She thrust the map at Obritsa. She could feel the edges of her control fraying, her thoughts spilling out. “Hurry, damn you! He’ll come for me at any moment!”
Her mouth in a thin line, her eyes hard and glittering, Obritsa worked quickly, her deft fingers summoning bright threads from the air and crafting them into a humming ring of light. She glanced at Rielle.
Rielle stepped through the light, and Obritsa followed shortly after. The threads unraveled with a simmering hiss, and the ring collapsed, snapping shut.
They dressed hurriedly in Anadirah’s office, Obritsa dwarfed by the too-large furs. A gentle pressure was building in Rielle’s mind, her thoughts shifting into a familiar configuration.
“Hurry,” she whispered, her fingers shaking as she tied her scarf and hat into place. “He’s coming.”
Obritsa, eyes wide, summoned more threads. They stepped through the ring and into a small unadorned room of stone in one of the fortress’s towers, just as Rielle had instructed—but horror overcame her as she realized the truth.
The room held only one casting: Saint Marzana’s shield, sitting alone in the center of the floor. Pale shafts of wintry light from four different windows intersected on the shield’s battered face.
Obritsa closed her threads and turned. “Where are the others?”
Rielle stared at the shield, a hot white rage rising within her.
Corien had separated the castings, hidden them individually throughout the fortress, and he hadn’t told her.
The last tattered cords of her control snapped.
She screamed in fury and flung her hands at the shield, calling the empirium to her in an incandescent wave of power. The room exploded into gold, every fleck of dust, every trace of air and moisture illuminated with brilliant light.
Obritsa threw up her arms to shield her eyes.
A high, discordant hum pierced the air—the shield vibrating on the floor. Then, with a loud crack, it shot toward the ceiling, shattered into dust, and was gone. All that remained was a charred spot on the floor and a spiderweb of cracks that spanned from wall to wall. The room quaked violently, the ceiling swaying overhead.
Rielle sagged to the floor, her mind bursting with stars. Her bones and muscles ached, her teeth and the space behind her eyes pulsed with pain—but beneath it was a depraved, wriggling pleasure. There was a delicate tingling in her fingers and toes, a supple energy playing at the ends of her hair and crackling along the soft lines of her skin.
She sensed a light nearby, turned slowly toward it as if moving through water.
“Go, Rielle,” said Obritsa, her voice tight with fear. “Hurry. The tower is falling.”
A loud snap split the air, and the floor gave way beneath Rielle’s feet as she stepped through the ring of light hovering in the air to her left. She felt Obritsa right on her heels and heard the threads snap closed behind them as they fell together into a white world of snow.
The air was so cold it immediately stole Rielle’s breath. She pushed to her feet, gasping, and fumbled to put on her gloves. Beside her, Obritsa adjusted the rucksack on her shoulders.
They stood on a glacier, a low range of gray-and-white mountains behind them. A few hundred yards ahead of them gleamed a black grin of water shot through with icebergs. And in the distance, dark mountains that pierced the clouds.
Rielle’s heart pounded as she watched them. Those mountains marked the Northern Reach, and she had escaped from it. From him.
And as soon as the thought formed, he found her.
Rielle, what have you done? He groped for her, his fingers brushing against her wrist, his voice caressing her neck. His anger tugged at her chest; she was supper, caught in a snare. The shield, Rielle! How could you do this to me? To us?
Rielle cried out, “Again, Obritsa! North!”
The girl obeyed, her wide frightened eyes the only things visible behind her layers of furs.
Rielle went first, Obritsa close on her heels, and as Rielle passed through the ring of light, Corien’s roar of fury struck the back of her neck like a whip.
• • •
They landed in a deep drift of snow.
Rielle choked on it, the fresh white powder up to her chin, and pawed around for Obritsa. She found the girl’s gloved hand, held tight to it, then sent out a burst of power that melted every flake within ten feet of where they stood. Water gushed to the bare black ground in a brief cold torrent.
Gasping and coughing for air, her furs drenched, Obritsa nevertheless did not