Chapter 38

Up and up and up we ran through the palace of jade until finally we spilled out into a wide, unadorned chamber with a gaping chasm at its rear.

The screams in my head were unbearable now, the agony of what sat in that pit making it hard for me to think at all.

I fell to my knees beneath the weight of it then began to crawl.

I dragged myself on, reaching for the edge of the precipice and looking down at the horror beneath me.

A star. Its being so bright and essence so pure that I could hardly bear to look upon it. Fallen and lashed in shadows, screaming for release.

Footsteps thundered up the stairs, bellowed commands ringing off the walls as Lionel's Bonded Men closed in on us and time fluttered by too fast.

"I've forged a crack in the wards. We have seconds to take advantage of it," Darius told me. "Do what you must and do it now."

I stared down at the star, tears burning the backs of my eyes and then falling, falling, falling and breaking against its luminescent body.

It shuddered as it felt them, reaching for me, pleading in my mind.

"Release me!"it cried through the confines of my skull. But I couldn't. I didn't know how, and we had no time.

My lips parted on the only thing I could offer it. A song. One bound in the power of all I was and destined to cast a Fae into a hundred-year sleep. One I had never risked uttering before for fear of how many I might send to their death through slumber.

"Block your ears," I told Darius, unable to look at him, but feeling the magic stirring the air as he cast a silencing bubble around himself and the girl.

My lips parted. And I sang.

The lullaby which rolled from my throat was so potently beautiful that I was unable to do anything more than release it, tears spilling down my cheeks with every magic-imbued note. It fell from me like drops of purest power and as it spilled over the trapped star, its screams finally fell away.

"Sleep," I urged through my tears, drawing the stardust from my pocket and without taking my eyes from the now slumbering star, I threw it over the three of us, and we were whisked away into the night.