Total pages in book: 214
Estimated words: 195876 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 979(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 653(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 195876 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 979(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 653(@300wpm)
Darkness. Then flashes of light. I'm seeing through eyes that aren't mine again, feeling emotions that belong to someone else.
The castle is burning. I can smell smoke, hear screams echoing through marble halls. I'm running, my breath ragged in my throat, desperation driving each step.
"Keira!" The name tears from my lips—no, from Raith's lips. This is his memory again, bleeding through our tether as we sleep.
I round a corner and skid to a halt. The door ahead is half-open, firelight spilling through the gap. Something is wrong. The quality of the light is strange, tinged with an oily darkness that seems to absorb rather than reflect.
Fear grips me, but I push forward, shouldering through the door.
What I see inside sears itself into my mind.
A young woman in her early twenties stands in the center of the room, her arms outstretched. She looks like Raith—the same golden eyes, the same proud bearing, though her hair is a deep auburn rather than black.
She's breathtakingly beautiful, and I can feel Raith's admiration and respect for her. His heartbreak and fear at what he sees.
Fire spirals around her in intricate patterns, but it's fighting against something else—a darkness that seems to move with purpose, with malice.
Across from her is a figure that shifts and changes, its form unstable, like smoke given flesh. The energy clears and I see it fully, familiarity prickling through my own memories into the vision.
The tall, pale and twisted flesh hunched over with limbs that are too long. The gaping mouth like a smile and the sightless eyes.
A siphon.
The air around it ripples with void energy, purple, green, and consuming. Somehow, this one seems even more powerful than the one I faced in Confluence. More deadly.
"Keira, stop!" I scream, lunging forward.
Her head turns, and for a single moment, her eyes lock with mine. Recognition flashes, followed by a depth of regret that cuts like a blade.
"I'm sorry, little brother," she whispers. "Run. Run now."
She draws deeper, pulling forth more fire essence than any human body should be able to channel. I can see it happening—the magic rushing through her, brightening her from within until her skin seems translucent, until the veins beneath glow bright orange.
I can see the outline of her skeleton through flesh and watch as the bone flakes away to ash, consumed by impossible heat.
The siphon shrieks, a sound no human throat could make, and lunges forward.
"No!" I scream, but it's too late.
Keira detonates.
There's a moment of perfect silence, a breath suspended in time. Then fire explodes outward in a blinding wave. The wall of heat slams into me, searing the left side of my body, throwing me backward through the doorway. The siphon is enveloped entirely, its form disintegrating in the inferno.
The last thing I see is the ceiling collapsing, massive stones falling toward me as pain consumes everything.
I wake with a gasp, bolting upright in bed. My heart pounds against my ribs, and I can still feel the phantom pain of burns across my skin, the echo of Raith's anguish. The pain of those burns... I only felt it for an instant, and it breaks my heart. I can't even imagine suffering that. Being marked by that. Knowing the source was the death of my own sister trying to protect me.
Beside me, Raith is already sitting up, his eyes wide in the darkness and touched by a distance and sadness that tears at my insides. I wasn't just seeing his memory. I was having the dream he was having. Reliving the same memory he must be haunted by night after night.
"Nessa?"
"I saw—" My voice breaks. "I saw what happened to your sister."
His entire body goes rigid. In the dim light filtering through the window, I can see the muscle jumping in his jaw. "I'm sorry you had to see that."
I swallow hard, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. "I'm sorry, Raith. I'm so sorry. I don't know how you go on when you have to keep reliving that. Nobody should've had to see that once. To be haunted by it in your dreams... it's—" I trail off, unable to find the words.
He doesn't speak, just stares ahead at nothing, lost in memories I've now witnessed firsthand. Tentatively, I reach out, placing my hand over his where it rests on the blanket.
"She tried to save you," I whisper. "She must have been so powerful."
His head turns slowly, eyes finding mine in the darkness. "She was. The strongest fire affinity in generations." His voice is tight, controlled, but I can feel the grief pulsing through our connection.
"The siphon," I say, the image of that shifting, formless creature burned into my mind. "It was there for you, wasn't it? Just like the one at Confluence."
His laugh is bitter, hollow. "It wasn't just one. Every member of my family died that night. My father. My mother. Gareth. Kiera. All dead. I didn't understand why until later. I had to hear it from a stranger's lips spreading gossip in a tavern miles from home."