Chapter 16: The Queen's Shadow
Daltigoth had ceased to be stone. Tower by tower, the city throbbed like a heart turned inside out. Lira sensed it before she saw it: magic had skinned the world and slipped inside. The walls rippled, gravity coiled and uncoiled. One spire hung sideways, another folded into itself like a pressed flower. The sky above spilled and folded, bruising into colors that had no name.
"She's drawn everything into herself," Thalen said, voice flat as the blade he never drew. He had not blinked since dusk, eyes fixed on the horizon's unsayable seam. "The world's stitching is coming undone."
They had dug their last camp in the last curve of the last hill, wind clawing at their backs. Shadows moved across the grass like remembered voices, all in keening whispers. Kerris knelt apart, her lips forming words no ear could reach. Lira tasted the same chill at the nape of her neck: a pressure, a gaze that waited behind her eyes and did not blink.
That night the dreams returned.
—
She stood on familiar stone and yet the stone did not know her. The bone staff was hers—no, it was the world's, a bone that tasted of ashes. Below her, a continent burned.
The gods were behind her, not a choir but a single unsparing breath. Their orders carved the sky, folding and folding like a cruel origami. Lira felt the edges of their will score her skin, but she turned her back on the light, and on the fire, and on the name they pressed against her tongue.
to the taste of ash on her tongue and the whisper of wind like lost voices. She lay still, the chill of the floor biting her palms, and counted the small, certain noises: the rattle of the hearth, the thud of a stoat on the roof, a far bell tolling midnight.
Outside, the sky was bruised and restless. She climbed to the window, each board creaking a secret of its own, and pushed the shutters apart. Storm wind clawed her hair back from her forehead, bitter and salt-tanged, and the icy surf beyond the cliff roared like something wounded and ancient.
Lira dug her feet into the bare floor, planted every drop of remembered fire into the boards, and let the hearth flare. Fingers of orange light shot between the chimney stones, banishing the chill. One shadow danced and stretched behind her like a lost promise.
"Keep it small," she whispered, though the room was empty, though the world was empty except for the storm and the ache of possibilities she could not name.
Outside, the sea tossed white knives at the cliff, at the sky, at the stories yet to be told.