I stretched my hand out, until my palm was flat against her chest.
Hers was different than any soul I’d ever touched. It resembled a public garden, a fertile plot filled not with her own essence, but with the essence of other people’s lives. Leaves and roots stretched up, flowers bending toward me. I ran my hands over them.
I was assaulted by visions.
A patchwork of faces and names I didn’t recognize. There were births and weddings and battles and deaths, across time and distance, each life its own unique flower or bush or tree, growing, flourishing, wilting. And then, three thorny, tangled vines, three blackening blossoms, unfurling inside her soul, revealing their secrets.
Draki, sitting on a throne of ice, giant wings sprouting from his spine.
Me, floating on my back above an altar, surrounded by a circle of stones.
Reyker, his face bloody, his heart faltering as some unseen force wrenches his soul from his body.
The visions shifted to other people, other things. Briefly, I saw into the past through this woman’s eyes, saw myself meet her in the Highlands. I heard the warning she gave, heard her tell me how I wouldn’t remember it. She was a mystic. A seeress. And she’d predicted Quinlan’s death—the price I paid for killing the white wolf in the Highlands, for using my gifts without the Ice Gods’ permission.
I pulled myself together, enough to speak. “Show me what’s going to happen to Reyker. Show me how to stop it.”
“Kill me, soul-reader,” the seeress said. “You must kill me before the Dragon returns.”
“What? No. I can’t.”
The seeress persisted. “Last time you did not listen to me and look what happened. Listen to me now: As long as I live, he will have a window into what only gods and seers should know. He will see who betrays him before it happens. He will recognize attempts to take his throne and stop them before they begin. He will be invulnerable.”
Kill the seeress, as I’d killed the white wolf. A willing sacrifice.
“Hurry!” she said. “He’s coming. Do as I say, or we will both regret it.”
I had no weapon on me, and there was no time to fashion one from the key in my hand. The only quick death I could offer was what I’d done to the Dragonman in the tunnels, but this time I would have to follow through. Not simply break her soul, but sunder it from its vessel.
I gathered her soul to me—the stalks of flowers, roots and vines, sprawling bits of other lives she carried inside her. Beneath those images, I felt the seeress’s peculiar essence brushing against mine, pulsing with life. “I reap this soul in the name of the Ice Gods,” I murmured, “in the name of Eyvor, the soul-keeper. May her veil-dwellers welcome you into Fortune’s Field.”
“Do it, magiska!”
With a silent cry, I pulled, ripping her garden up from its roots, tearing her soul free. Sound and color filled my senses, all the pieces the seeress was made of rushing past me, the last remnants of her visions drifting around me like shed petals caught in a cyclone. In each one, I saw a face, melting. Dying. Hundreds of faces, of deaths, brushing against me.
I let go and fell to the floor.
The seeress’s eyes were still open, but there was a measure of peace in her features. It was a merciful death, if there truly was such a thing.
Her curse died with her—this time, I would remember her. I would remember everything.
Above me, someone moved in the passageway. I had to get out.
I ducked out of the cell, locked it, returned the keys to their peg. There was a door on the other side of the dungeon, and I pushed through it just as someone came down the stairs.
The door opened on another passageway, this one winding around, back to Draki’s dusty library. I hurried through it, into the hallway on the other side that passed my bedroom, then up the ladder that stretched to the landing and the rooftop balcony, where I would make my grand entrance.
Music flowed through the balcony doors, coming from outside. I cracked a door open and peered at the crowds below, people milling about in the space between the fortress and the lava field, dressed in their finery. I recognized the emissary to Glasnith, laughing with a group of warriors. Servants flitted between the guests, carrying trays of food and wine and ale, setting up a feast on the many tables that had been arranged. Musicians played near the tables, flutes and lyres and fiddles, and harps that made me ache for Hilde. There were Dragonmen everywhere, more than I’d ever seen—of the hundreds of attendants, over half of them were Draki’s soldiers.
A hand touched my back, and I jumped.
“It is time,” Draki said.
When I turned, he stared at me, his expression stony. The gentleness he’d shown earlier was gone, replaced with impatience. And something more, something worse. Disdain. “You know,” I choked out.
He’d been in the dungeons. He saw what I did to the seeress.
“I always know. There is nothing you can hide from me, no escape from the consequences of your actions. Your punishment awaits.” He ran his fingertips along the skin of my throat. “For now, you will wait here until I announce you. Do not fail me in this. Remember what is at stake, all those who will suffer if you deny me.”
He left me there, though his touch lingered, phantom hands around my neck. I crossed my arms over my chest, standing out of sight beneath the bone archway, the skulls of Draki’s victims grinning at me. Minutes later, I heard him call out my name.
Jarl Lira of Drakin. Consort of the Dragon.
I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. The tunnels were locked up tight and heavily guarded. There was no other way out except to leap from another cliff, and I didn’t expect I’d survive such a feat again. Besides, Draki held all the cards now—the fate of Glasnith and everyone on it, including my brother; the lives of the children of Vaknavangur.
And Reyker. Always Reyker.
I threw open the doors and marched onto the balcony, a warrior preparing to fight a different sort of battle, one that would test the strength of my mind and soul. The sun had taken its leave not long ago, and the air was cold against my skin—I wore no coat, no cloak, only the gown that matched Draki’s tattooed flesh, and my own warrior-mark of thorns. The staircase was three stories tall and wound in the center like a corkscrew, the perfect platform for Draki to display me to all his guests. I could feel them staring, judging me in the glittery wash of moonlight and torchlight. Head high, I descended the first step.
My gaze was fixed ahead, but I couldn’t help glancing down. There was Draki, standing to the side of the stairs, watching me. There was his sea of followers—Dragonmen and servants, commanders and emissaries, lords and ladies. Anyone influential in Iseneld. Anyone whose power the Dragon could bend to his will and use to fortify his throne.