Page 136 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Only its claw-tipped paws don’t change. Clasped around each of its four ankles are brass shackles inscribed with ikons. That must be how they captured it, how they kept it from returning to the Storm.

“What’s the plan?” I hate the way my voice shakes, the way terror turns my palms cold and sweaty.

“Don’t die.” Pa says, his eyes alight with a fierce sort of delight. He’senjoyingthis.

The beast throws its head back and lets out a roar like a clap of thunder. Its eyes—pinpricks of violet lightning—fix on us, staying the same while the rest of its face morphs.

“Vesper! Go!”

I scramble back twenty feet, dropping to my knees and skidding across stone with the stick of charcoal in hand, and draw the three ikons Pa calls out, linking them together into a shape like a constellation.Ikonomancy is a language, and as with language, words can be strung into sentences.

The ikons come easy to my fingers, though I wish Pa had taught me how to keep my hands from shaking.

The stormbeast stomps on Pa’s first set of ikons, and they activate; the ground under its feet melts into a gooey puddle of molten marble, and the beast trips into it, splashing bits of rapidly-hardening rock onto its legs. The stone solidifies, stopping the beast in its tracks. It writhes, morphing faster and faster. Pa stumbles away as it loses shape altogether, becoming a swirling black cloud, the four brass shackles glinting in its depths.

It reforms itself outside the bounds of Pa’s ikon, landing with a thud on all four shackled feet. It leaps past my first ikon, following Pa.

Pa drops beside me and grabs my hand as I’m about to finish linking them together. He scribbles one more ikon and closes it. “Get back.”

We scramble back as the stormbeast treads upon the linked ikons.

The ground rises up in boulders like teeth, jutting fifteen feet tall and clamping shut around the beast. It’s sealed inside a rough, ridged mound of stone.

Pa holds his arm out, stopping me. My heart pounds in my ears; the crowd is silent.

The rock holds.

“What now?” I ask.

Dalca watches from above. A vein jumps in his jaw, and I give him a grim smile. Pa and I’ll get through this, we’ll beat the Trials and then—

Something tickles my skin, making the Queen’s curse throb within me. The stormbeast prowls inside its stone cage, leaping from one edge to the other, expanding in a twisting, gusting tornado, pressing on the stone from within. It’s a vortex of anger and heartrending sorrow, and it suffers to be separated from the Storm. But then I sense a moment of dark glee as it builds pressure, finding weak points in the stone and pushing.

“Pa! It’s going to break out!”

His brows furrow at me in doubt. With my eyes open, the stone mound looks solid—but the Queen’s curse tells me the beast is moments from breaking free.

A sharp crack rings out in the air, followed by a loud hiss. Another crack, then another hiss. Fractures spiderweb across the surface of the stone, wisps of dark cloud eking their way out in ominous spirals.

The stone cage shatters.

The stormbeast roars with a dozen serpentine heads, lightning streaking between its fangs. Its body is that of a massive hound, and somehow those ikon-inscribed shackles are still around its ankles.

It sprints toward us, its many eyes agleam, and I stagger back. A rippling wall of gray stone rises before me, nearly clipping my toes as it stretches ten, fifteen, twenty-five feet in the air. Pa lifts his stub of charcoal from the ground. The wall he created spans the width of the arena, sealing us in a small section, maybe a fourth of the arena, while the stormbeast has full rein over the rest.

“Let’s just stay here,” I say.

Pa barks a surprised laugh. “I once read about a Trial that went on for days. The accused couldn’t kill the beast, so she hid. She drew water from the air and lived on that for as long as she could.”

“Thank you, Pa, real uplifting.”

He gives me a thin-lipped smile and gestures for me to throw him my stick of charcoal. Mine’s still a good three inches long, but Pa’s used his up to a small stub. We’ll run out soon. I glance down, seeing how my veins jump in my wrists, and I know what my backup plan will be.

He begins to draw ikons on the ground. I press my ear to the stone wall and close my eyes. The stormbeast prowls, aching. I exhale long and slow, and slip into the spiraling whorls of its body, its emotions becoming mine:I want to go back, I want to go home, to a soft, sweet embrace, to where I belong, but these things on my feet keep me here, burning me, and it hurts, it hurts—

“Vesper!”

I blink back to myself. Pa throws me the stub of charcoal.