Chapter 8

I listen.

Instead of reaching out, I just listen.

And I hear them—my coven. My mate. Is it them? It's just whispers, faint and mostly unintelligible, but I know their voices. I know the touch of their minds upon mine.

I hear Caspian whisper my name, again and again, full of sorrow and pain. I wish desperately to touch his mind with mine, but I dare not. I must conserve my strength, instinct tells me.

The ward seems to prevent me, and any magic, from getting out, but doesn't seem designed to stop anything from going in—I've examined the magic of the ward now that I can see the threads of how it was constructed. I know, without a shred of doubt, that I do not possess the power to force my way out. So, if there is a way out of here, it'll be another avenue. What, I don't know.

For now, I have to get out of the cuffs.

I've spent a few days resting and healing and examining the cuff's magic more closely. I have some ideas, and now it's time to test them.

Bracing myself mentally for what's to come, I lay down on the cot and turn my focus inward.

My prana is a seething, roiling ocean, depthless and impatient. It needs release.

I take another breath, grit my teeth, and pull a tiny palmful of prana.

Lightning strikes me, shearing down my nerve endings from the brain stem to the arches of my feet, so sudden and so intense I can't even scream, can only howl through clenched, grinding teeth. I release the magic, and the pain ends as abruptly as it hit, leaving me gasping, stunned at the speed and ferocity of the attack.

The scarlet-barbed serpent writhes wildly, eager, hungrily. Daring me to try it again.

So, I scoop up a double handful of prana and then drop it again immediately—the level of pain is the same, as far as I can measure such things—certainly no worse. Which means it doesn't scale the intensity of the pain to the amount of prana.

But still, even though it was only for a split second, the bolt of agony leaves me gasping and whimpering.

I spend a moment gathering my courage for the first real attempt to overpower the mage-cuffs—the first two were exploratory—tests.

Once I've psyched myself up as much as I can, I turn inward once more and pull . I pull every last drop of prana I can handle, and pull and pull, and pull until I feel like I'm going to detonate all over again.

The pain is immediate, intense, and searing. I hear myself screaming, but I do not let go. I pull more and pull more. I'm flooded, glutted on prana. Choked with it.

The agony is all-consuming. I scream until I cannot scream—until my throat is shredded raw…

Until the universe winks out, and blackness consumes me.

Find its weakness, Sparrow. The words are softly growled in my ear—which I do not have. But they would be in my ear, if I did.

It doesn't have one, I murmur.

All things have a weakness .

It hurts.

You must endure. You can. You will.

A cold nose nudges my cheek. Hot canine breath wafts over me. Warm fur tickles. A wet tongue touches the underside of my chin.

Try again, Sparrow.

I come to with a jolt. The Wolf—Caleb.

Find a weakness, he said.

I turn inward yet again and watch the red snake-like thing twist and unfurl, slither and slide. This time, I watch it as I pull prana.

The moment I pull, it strikes—like a constrictor, wrapping around me, somehow expanding to encompass the ocean of my magic, its barbs digging in, coils tightening. The longer I hold the magic, the tighter it constricts.

So, I hold, until I can hold no longer, until the pain smashes me back down into The Dreaming.

I see him. Caspian. The shadow of him, his dark hair and his blacked-out eyes, and his beautiful marble skin. He doesn't see me, doesn't sense me.

Cas?

He doesn't hear me.

Caspian!

He turns away, and I can feel his sadness. I can smell the madness on him. Has he fed? Is he suffering?

I sense Wolf and return to The Waking immediately. But words float up to me from him:

…Brute force, Sparrow. Will never work…must…find…weakness.

I try again. I pull and hold on as the mage-cuff magic wraps around me, tightening, sending lances of agony through me.

This time, I let it tighten. Endure. Pull more. It tightens. I pull more—another coil wraps around me, another lance of pain making my body shake, my teeth ache, my eyes burn. Hold on, hold on. Pull more. Yes—it tightens, as it's supposed to. The more I pull, the tighter it gets.

A memory floats up—a YouTube video of an ex-military dude showing how to escape having your hands zip-tied. The trick, he said, was to tighten them as tight as they could go, and then apply force—the closure will snap.

I wonder if the same principle applies here?

Too late—the latest lance of pain shoots through me, dizziness washes over me, and then I have to let go, and let the darkness wash over me.

It's just a spark. But it's my spark. It knows nothing, but it's mine. I know it. I feel it. It's—familiar. Faint. Vague. New.

It's a life. Or, something that should have been a life. Could have been a life.

It's a life-seed. The spark of awareness that inhabits all sentient beings. But this one…it never got a chance to grow.

I cup it in my non-existent hands. I'm sorry, I whisper to it. I'm so sorry.

A wet nose nudges my shoulder, a tongue drags along my arm. You have to let it go, Sparrow, comes the deep, dark, warm, powerful voice of Wolf. It doesn't belong here. You must let it go.

Where will it go? I ask, hearing unshed tears in my ethereal voice.

Down into Death.

What if it gets lost?

Wolf brushes against me. I will show it the way. I will shepherd it there myself.

Wolf takes the spark from me with his…hands? Mouth? Both and neither at the same time, somehow. He descends with the spark of Life That Should Have Been.

You're almost there, Sparrow, comes the voice from the depths. Try again.

I rise, and I wake.

My body aches—every joint throbs and my skin feels like I've been sunburned on every inch of my body. My head pounds. My mouth is dry, my lips cracked.

I just breathe for a moment. I feel my system trying to heal me, but my ailment is not physical. There is no cut, no broken bone. There's nothing to heal.

I delve inward one more time—it feels personal, now. I don't know if the magic is sentient, semi-aware, or mindless, but I hate it. I want to kill it—to destroy it.

The fury that always seems to be there burns in me, woven in with the rakta in my veins, the prana in my core, the mana in my spirit, and the maya beneath it all.

Fury. Rage. Hate. Guilt. Responsibility.

It's all too much, and I cannot shift the burden to anyone else—it is mine whether I want it or not. My child was murdered. I have suffered.

No more.

I tug on my prana and the agony hits me in full force. Breathe through it. Cling to the prana. Let the noose tighten. Pull more—more pain. Pause, and breathe. Let the pain flow through me. It will not, cannot kill me. It's just pain. I can bear this, too.

Pull.

Pull.

Pull.

With each new draw of prana, the scarlet serpent coils tighter and tighter. I pull more, and more, and the agony builds and builds….

But now, yes. I see the strain on the dark, evil, sadistic magic. It has a limit. It can only tighten so far…

And my magic is all but limitless.

So, I pull.

And I pull.

Little bits at a time, swelling the hoard of glowing white-gold vitality in my hands, brighter and brighter. More and more.

Dizzy with pain, barely able to draw breath, I let my fury fuel my determination. Let my will override my weakness, my desire to give up, to stop, to make the pain end.

The pain will end for good when I destroy this parasite.

I pull and I pull, and the noose tightens and tightens. And now I can see cracks in the magic—the angry glowing crimson of the glamour shimmers a sickly orange in places along its endless length.

Just a little more. Pull a little more. Tighten a little more.

My lungs are crushed, my skull throbbing and pounding fit to crack apart, but I snarl and fight and pull once more, until I know I can hold no more.

My prana pulses like a steam engine about to detonate, more white than gold, hotter than the sun and as destructive in its raw state as a nuclear bomb.

Maybe I should just vent.

No, some instinct whispers. No.

Mom?

I feel the answer—feel the moment clicking into place.

Now.

PUSH.

No glamour is cast, no magic issued. I just…push, outward, with every last atom of my being, as hard as I possibly can. Just PUSH .

The scarlet serpent shatters into a million, billion pieces, shards and shrapnel dissolving into nothingness.

The agony ebbs to a sharp ache in my body. I crack my eyes open and see that the mage-cuffs have crumbled into ash, staining my skin gray.

Exhausted, I pass out.

The Dreaming claims me.