12. Gwyneira

12

GWYNEIRA

“ H ello?”

Nothing.

“Roan? Ozias? Is anyone there?”

Silence.

In the dark, I twisted and turned, lost in a place where there was no trace of up or down. I couldn’t feel my body. See my own hands before my face. There was just… me.

And the darkness.

“Please! Can anyone hear me?” My terrified voice barely pierced the emptiness. “Casimir? Byron? Any?—”

Low laughter rolled through the night, cruel and familiar. “I see you, Gwyneira.”

Oh gods.

Panic gripped me, and before I could think to question, I was already fleeing into the dark. I couldn’t let her catch me. Not if I wanted to survive.

But… where was the way out?

The darkness grew thicker. Colder. Emptier in a way that felt like nothing of substance or form could survive. I’d made a mistake coming here.

White as snow…

I slowed at the faint traces of a woman’s voice drifting through the darkness.

Red as blood…

I twisted and turned, searching. I… I knew that voice. I’d heard it on the edge of a dream.

Dark as ebony…

“Hello?” I called, but the emptiness swallowed my cry.

Yet a ghost of sensation brushed me, like a hand against my cheek. Hold on, my precious one. They’re coming.

Far in the distance, a thread of glittering power flickered to life in glistening white and gold, shining like dust made from the stars and the sun. It wound its way back and forth through the night, searching, battling the darkness to find me.

I knew that light.

“Byron! Casimir!” I strained toward it. “I’m here! I’m?—”

The dark was too great. The gold light fell back, unable to continue. But still the silver-white glitter of stars continued on, struggling with all its might.

Byron. But he was fading.

“No, please!” With everything I had, I summoned up my own magic. Whatever I could find in this empty, awful place where light was an abomination and my stepmother’s darkness still reigned.

He was going. Draining away.

My power touched his.

A shock jolted through me, and I could feel the same reverberate through him. Like threads of light, our energy wove together, blending and twisting into each other until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

Until they became the rope that could pull me from this horrible night.

But it wasn’t just our power that joined. Images suddenly hit me, as if I’d plunged into strange, frigid water that engulfed me in sight and sound.

Marble floors glittered beneath me, and all around, carved columns rose up to a distant domed ceiling that shone with sunlight and inlaid jewels. Robed figures stood in a circle, surrounding me, each of them several feet taller than I was and broader besides. The smell of incense hung heavy on the air. I was cold beneath my velvet robes. Nervous too, but resolute. This was all I’d ever wanted, and excitement fluttered like trapped birds in my chest at the fact this day had finally come.

Not all the Order had thought I should be admitted into their ranks. I wasn’t like them, and many had openly questioned whether someone like me could handle the burden of this calling.

But every single day, I swore to myself that I would prove them wrong. I would be worthy of this. I would never falter.

Not now, not ever.

The robed figure ahead of me stepped forward. “Do you swear your life to the Order of Berinlian, forsaking all others for the pursuit of higher knowledge? Do you swear to have no other love but that of learning, abstaining from all attachments and keeping your mind, body, and soul dedicated solely to the holy communion of magical wisdom?”

I held my face still, reflecting the solemnity of the occasion no matter how much I wanted to grin with pride. “I do.”

I gasped, the rush of images vanishing into light as I opened my eyes and saw blue sky above me again.

And Byron.

I stared at him. That… that was him. His past. I could feel it as viscerally as if I’d stood there myself.

His fear. His pride. His desperate need to prove everyone wrong. To be every inch the scholar so many swore he couldn’t be.

And he had. Gods, did he know how truly he had? He was amazing, and I ached for how much I hoped he knew that.

Just as much as I ached for how I knew now why he and I would never be together.