Trine Rising by C.K. Donnelly

Author:C.K. Donnelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: YA, young adult, YA fantasy, young adult fantasy, teen fantasy, coming of age, fantasy, strong heroine, magical powers, sword and sorcery, action and adventure, mystery
Publisher: C.K. Donnelly
Published: 2020-07-12T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

“But to harken unto Their Will requires a decision I am loath to make.”

—The Codex of Jasal the Great

Mirana ran through the corridors of the learning hall, as empty and unforgiving as a tomb. She sped across the rain-drenched courtyard and stopped when she reached the hall’s library. Catching her breath, she laid her palms and forehead against the great oak doors. She pulled her mind inward, dissolving her presence into the life around her. She did not want to be found. Ever.

The Aspects Above had shunned her. No saving grace had come from on high, no absolution was granted, no expiation given for the sins she had committed, nor the ones that awaited her. No hope remained, only one last choice.

She pulled back on the iron rings and went through the doors. The smell of dust and age filled her nostrils. Thunder crashed, and she cringed instinctively at the deafening crack. Lightning lashed at the tall stained-glass windows, illuminating in violent bursts the harsh colors of their facets. The intermittent light put the ceiling corbels in stark relief as they hid high up in barrel and groin vaults. The oil lamps flickered in meek imitation of the lightning outside.

She hurried deep into the sepulchral library. Thousands of volumes, parchments, linen scrolls, and preserved hides mouldered away on the shelving, corpses stacked within catacombs of knowledge, as useless and dead to her as cadavers. A few leather-bound books around the cavernous room stood tethered to stands by chains, prisoners of false wisdom. As was she.

Long tables sat before the shelves, great, dark planes of wood like so many altars ready for a sacrifice. Carved under one of those tables were her and Teague’s names. He had cut their glyphs into the wood with his belt knife after she had kissed him for the first time. They were fourteen. She would never taste his kiss again.

“Teague.”

Mirana sank against a heavy wooden chair. All of those memories of their primary lessons together in this place, all those dreams, that first timid kiss—they were lies. They were denials of a self she believed herself to be, only to be destroyed by the person she would become.

She crossed her arms on the leather seat and buried her face in them. Caresses touched her mind, insidious in their insistence, sickening in their supplication. She lifted her head, blinking through rain- and sweat-matted hair. Amulets. Statues of Fal’kin, most of whose names were lost to time, stood in niches and alcoves around the library. Amulets hung from their cold, stone necks and whispered to her now.

She bit back another cry, her chest constricting with the effort. She could choose every one of them. All she had to do was hold one and let it into her being. When she did, though, it would taunt her with its gleaming, a sign of the power she held but could not find a way to safely use.

She sat up and leaned against a statue plinth. She let her head fall back.

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