The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,398

been made. “I know that people make choices about eternity before they understand what eternity means. I know I threw away a thousand second chances before I took the last one. I know they probably won’t take it, but . . . what if they do? So for my boon, my lord, I beg that You offer these undeserving one more chance.”

Orholam studied him. “You stand broken and powerless, stripped of all you loved, with all your world in the balance, your son and your wife fighting for their very lives, and for your boon you ask clemency for strangers?”

“My wife and son are Yours. If You don’t care for them even more than I do, You’re not who You say You are. If You’re not who You say You are, what use is a boon? But I think You are. My wife and son are loved, by me and by You and by thousands of others. The sea demons . . .” He thought of them: feeding on light itself but living in darkness, alone, outliving everyone who’d ever loved them, twisted into something hideous by their own choices.

Dazen’s heart emptied all at once, like a dam bursting and all his hopes rushing out, like he was doing something disastrous—but right. “The sea demons aren’t strangers. They’re me.”

“O Dazen,” Orholam said, and his voice was soft and his eyes were proud. “Here at your end, you are indeed a man after my own heart. So let it be. Come. Your penance awaits.”

Chapter 123

Kip flexed his burn-scarred left hand, working the stiffness out of it before taking the intricately engraved golden bar in his grip. It fit like they’d been made for each other.

“Breaker, I don’t mean to minimize the challenge you’re taking on there,” Ferkudi said from the edge of the roof where he was looking out over the Jaspers, “but whatever you’re going to do, could you . . . maybe . . . you know, start?”

With his free right hand, Kip pulled the mirror array’s crystal to rest against his forehead, exactly where the pagans said the third eye resides.

“The bane have all made landfall,” Big Leo said from beside Ferkudi. “Thousands of drafters and wights are swarming from every one of them. We’re surrounded.”

“Not all the bane. Superviolet’s gone,” Kip said.

Liv had found her old loyalties were stronger than she’d expected after all. She’d withdrawn from the fight. Thank you, Liv.

He drafted superviolet and put his right hand on the other grip—and suddenly felt his awareness cast out of his body as if he’d been catapulted from himself, far out into the ocean.

“Whoa, whoa! What was that?!” He yanked his hands away from the grips. It had not done that before. It was as if the presence of the bane had somehow charged it up.

Everyone was staring at him, unnerved.

“Not that I’m surprised or anything,” he said with a weak smile.

“Boss?” Ferkudi asked.

“No worries,” Kip said. “I got this.” He checked himself. This wasn’t what had happened yesterday, but yesterday he’d practiced using only the barest amount of superviolet and no other colors—knowing that the bane would deny him the use of them. He’d already had so much to learn. The superviolet let him focus the mirrors. Today—dammit, when had he drafted a little bit of blue? Probably just spectral bleed from the superviolet, and this bluer-than-blue beautiful day.

He emptied himself of blue on the nub of hellstone he kept at his belt, then tried again with only superviolet. Now he was simply directing the mirrors as he had yesterday.

Andross had told Kip not to draft on the array, told him drafting with so much power at hand would burn him out in seconds or minutes. He was—irritatingly—surely right. But if Kip drafted not through the array but before he touched it, and then it still worked without frying him, then maybe that was worth exploring.

So he lifted his hand, drafted a bit of blue—and now he could cast his vision wherever he wanted.

He blew out an exasperated breath. Why did he always have to figure things out the hard way? Could no one leave a short instruction book chained to these magical devices?

There was no time to waste, though.

He launched himself back to where Zymun had last focused the array, far out in the sea, but saw nothing there.

Why that bit of the sea? No reason?

Zymun must have kicked the mirror array when they’d hauled him off it after he’d blown his halos.

Kip drew his