Page 49 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

She winced against the pain, but her power responded quickly, countering whatever it was. Thank the stars. It was the first time her power had spared her from pain. After another second or two of silence, she opened her eyes and stood.

Soft threads of golden smoke drifted like snakes in an invisible wind. They leaked from the doorway and the temple beyond. She could barely see them, which was probably why she hadn’t noticed them before. The tendrils seemed to beckon her, leading her into the temple.

It curled and twisted around her ankles, over the place where Zeke had died, and out into the city.

The old Hallie woke with a vengeance, and her fingers twitched, overcome with the urge to draw the strange phenomena.

Where was it coming from? What was it? The smoke had a slightly luminescent quality about it, but being so faint, it didn’t give off much light. She peeked around the massive door.

Whatever had destroyed it hadn’t merely been trying to leave the temple—it had been enraged. The stone threshold was stained dark, and beneath the scent of smoke, there was the faint, sickly-sweet odor of decay.

The dragon Ben had brought through. It must have done this.

Where was it now? Was it lying in wait for her inside? Was that its heart she heard?

She clenched her hands. She would solve this mystery, then go home. She needed to be there. With Kase. With Petra, Ellis, and everyone at University she loved. She even spared a thought for the librarian who hated her guts.

The last thought brought a small smile to her face for only a moment. What would the old hag say when she discovered it was Hallie who’d returned to save her and the thousands of books in the library?

She took a few fortifying breaths. She would see what waited inside this temple, then go back to the palace to find Niels.

He had to be there somewhere. It had been stupid of her to leave the palace, but now that she had, she couldn’t turn back.

She needed to know what lay inside, what called to her.

She turned only briefly, looking down into the city of ghosts, where shadows shifted like the restless spirits of the fallen. Moonlight on scorched cottage roofs glinted off shattered glass and twisted metal. It would be worse inside the temple.

Another heartbeat gave her pause, but it was over in a moment, even if it did rattle her bones. Nothing else moved. Not even the door hanging by a thread. So incredibly odd.

Hallie stepped over the ruined threshold and into the temple. Her fingers flared with heat as she ran them along the door frame’s broken stones. She hadn’t paused to inspect the stones last time she’d been here.

It almost felt like coming home. Yet it scared her.

Not only was there the possibility of failure and being stranded there, but something about the smoke and the Gate and everything here felt like a warning. She was out of her element and unprepared for the future to come.

Yet these bricks, this Zuprium contradicted those feelings as long as she ran her fingers over them. She looked down at the goggles. They were sparse on Zuprium, but it was there in the frames, holding the lenses in. She ran her thumb over the small crack in the right one.

Had that feeling always been there? Had she simply ignored it up until now?

Stoneset had been rife with Zuprium dust. Had that made a difference?

She let her fingers fall from the bricks and immediately felt the loss.

She hadn’t ruled out the idea that she might simply be losing it, not just yet.

With all the stress of the last few months, it wasn’t such a bizarre theory.

She wished Navara had written more about her people and the life she’d led here. Instead, she’d unraveled into raving at the end, trying to find a way back to Myrrai. She hadn’t been successful.

The Gate’s image flashed in her mind again, urging her to continue. She turned away from the threshold and followed the smoke. She could deal with thoughts of Navara and her near-useless journals later.

In the stone corridors, the warm pulses intensified, though she was able to stay standing. The smoke curls grew denser and brighter. With each step, she walked beside an echo of Kase in her memory, stumbling beside her as they trailed the cart carrying Zeke’s body.

Steadying herself on the wall, she took a deep breath.

It felt like yesterday, but at the same time, everything she’d gone through since made it feel as if she’d lived three lifetimes.

If she were to measure that in novels, she’d estimate it as two rather large ones filled with fantastical worlds and domineering kings ruling with iron fists.

She wished her last few months had been but ink on paper, for if it had, she could very well write herself a happy ending.

But that wasn’t reality…at least, not the one she found herself in.

Taking a few more moments to breathe, she finally pushed off the wall and strode forward, following the smoke.

The temple was a maze of murals and corridors.

Even in the faint light, she discerned the difference between the wall paintings and those that hid underneath the ruined city in the valley below.

These told of more modern times, particularly when the First Earthers landed.

She wished she’d paid more attention to these the last time she’d visited, though at the time, she and Kase had just witnessed Zeke’s death and were attempting to protect the Gate from the Cerls.

Several nerve-jangling disconnected heartbeats later, she found herself in a very familiar corridor.

Debris and rubble lay strewn about, but she’d kissed Kase on the cheek just there, beneath the empty sconce that hung at an odd angle.

It was where he’d almost kissed her for the first time, though they’d been interrupted.

Now, she was glad for that interruption. Their first kiss was worth the wait…though she hadn’t chosen the most romantic of settings, unless you were into the dank and dreary dungeon thing.

The heart in her chest gave a painful throb. Stars, if this was what it was like to truly love someone, to miss them with each waking moment when apart, was it worth it?

She knew it was, even as her eyes stung, her vision blurring.

Just like she knew Kase felt the same. The look in his eyes when they’d said goodbye had told her that.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. She’d never felt that with Niels, no matter what eighteen-year-old Hallie had believed.

Leaving him hadn’t felt like tearing her heart out and leaving it behind with someone else.

Thump-thump.

This one crashed through Hallie like an ocean wave, and her power surged. The smoke throbbed with the heartbeat.

Just a little further. I’ll see what this is, then I’ll find Niels, and we’ll go back to Jayde.

But what about Fely and King Filip? What about the sword?

She shook those thoughts away. She couldn’t let guilt command her decisions.

The phantom heartbeats and the smoke meant something.

The Gate was around the corner, and if the front door of the temple was in such terrible shape, she could assume this one would be the same.

She closed her eyes for a second and stretched her hearing as far as she could. She didn’t want to walk into a trap.

No growls or roars, so probably no dragons. She couldn’t hear anyone inside. But that didn’t make her feel safer. She could be mistaken; worse, she could be hallucinating. She might’ve very well hit her head in the palace, and this was all something she’d made up in her mind.

She wasn’t sure that would be a bad thing. If she woke right now, it might be better.

Her power hadn’t abated after the last heartbeat, and it burned through her body as if she were an eternal flame, never burning out. It stung, but she kept hold of Kase’s goggles. Her brother’s pocket watch might have tempered the pain completely, but the goggles helped a little.

The only real sound was a light crackling, like a bonfire, which would explain the smoke. But the better question was how and when a fire had started in the first place, and what kind of fire produced glowing smoke.

All the more evidence in favor of all this taking place completely in her head.

An urgency tugged at her, one she couldn’t quite put into words. It begged her to round the corner. It pleaded for her not to turn aside now.

And as the reckless Hallie that had been born as of the last year, she marched right around the corner and into the Gate chamber.

Blackened walls riddled with gouges matching the temple entrance scoured the floor. Rocks and bricks and Zuprium littered the floor, and in the center of it all stood the glowing Gate.

Thick twists and coils of her smoke guide wafted from the glowing center of the archway. Images no longer flashed. Instead, all that remained was a simple black sword with a ruby in the pommel. It was as if the sword was caught in a stream, the smoke from the Gate flowing over it like water.

Her skin crawled, like a thousand tiny beetles scurrying up her body.

The Gate was angry.

The ground shook with its fury, tossing her aside like chaff in the wind. She curled into a ball and huddled against the ruined door frame. Shouts echoed in the corridor, but she couldn’t tell if they were her own or the screams of vengeful ghosts.

“Hal…” A hand brushed her back.

Niels.

How did he get here? Had he been in the temple the entire time? The quaking had stopped, but the tremors still rattled in her bones. She uncurled herself.

“Was that you shouting?” His face was whiter than snow.

She made a cursory glance at his leg. It was still bloody, but the stain was brown and beginning to fade. Old blood. He didn’t seem to be favoring it. Her healing hadn’t reverted. Yet.

“No,” Hallie answered, getting to her feet. She shrugged off his offer of help and dusted her trousers. “I don’t think so.”