Page 251 of The Cradle of Ice

“I don’t know. But the Root must have expended considerable energy in preparing and executing this trap. It had to tax him.”

Daal glanced to the others, who all gathered behind them, their faces tense. Ahead, the Root was a statue fastened to the copper. Beyond the creature’s shoulder, Shiya remained locked in a cocoon of crystal and fire. She quaked inside, somehow transferring that violence to the turubya’s orb in the dome’s center.

Nyx stepped next to him.

“What do you want me to do?” he whispered.

She held out her hand. “What you’ve always done. You be my flashburn, I’ll be your forge.”

He closed his eyes and clasped her hand. As their palms touched, fire ignited with a furious heat. He melted into her. It no longer felt unnatural, but welcoming. His flames flowed out of him, pumped by his own heart, flaring hotter with each breath.

He felt his skin chill, but he held firm.

He was rewarded as Nyx sang softly next to him, a wordless melody, fed by his flames. He felt the vibrations of her throat as if it were his own. Her song grew, washing between them. She drew more and more, eventually drawing gasps out of him.

The song now flooded, filling both, until there was no more space. He remembered drowning in the Dreamers’ sea, alive but with his lungs weighed down by water, a heaviness without panic.

This was like that.

And still the song grew.

As Nyx drew more fire, the cold in him deepened to numbness. He felt the surrounding world fade. Still, as before, her desire was his. He felt her ache, her longing for more. She was the black abyss that could never be satiated.

Still, he gave himself fully to her.

Why hold back if it was the end of the world?

If I must die, let me die within you.

She heard him. Melded together, they could keep no secrets. She spoke in threads of light and song.

Stay with me …

He wanted to refuse, to give her all of him, but those strands of song wrapped to him, holding him closer. He threw her words back from a moment ago, words that still resounded inside her and he could read.

All or nothing.

They dared not hold back.

But she refused to accept those extremes, offering an alternative.

All yet nothing.

He didn’t understand.

Stay with me …

She bridled him to her, using his own energy to hold him. He read the reasons. A mix of fear, loneliness, need, even desire.

He stopped fighting and released himself to her.

* * *

WITH DAAL’S CONSENT, along with his trust, Nyx let her song burst from her heart and throat. A golden torrent flooded out of her, fueled by Daal’s flashburn and shaped by her forge—but she aimed her power where no one expected.

One chance …

She emptied her tide down, into the copper floor. She followed that rush, bound with Daal. She was too terrified to try this alone, to risk the impossible by herself. She needed his anchor.