Soul of the Sword (Shadow of the Fox #2) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,151

dungeon, flashes from the corner of my eye as I passed. Sometimes voices drifted to me, snatches of words or hints of a conversation I couldn’t quite make out. I kept moving, feeling guilty as I hurried past Tatsumi’s hidden fears and darkest memories. The emotions he kept locked away even from himself.

After a while, though, the cells grew silent, empty, and it began to grow cold. My breath writhed into the air, as ice started to form on the walls, coating the bars and hanging in glistening spikes from the ceiling. Shivering, I pressed on, a globe of kitsune-bi the only light in the pitch-blackness, blue-white flames dancing and sparkling off the ice as I continued.

And then, quite abruptly, I hit a dead end: a solid wall of ice at the end of the corridor. I turned and gazed back down the hall, wondering if there was a side passage. Had I missed a door that led to another part of this frozen labyrinth? No. I knew that I hadn’t overlooked anything, just as I knew that Tatsumi’s soul was here, somewhere.

Facing the wall of ice, I reached out and put a tentative hand on the frozen barrier, feeling a burning cold sear my palms and fingertips like a flame.

And I felt it. A pulse. A glimmer of emotion, somewhere on the other side.

My heart leaped. He was here. Beyond this last barrier, just out of reach. But how was I going to get to him? If I had the means, I would chip away the ice wall bit by bit until I had broken through, but our time was running out. Hakaimono would soon be here. I had to reach Tatsumi now.

Here, in the realm of dreams, your foxfire is as deadly as you need it to be.

Taking a few steps back, I raised both arms, fingers spread wide toward the obstacle blocking my path. I called my foxfire and felt it surge through my body, up my arms, and spring to life in my hands, blue-white flames that illuminated the darkness like a torch. With a mental howl, I gathered up my magic and in one strong push, sent a column of kitsune-bi toward the wall of ice. Where the ghostly flames struck, the wall let out an earsplitting hiss, as if in pain, and steam billowed away like the breath of a dragon, coiling around me and snapping at my hair and clothes. But it wasn’t melting fast enough.

Brighter, I thought at it, pouring more magic into the flames. Brighter, hotter. Cut through this barrier like a sword through a shoji screen. I am so close to reaching Tatsumi, and this will not stop me!

Suddenly, impossibly, the ice itself caught fire, igniting like a sheet of parchment held to a flame. Kitsune-bi roared as it engulfed the entire wall, and steam billowed out until it was impossible to see through the swirling clouds of white. Squinting, I turned away, raising an arm to shield my face until the steam dispersed and the foxfire flickered out, plunging the hallway into darkness again.

For a heartbeat, it was like something had swallowed me. Swiftly, I opened my palm, and a tiny globe of foxfire sputtered to life once more, illuminating a gaping hole where the ice wall had been…and something dangling from the ceiling in the chamber beyond.

Tatsumi. Without thinking, I ducked through the gap into a room as dark and empty as the bottom of a fathomless pit. The ground under my feet glittered like an ocean of needles, and my sandals crinkled against the frozen ground as I hurried forward, sending brittle echoes rippling through the dark.

“Tatsumi-san?”

My voice sounded tiny in the soaring blackness, the words muffled by shadow and void. An ominous glow burned against the dark, coming from a tangle of glowing red chains that hung from the black of the ceiling and stabbed up from the floor, an evil web that converged in the center of the room. A figure dangled from the chains, held spread-eagle with head down and eyes closed. There were no shackles or cuffs locked around its limbs; the glowing links stabbed into its body and disappeared beneath its flesh.

“Tatsumi-san!”

Sprinting beneath the web, I gazed up at the motionless figure, my heart twisting painfully in my throat. Tatsumi didn’t move or open his eyes; he hung limply in the chains, his body flickering with a subtle light.

I swallowed hard and reached for him, feeling evil energy pulsing from the links,