As She Ascends by Jodi Meadows

Author:Jodi Meadows
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

FOLLOW THE LIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

AARU, HRISTO, AND I FLED THE THEATER WITH THE last of the evacuees.

We just blended in, rushing along with the rest of the people trying to escape my fury, and they had no idea I was the one who’d almost destroyed them, because they hadn’t been able to see through the corona of light surrounding me. And when I stumbled, someone took my arm and kept me on my feet. Another person asked if we needed help.

Guilt turned over in me as Hristo and Aaru guided me through the stormy streets. We had to keep to the edges of the crowd to avoid the police pulling people aside for questions, but there were so many others doing the same thing; no one noticed us. When we reached the Red Wine Inn, I went straight to the washroom and shut the door behind me.

Thunder growled and shook the building.

In the other room, I could hear Hristo as he told the others about Tirta, our attempt to see her, and how I ended up on the main floor and wreathed in fire.

Rain beat against the building, loud enough to drown his words and confuse my mind with irrelevant numbers, but as I sat in the far corner of the washroom floor, I could still hear everything.

“I thought she was going to die,” he said. “Falling like that. I thought I was about to see her neck break and that would be the end.”

“The end of what?” Gerel’s voice darkened.

“The end of everything.” Hristo sighed. “She was already glowing when she fell. The noorestone magic was already in her. That’s probably why she landed on her feet. That power is what saved her. But then it kept growing until she was too bright to look at. Still, I swear, I saw—”

“What?” That was Chenda.

“Wings?”

Easily, I could imagine Hristo closing his eyes as he tried to sort out the real from the imaginary. As he fought to recall each detail and judge it for accuracy.

“It looked like she had wings made of light,” he said. “The floor turned liquid behind her.”

“Seven gods.”

“What do we do?” Ilina asked. “Can we help her?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if she gets worse?”

“Remember in the Pit.”

“I thought she was going to die in the Pit.”

“Me too.”

“And then the tunnel.”

“That was too close.”

“And it was nothing compared to this.”

“She should never have rushed in there.”

“What’s done is done.”

“It was impulsive. Dangerous. What if she’d been caught?”

Quiet.

“This was a mistake. All of this.”

“Chenda—”

“No. Listen. This mess could have been avoided if you’d listened to me from the start. . . .”

My heart squeezed as the argument escalated, and after a while I didn’t even pay attention to who said what. I just pulled my knees to my chest, shivering in my wet clothes, listening to my friends worry about me, about this power, and whether I would accidentally use it to destroy us all.

“Give me peace,” I whispered. “Give me grace.”

But if Damyan or Darina heard, they refused to give me either.

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