Page 5 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

But if Correa was dead, then what leader did they have? Had King Filip survived the attack, or did they really expect the village bard to play that part with this terrifying world as his stage?

Hallie shut her eyes and pretended—wished—she really was asleep. If she closed her eyes long enough, maybe she could pretend well enough to make it real.

Not that her dreams were much of an escape.

Most of the time, Kase was there…sometimes kissing her, sometimes disintegrating beneath her fingertips.

Before Achilles, her dreams had been riddled with the trauma of the Eudora Jayde journey, but since the fort’s destruction, the nightmares had shifted, worsened.

They almost felt more real than her waking hours.

In the nightmares, fire raced in her blood, and the air smelled of ash as Kase’s skin fell away. His scream still pierced her ears when she woke up.

Screams, because she’d failed to take on the Essence over and over again. Screams because Correa had tortured him.

Lightning, fire, screaming, ash.

Hallie clenched every muscle at once, willing the memories away.

“I’ll just leave your food here.” Niels paused. “Hope you decide to join us.”

I’m safe. We’re not in Achilles. I’m safe. Kase is safe.

Slowly, Hallie relaxed her tight muscles and took deep breaths as his footsteps faded away.

The other survivors chatted amicably, likely preparing the evening meal for their families or heading to wherever Guy had decided to tell his stories that night.

But how could Hallie join something so normal when the world around them was so wrong?

She couldn’t help them decide whether or not to return to the village proper—she couldn’t even decide what to stare at.

Just to make her own point, she rolled over and inspected the portrait once more. The life in Jack’s eyes struck her to the core.

If her brother hadn’t died, would he have been roped into this as well? If he’d been here, would he have been the one to take on the power, to allow Hallie to live her life in ignorant bliss?

Was it wrong to wish that he had?

Of course, if he had survived, she would’ve never met Kase.

Stars, her chest ached. She just wanted him to be there. She wanted him to tell her it was going to be all right, that they would find a way through whatever horrors awaited them.

She blinked away the moisture pooling in her eyes. No use wishing for things that would never be. She could only do what Kase needed her to do…for herself and for Yalvara.

She took a deep breath. The sooner she found the Passage, the sooner she could find a way back to Kase.

If her power allowed it.

Finally, she made up her mind and pulled the latest journal out of her pack. She had a job to do, and she didn’t have the luxury of pretending the world outside the cavern walls didn’t exist.

She slid her fingers over the worn leather and hooked them underneath the cover. Running the pads of her fingertips over the edges, she found the place where she’d left off. But when she went to turn to the next page, a pinprick of pain bit the tip of her pointer finger. Parchment cut.

She cursed softly and sucked on it. In her time at University, she’d gotten used to the sensation; once, she’d even sliced herself with parchment three times in one sitting.

Not her proudest moment. Someone had once told her parchment cuts only stung so badly because they ripped skin instead of cleanly cutting it.

She didn’t know if she believed that, but her stupid finger throbbed regardless.

Inspecting the page once more, Hallie ran her finger over the messy jargon on the page. This shouldn’t have been so difficult—she was a Yalven scholar, for stars’ sake. Did that not mean anything?

She pulled out her sketchbook and made a few notes. A few of these words could be translated in a few different ways. She would need to decipher what the woman was trying to say by guessing at context she didn’t have…which could, of course, render the entire thing entirely unhelpful.

But she had little choice. Not when—

Heat throbbed in her center. With it came a flash, a picture that made her gasp: the archway again, flickering through her mind like a flame.

It was the first time in three days she’d felt it. Seen it.

Hallie put a hand to her stomach as the heat died down and turned to ice once more. She looked at the page before her and noticed a small, infinitesimal streak of brown. Her blood—the parchment cut. The rusty smear struck through one of the first lines of script.

A coincidence, surely.

She leaned closer, analyzing the symbols there. It did seem to say something about a portal of some sort…in a certain context. She made a hasty note in her sketchbook.

A coincidence…but maybe not.

The door to the Gate Chamber had opened because of her Yalven ancestry; her blood had been the key. Could it open the door to her power, too?

She tapped her cut finger and her thumb together.

Only one way to find out.

She’d still be under her record of three papercuts in one sitting. Besides, this was for science’s sake.

Clenching her teeth against the pain to come, she set her middle finger against the parchment edge and sliced it.

“Blast, blast, blast, that hurts,” she hissed to herself. Inspecting her finger, she willed blood to appear. “Please don’t make me slice it again.”

A few more moments of pinching and pleading, and blood finally peeked out of the slender, stinging cut. She touched her finger to the edge of the page, then pulled back and inspected the faint, wavy imprint of her fingertip.

Nothing extraordinary.

She blew softly on the page, like stirring the dying embers of a fire. Maybe it needed a moment to work. Maybe she’d well and truly lost it.

Waiting, waiting…

Nothing.

Yep. I’ve lost it.

Laughter echoed through the cavern—Guy’s doing, most likely. She was surprised the bard had stayed here as long as he had; bards weren’t exactly known for settling in one place, after all. But she was glad, this once, to be proven wrong.

It turned out the qualities of a skilled bard and the qualities of a skilled leader had plenty of overlap: both required an abundance of charisma, a talent for public speaking, the ability to inspire particular emotions in their audience, and the kind of shrewd insight that anticipated trouble before it arrived.

And he’d certainly proven his courage by stepping up after the attack to help keep the survivors alive.

Joining the others at the fire would’ve been easy.

If she only put down the journal and left her father’s tent, she could pretend she wasn’t an Essence wielder for the night.

She could pretend she hadn’t spent the last few years among the upper echelons of society.

She could fall back into the mountain accent she’d tried so hard to suppress. Easy.

Nothing was ever easy.

Hallie no longer belonged among the people she’d known her entire life. She was different; not above them, not better than them, just not the same. She’d lived a lifetime away from the sleepy little village of her birth, and no one could rewind time.

Some might say she’d lost herself. But some would be wrong. In fact, she had found herself in a messy-haired, cocky pilot with a heart of stardust and a penchant for dusty tomes.

Maybe it wasn’t too late; maybe she could find her way back to Myrrai. Find her way back to Kase.

She inspected her two parchment cuts. If her power stopped responding, she wouldn’t be able to make it to the Yalven city, but she could make it to Kyvena. There’d not be any danger of succumbing to the power she didn’t understand or control.

But would that mean she’d failed?

She’d convinced Kase, her father, and Niels she could do it. The Lord Elder had given her the vision of the passage for a reason, surely…yet he’d gone silent in the days since.

Perhaps she’d proven herself incompetent or unworthy somehow. Or perhaps she was simply tired and should trade fruitless daydreams for actual sleep.

She looked down at the spiky, inconsistent Yalven characters below.

Maybe failure wouldn’t be so bad.

No one was forcing her to do this. If her power had disappeared, that was fine; it meant she wouldn’t have to worry about the world or Jagamot or anything at all. She could just…be.

But there was that voice at the back of her head, the one that always waited until her lowest moments to sow that seed of doubt in her naysaying. A voice that very much sounded like reason.

If she wanted Kase to live a long and full life, she needed to solve this. He deserved better than her hesitation and doubt.

He deserved the world. And she wouldn’t stop until she gave it to him.

Without stopping to consider the consequences, she turned off the lantern and smashed it onto the stone below.

The laughter outside cut off sharply, but Hallie didn’t care.

She grabbed the largest glass shard from the casing and sliced it across her palm.

She gritted her teeth against the burning ache.

Blood bubbled from the jagged wound, slithering to her wrist.

She pressed it onto the parchment. She was mad. Absolutely mad. It hurt like burning suns.

Blood soaked the page. The journal was ruined, and Hallie only had a second to feel bad about that fact.

Heat leapt from her core, blazing a fiery trail up her chest and to her fingers and toes, a detonation that knocked her to her knees. She stuffed a hand in her mouth to keep herself from screaming. Sweat ran down her face, joining the blood on the page below her.

The cavern disappeared. Darkness crushed her chest. Her knees pressed into the stone floor she could no longer see.

Too much, too much—it might kill her. The weight might grind her to dust. She couldn’t move.

She screamed, but something stole the sound away as soon as it met her lips. The fire inside her burned so violently, yet it shed no light.