I landed on my stomach on a patch of grass.
When I lifted my head, a blast of pain shot through both my jaw and the back of my skull. I saw only a massive archway among a few crumbling ruins.
The citadel, the Hall of Miracles, Halvor, the monster—my sister—they were all gone.
Then whatever had pulled me through the doorway—the gateway to Visimperum—yanked again, dragging me across the grass, away from the archway. Away from my only way back home.
I grabbed at the grass, digging my nails into the soil beneath, and bucked my body, trying to free myself. An angry hiss preceded claws slicing into the tender skin of my ankle, threatening to hobble me permanently if they cut much deeper. With a sudden jerk, the thing flipped me over, so that I was face-to-face with a rakasa, smaller than the one in the citadel, but no less terrifying. It had a long, flat body with six legs, each ending in four claws, one of which was clamped around my leg. Its short neck supported a head that reminded me of a boar’s, with jagged fangs hanging outside its black lips. Drool a very concerning shade of greenish gray gathered on the tips of the fangs.
I’d only ever been able to sneak the one book on rakasa into my room, but I’d read it enough that dozens of competing facts about the different kinds of monsters rushed through my mind at once, flooding my body with hot panic. Predators, all of them, some pack hunters, some solitary. Some poisonous, some devouring their prey … others taking their time, inflicting maximum pain upon their victims … I racked my memory for an image matching the beast that continued to drag me toward the copse of trees at the other end of the clearing from where the gateway stood. Nothing came—my mind couldn’t seem to process that I was seeing a creature I’d only read about until now.
A shriek from above us sent a tremor through the monster. Its short legs redoubled in speed, rushing for the cover of the trees, but not before a massive creature that I instantly recognized as a gryphon—with the head and wings of an eagle and the body and tail of a lion—dove out of the sky to land directly in front of it, forcing the monster to skid to a halt with a yowl of frustration. I caught a glimpse of a man with glowing blue eyes vaulting from the gryphon’s back, one hand gripping a sword and the other lifted, a ball of blue fire hovering above his open palm.
The monster hissed, recoiling away from the man—the Paladin—trying to drag me back the way it had come. But more shrieks sounded above; I had to blink multiple times to convince myself that I was seeing truly. An entire battalion of gryphons soared toward us, the first three also tucking their wings and diving for the earth, landing in a circle around the monster, trapping it. It would have been completely overwhelming if it weren’t such a relief.
“Help! Help me!”
The beast scuttled backward, its jaws clacking. A horrible growl whined from its throat, as its claws tightened yet again around my leg, yanking me below its belly. For the first time, I noticed the smell of the thing—a mix between putrid meat and decaying flesh.
One of the Paladin shouted something in their language. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed.
Another shout and then a cacophony of shrieks blasted through the air. The monster bellowed; its claws spasmed against my leg, then abruptly released me. It began to drop, its belly pressing me into the ground, threatening to crush me. A loud crack sent a shudder through me and dimly I realized it was my arm bone snapping—
And then suddenly the creature was gone, lifted straight up off the earth. I scrambled away as quickly as possible, using my one good arm and dragging my destroyed foot behind me toward the first pair of legs closest to me.
Once I was sure I was no longer underneath the monster, I flipped over to see three gryphons dragging it through the sky, away from us, the monster’s head hanging limply, a tendril of brackish smoke rising from a hole in its chest.
I let my eyes close and my head dropped back on the earth, all of my adrenaline draining away with the removal of the threat, leaving me trembling and overcome with pain. My jaw and arm were definitely both broken, and I didn’t even dare look at my leg. I’d never experienced anything like the agony that swelled up from where the monster had most likely severed muscle, tendon—even bone.
The group of Paladin—a group of Paladin, standing right there, more people surrounding me than I’d met in my entire life—murmured quietly above me in the unfamiliar but melodic language of theirs, until a male voice cut over the rest.
“Zuhra,” he said in my language, his voice hesitant and thick. “Is it truly you?”
My eyes flew open to see a man I would have recognized anywhere, even after fifteen years apart, on his knees next to me, glowing blue eyes glistening with the sheen of withheld tears.
It was Adelric—it was my father.
I’d never felt more at peace than in those moments of pure darkness, in the minutes when I nearly lost myself. But something inside, something stronger than peace, or rest, or release, whispered to me, urged me to turn back, to fight back. It was a voice I knew, a voice that had called me from the darkness of my own mind so many, many times.
Come back to me, Nara. Come back …
Over and over she’d asked and I’d tried, oh, how I’d tried. And no matter how many times I’d failed, she’d stayed, she’d whispered, she’d urged.
Come back to me, Nara. Come back to me …
And so I turned from the velvet night and fought toward the small, distant light and all that accompanied it: pain, exhaustion, fear … guilt. I couldn’t remember why, only that it was—that all those things awaited me if I forced my way back out of the dark. And still, I climbed, I grasped, I reached.
Come back to me, Nara. Come back …
To Zuhra, to my sister, to my home. It was she who called me, who had always been there, calling for me. It was she who I stretched out to reach. And, finally, at long last, I surged up, up, up, back into myself, and woke with a gasp.
My eyes opened to a broken, empty room, and my body crumpled with the memory of it all.
“Inara! Oh, praise the Great God!”
I turned to see Sami kneeling beside me, her wrinkled cheeks glistening with wetness. Tears. Tears for me?
Beside her, Halvor crouched, watching me solemnly. A strange awareness filled the space between us—I could sense his trepidation and relief, almost as if they were my own emotions.
I couldn’t meet his gaze. My eyes dropped as I forced myself to sit up. I cocked my head, waiting for the roar, but there was … nothing. The sound of my own breath, the muffled noise of Sami’s sobbing, the groan of the citadel—as if it knew of the assault it had undergone—and the muted murmur of the wind, exploring this new space through the shattered window.
“She’s gone,” I said.
Sami’s quiet crying cut off with a sharp intake of breath.
“I lost her.”
“We can get her back.” She reached out to pat my hand, but I jerked away. I never jerked away from touch—I felt it, knew it, so rarely—but I had let in a monster … I was a monster … and I didn’t want her comfort.
“I lost her,” I repeated. “I did this.” I gestured to the room, encompassing the whole of my awful deeds.
“You healed me.” Halvor’s whisper drew out a flicker of fire deep in my core—a tiny flare of the thing within me that had woven him back to life. “I should have died.”
I stared at my hands in my lap—my bloodstained, perfectly unmarred hands.
I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do.
I’d done enough … I’d never be able to do enough.
Zuhra was gone.
My skin was whole, my body was healed, but no power in the world could mend the serrated edges of the unseen wound within me, the hole that was so big I didn’t know how I could function with it inside me, how I could ever live with her missing from my life.
How did a body hold all of that inside? How did it contain blood and bone and muscle and power and fear and guilt and a gaping hole wider than the broken window that let the chilled breeze steal in the citadel and brush the wetness on my cheek, like a cruel lover relishing my pain, sending a shiver down my spine?
You did this, the wind whispered as it fingered my hair, as it scraped cold nails down my skin.
I closed my eyes and lifted my chin, accepting its truth, accepting my fault. And wishing I had ignored her voice and remained in the dark.
Perhaps I had gone the wrong way. Perhaps she had been calling to me from within it, not out of it. Perhaps I had lost her far beyond any hope of ever reaching her again, until the darkness came for me once more.
“What do you mean, Master Roskery?” Sami’s voice was an alien thing, her question so far removed from where I wished to be that I winced. “In the citadel, I heard … I thought I heard … What happened in here?”
I felt his hesitation, his concern, as he paused and gathered an attempt at a response.
What, indeed.
“A monster.” I spoke before he could.
“A monster,” Sami repeated slowly.
I pointed at the wound the citadel bore. I’d healed Halvor. I couldn’t heal that.
“She … she touched the door—the gateway,” Halvor began quietly. “It absorbed her power and opened. A rakasa came here and … and something else dragged Zuhra through it.”
Sami made a noise that was part terror and part gut-twisting anguish. “A rakasa? Here? Now? And Zuhra … she’s … she’s…”
“In Visimperum. She must be,” Halvor insisted.
I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t know what rakasa meant or gateway or anything he said other than: I had touched the door. I had done this.
A monster had come, yes, but a monster had already been within the whole time.
“That’s not possible. It’s closed. It was supposed to be closed!” Sami’s voice rose until it was nearly a shout.
The silence after was crushing.
Halvor didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.
“We have to do something. We have to warn them—we have to—”
“How? How can we do anything? We’re trapped here!” For the first time, Halvor’s voice rose too, a sharp bite that cut off Sami’s hysteria.
“I did this.” I forced myself to stand on legs that trembled and threatened to buckle.
“Inara?”
I forced myself to walk across broken glass, tiny pricks of pain cutting and tiny bursts of flame healing. Not gone, then. Little embers of power still flickered through me. Good, good, I thought as I climbed the stairs, come to me, fire. Come back to me, Zuhra.
“What is she doing? What are you doing?”
“Inara, stop! Don’t do this!”
I heard him behind me, I felt his terror coating my tongue—or perhaps it was my own—but I was closer, faster.
“Going to get her,” I said and then, ignoring his shout right behind me, I grabbed the handle.