. “My methods are not yours to argue.”

Correa turned his gaze upon her. “Where are her restraints?”

“The Lady Fely is more than her match, General.” The last word had a bit of a bite to it, but it was so subtle she wasn’t sure if anyone else would catch it. “She can barely keep her feet as it is. No need to be excessive.”

Correa’s fingers twitched, as if he longed to use his power against his nephew. A small spark leapt from his pointer finger to his thumb so fast Hallie barely glimpsed it. But it was enough.

She tried to swallow, but it was as if her fear had solidified in her throat. Her chest squeezed. She couldn’t breathe. The pain branched like lightning in her veins.

A light touch at her elbow brought a small pulse of heat. The woman, Lady Fely. The heat was gone as quickly as it appeared, but Hallie was able to breathe.

What had Filip said? That he’d given Niels a little bit of Soul ? What did that mean? Was it actually someone’s spirit? Their own, perhaps, or one of the lives they’d collected? Like Yarrow’s?

Hallie’s stomach roiled as Correa holstered his pistol. “Leave him and let’s go.”

“No,” the King replied.

That same bored voice.

Hallie waited with bated breath. Correa’s glare turned deadly. “This is not the time to be careless. We must find the final Essence. Asa has been unsuccessful at locating him and the secondary Gate.”

“My brother might have been successful if you hadn’t ordered the city burned.”

A pause. “Were we not in agreement?”

“Are kings not allowed to change their minds?” King Filip crossed his arms. “I am sorry, Uncle, but I don’t see the value in us both going to the capital to search for a man who, by all accounts, is centuries old.

Asa should be able to find him just fine with your help.

” The King crossed his arms and stood to his full height.

He was still shorter than Correa, but only by a hairsbreadth. “I shall meet you in the Yalven city.”

Correa cursed. “Like the stars you will.”

“I will take the Essence of Time to Myrrai and await you there.”

They stared at one another. Hallie barely understood what they spoke about, but she could gather that she was the Essence of Time…

and that whoever Asa was, he was important.

She hadn’t done a whole lot of research into the Cerls, but she didn’t recall a younger prince.

He was quite possibly illegitimate. The royal families of First Earth had also been obsessed with bloodlines.

Stars-ridiculous, if you asked Hallie, but she’d had the privilege of growing up in Jayde.

The government had its issues, but it allowed for the general populace to have a say in who made the decisions that affected everyone.

The two men continued to face off until, finally, Correa sighed. “Find Kainadr. Await my orders. We only have one chance to make this work.”

Filip nodded his head. “Good luck, Uncle. Tell Asa I will see him soon.”

Hallie itched to grab Kase’s goggles in her pocket to ground herself, but they might think she was reaching for a weapon.

Where had she gone wrong? What had she done to end up here? Her hands shook. She couldn’t help it.

This was different. This time, she was willingly putting herself in their clutches. She was making a deal with them. She would work with them.

She didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

She no longer felt like herself, but this deal was the only way she could do anything to help her country, her parents, and Kase.

Heat tingled at her fingertips once more. She didn’t think it was fear this time.

Correa paced a moment before turning back to her. “Regrettably, I was here in this little village nearly fifty years prior, looking for evidence of a Passage. Our intelligence suggested someone was looking for a way to the holy city.”

He paused. The heat rose up her arms slowly as the threads untangled. Fifty years…was that why they’d attacked? Had Navara been the reason the homes were burned out and overgrown?

Hallie thought back to the journal and her experience inside it—the darkness and the conversation. If someone had been looking for a way to Myrrai, had it been Navara? Had she tried to go back to her homeland to save whoever they’d been discussing in the…memory?

Correa prompted, “Is that why you are here, Miss Walker?”

Hallie squeezed her hands tightly and used the pain in her palms to ground herself.

The answer was right in front of her. It had to be.

She glanced subtly at the brick in question.

She was certain that was the key. But if Navara had been unsuccessful in opening the Passage back up, could Hallie open it herself?

The Lord Elder had created it, and Hallie now had his power.

The image of the glowing archway flashed in her mind insistently.

“It is,” she said with as much confidence as she could muster. “I believe a Passage lies here, though if you weren’t able to find it all those years ago, it might be that it has disappeared.”

The woman shifted behind her, and Hallie flinched without meaning to. “Weren’t you trying to do something with that brick there?”

Hallie hesitated. Her heart drummed loudly.

She gave in and stuck her hand in her pocket, her fingers gripping the edge of Kase’s goggles as hard as she could.

They gave her strength, and neither of her captors stopped her.

She took a moment to breathe. The heat in her arms had reached her shoulders, but as she grasped the goggles, it receded slightly. “I’m not exactly sure.”

Correa stepped forward around Niels and looked down at the brick in question. “Fate works quite mysteriously.”

He bent down and brushed a hand on it. Sparks leapt from his fingers.

He scoffed. “Of course, the maker of this particular Passage didn’t want it found by anyone.

Only those who needed it. It seems as if we were not in need in the past. I’d blame General Ormond, but it bodes ill to speak of the dead…

” he paused and looked over his shoulder toward something only he could see.

“Especially in the place of his passing.”

“What?” Hallie asked.

Correa stood and shook out the arm that had touched the brick.

“There are three ways to get to the holy city. The first is by traversing the sea above it or on it—a lengthy journey and nearly impossible until recently. The second is through the Gates. The final one is through smaller Passages created by the Essence of Time. This side of Yalvara used to have many of these Passages, but between the wars and the actions of the misguided peoples of Yalvara, most are now closed.” He gestured to Hallie and pointed at the brick. “But you can open this one.”

Without taking her eyes from Correa, Hallie stepped forward, trying her best to hide the shaking in her knees.

She knelt next to the brick and placed her fingers upon it, regrettably letting go of the goggles. The heat returned to her arms in full force, and with her fingers on the brick, they burned just like they had minutes earlier.

She closed her eyes against the heat and pain. She envisioned the fire and its spiraling, uncontrollable tendrils. Focusing hard, she grasped one and pushed it through her fingers into the brick. She closed her eyes and braced for…whatever would happen.

Her heart raced. Her power writhed harder, strands vying for control, fighting for her to release her hold on the one she’d chosen. She shut them out as best she could. Sweat poured down her face, dripping down her nose and onto the ground below.

She clenched her teeth as the power warred within her, begging to be released.

It was as if the floodgates had opened once she searched for a piece of it.

Like a living entity, the power wanted to be used.

It wanted to wreak havoc, to destroy, to unleash itself upon the world.

But Hallie held on. Her jaw ached from clenching it so hard.

She pressed the one tendril into the bricks with all the strength she had left.

Nothing.

She ripped her hands away, and the cold early morning froze the sweat on her face. She shivered.

“Let the flames loose,” King Filip said from nearby. “It’s contrary, I know, but in some circumstances, your power needs to be uncontrolled. Keep hold of the one strand to keep you grounded. Let the others flow into the brick. Visualize your outcome.”

Well, he’d been mostly right before when she’d tried healing Niels.

Hallie breathed heavily and shivered some more.

With hesitancy, she pressed her hands to the brick again.

Heat immediately radiated out from the place she touched.

Her power responded with vicious desire.

She grabbed at one of the strands and held onto it, but she allowed the madness pressing against her skin and soul to flow out through her fingers instead.

She screamed. It burned. It scalded and flowed like a river into the brick below.

Light exploded behind her eyelids, and she nearly lost control of everything. She was on fire. She was fire. She clung to the strand, but it was like clasping a hand in a raging storm.

“Hallie!” someone screamed. Niels? Or was it Kase? Someone else?

She couldn’t let go of the brick. She lost hold of her one strand of power. The light grew brighter. The pain increased.

She fell straight through the shining portal.