Page 6 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

The Lord Elder had said his power would burn through her. She’d expected that burning to devour her slowly, a spark chewing through a log; she hadn’t expected it to consume her like chaff, a flash of light with nothing left behind.

Panic choked Hallie, but no sound came out. It was as if she’d found herself in the vastness of space, only able to focus on the fact she couldn’t breathe. She curled into a ball and willed it to end.

“He’s too young. Father could heal him.”

The voice came from the darkness. Hallie blinked, but she remained blind. Where was the woman? She sounded…familiar. Her words came soft but clear, iced with slightly elongated vowels. It reminded her of her own voice.

“Ara, you’ll kill yourself tryin’. He don’t want that.

” The second voice was deeper, male. The gravely edge to his tone suggested he’d done time in the mines, though that gave no hints as to his age; it was always hard to tell whether miners had been working there forty years or ten.

The grit took early and overstayed its welcome.

Some force shoved her forward. More shouting, more screaming—hers? Someone else’s? The force yanked her back. She still couldn’t breathe.

Hallie’s skin tingled, shuddered—then caught fire.

She collapsed, her body caught up in the inferno. The void beyond swallowed her screams.

Her stomach lurched up into her throat, but she couldn’t retch. There was no air.

Then, as suddenly as the phantasmal fire had come upon her, it extinguished.

Air flooded her lungs; she coughed, sucking down oxygen in great gasping breaths as she forced herself to blink. Tears stung her eyes as they alighted on the canvas ceiling of her father’s tent.

What in the blasted suns and stars had just happened?

Once her lungs stopped aching from lack of air, she pushed herself to her knees. Chills wracked her body. She shivered violently. She grounded herself by firmly pressing her fingertips into the rocky floor below.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

She spent several minutes repeating the mantra to herself. After the sweat dried upon her skin, and her stomach stopped rebelling, she sat back on her heels. She pressed her stray hair back into its messy braid.

She was okay. Everything was okay.

The corner of the offending journal caught her eye. She must have flung it aside in the throes of…whatever that state had been.

Internally, she cringed at her carelessness. The Hallie she’d known did not mistreat books like that. But this new Hallie was something else.

She inspected her hands, where power still tingled like pinpricks upon her skin. No visible wounds except where she’d cut herself with the glass shard, and even that had scabbed over already. Nothing to represent whatever power she’d unwittingly unleashed.

Madness. There could be no doubt.

With shaking hands, she fetched the journal and opened it to the page she’d coated in her blood. The paper was clean; no trace of scarlet stained it. But the tingling didn’t stop.

She snapped the journal shut and stuffed it back into her pack. She would deal with it after she ate something. An empty stomach was the last thing she needed on top of crazed visions or cuts that healed in seconds.

She stood and stepped toward the entrance, but her legs sagged, threatening to fail. She staggered a little, catching herself on her cot.

Steady. Steady. Loss of blood, perhaps… or a loss of power. It was hard to tell. Both ideas made her feel a little woozy.

Especially since she hadn’t lost all that much blood.

The chicken and dumplings waiting outside the tent made for a perfect distraction. She sat back down with the crude stone bowl and spoon, both carved from the same stone that made up the cavern.

The townsfolk of Stoneset were certainly resourceful.

Guy had put a system in place: if you wanted to eat, you had to work.

Some people oversaw the gathering of food from the gardens or hunting for meat.

Another group washed and mended clothes.

A third prepared food. The last patrolled the surrounding areas.

The children were tasked with more menial chores, of course, such as fetching water from the underground river or the nearest well.

Others ran messages between the busy adults.

Hallie had yet to be assigned a job at all, but Guy had told her he’d give her a few days to recover first, and then they would talk.

Hallie would be long gone before that time came. Hopefully.

She ate her dinner, which was delicious and perfectly savory, if a little lukewarm. But that was her own fault.

She tapped the spoon on the side of the bowl.

Maybe going out and joining the others by the fire would be nice.

She could manage thanking Ms. Vella for the meal and probably avoid having any meaningful conversation with Niels.

Some of the younger girls even wanted Hallie to tell them about the capital.

They’d come around twice to ask her about it, and—

Thunder boomed outside the tent.

Not thunder—the blast of a flashpistol.

The sound ricocheted through the caves, followed by screams. Hallie slapped her free hand to her ear, the other pressed into her shoulder.

Shouting. More flashpistol blasts.

She didn’t hear the bowl as it hit the stone floor, nor did she bother with the food that splattered on the canvas wall.

The screaming. It was exactly, exactly like what she’d heard before coming out of whatever trance she’d gone into earlier—the one with the voices and the darkness.

It didn’t end within a matter of seconds.

Instead, the screams grew louder and more frantic. Running, pounding footsteps. More pistol fire. They all rose to a deafening cacophony as they echoed off the cavern walls.

Hallie ripped open the tent flap to meet Niels. His frame took up the entire entrance, blond hair mussed, eyes panicked. He had a pack on his back and a flashpistol in hand.

“What’s happening?” Her irritation with him couldn’t drown out the relief that he was okay.

“Cerls.”

The word poured ice water into her veins. “Soldiers?”

He pushed her back into the tent. “Grab your pack. We’re leaving.”

“But what about the others?”

“Blast it, Hallie,” Niels growled, grabbing her pack. “Let’s go.”

But if it was Correa, she could do something. She could fight. “I can help.”

Niels shoved the last of her effects into her pack, including the portrait of her and Jack, and pushed the bag against her chest. He eyed her. “No, you can’t.”

Smoke from the flashpistol blasts scalded her nose.

She dug her fingernails into her palms. Her cheeks flushed, and frustration bubbled in her blood.

How dare he discount her. She threw her pack aside and snatched a shard of glass.

She wasn’t sure if she was going to use it as a shiv or make herself bleed to harness whatever power she’d just awoken, but she was going to fight.

The noise in the cavern made her head ring. Between the pistol fire and screams, she could barely concentrate on what was before her.

Niels grabbed her shoulders. “I promised your Pa I’d take care of you.”

“The Cerls are looking for me.” She tried to shove past him, but he was a boulder in her path. “For me. People are going to die because I’m here.”

She didn’t know it for certain, but it was entirely too coincidental that soldiers had found them here only now, months after the Stoneset survivors had settled in the cavern. Hallie was the reason they were here. She was certain of it.

She wouldn’t let Niels or anyone else stop her from trying to make it right.

He squeezed her shoulders hard. Hallie kicked his right shin. He swore loudly and grabbed his leg. “What did you—Hallie!”

Hallie twisted away, breaking his grip. She lunged toward the tent entrance, but she wasn’t built for speed or fighting or—well, anything, really. Not as she was.

Niels grabbed her forearm and pulled her back. He looked her straight in the eyes as she tugged. “If they really want you, they’re going to have to fight their way through me.”

They wouldn’t get the chance. She’d fight him first. “Unhand me!”

She could do this—she could do something . She’d brought the whole fort down on their heads at Achilles, for stars’ sake.

All she had to do was spill enough of her blood.

Niels looped her pack’s strap over her shoulder this time, his hand still clenching her forearm. It was beginning to hurt. She twisted and yanked, but he held firm. “Stop it and listen to me. We’ll take the tunnel toward Ravenhelm, then circle back.”

Something hot and searing and awful tore through her middle. She doubled over, shoving her own hand into her mouth to muffle her cry. Niels yanked his flashpistol from where he’d stuffed it into the back of his trousers and whipped it toward the tent entrance. “What? Where are you hit? Did they—”

“I’m not hurt.” Hallie clutched her stomach, bracing herself until the heat abated some.

She wasn’t sure what had triggered it, but something was trying to get her attention.

It felt just like before, when the Lord Elder had given her the image of the archway, but…

stronger. Much stronger. A tidal wave, not a ripple in a tide pool.

Ravenhelm. She needed to go to Ravenhelm.

But the soldiers were attacking here. She needed to fight here .

“What’s wrong?” Niels asked, his voice slightly frantic. “Don’t lie to me, Hal—”

A tall, barrel-chested man ripped back the tent flap. The canvas screeched as it tore. The pistol in his hand leaked blue smoke, the muzzle poised and ready to fire directly into Hallie’s skull.

Everything froze. The only movement came from the sparks popping and fizzing in her peripheral vision, though she could not say where they were coming from—only that they were there. Maybe she’d been hit after all, only by an electropistol, not a flashpistol.

The intruder’s uniform was dark blue and filthy. Ragged holes, streaks of dirt, and dark, blotchy stains decorated the front.