informal formation as we walked through the outer oval of rooms to the ice chamber: Ben and Yvera first, Ben looking strangely at ease and Yvera as tightly wound as a spring, hand on a knife at her waist, claymore on her back; then Kor and me, Kor looking as bright-eyed as if we were going to a concert put on by his favorite band, and I.…
Well, I just felt glad that Ben hadn’t made me eat fit to bursting at dinner. Although he’d handed me a roll as we passed through the mess and asked me to eat it. I complied, even though it churned unpleasantly in my stomach.
Though there were arches at the three lower cardinal points of the Rim, giving easy access to most of the outer oval ring of chambers, there wasn’t an arch at the northern end. Instead, the oval ended as the walls came together in a sharp point. With the southern end of the hold curving much more broadly, the whole shape of the hold was more of a tear drop rather than a perfect oval. Or perhaps a leaf, I realized.
Since the ice chamber was at the north point, with no arch leading into it from the Rim, we didn’t even bother with the Rim and instead followed the outer path through the chambers, as we had the first time. Through the bedrooms, the mess, the bathrooms, the laundry, and the workrooms.
Finally, we came to the doors to the ice chamber, which were the only ones, other than the freezer room, that had closed themselves again after I’d opened them the first time. The white trees on them glowed far more brightly than before, almost too bright for me to look at.
It was time. I could feel that in my bones, even though I couldn’t feel the moons as the others could. Odd, that. Moontouched and all, you would think I would have a stronger connection to the moons than the drakón, but no matter how I strained, I couldn’t locate them, couldn’t feel anything from them like they seemed to. If the moons were the source of this energy fizzling inside me, I would have felt them by now. But the energy seemed to come to me from everywhere and nowhere at once. It simply built and built.…
Maybe it was this place, this hold. Maybe it was this night, which smelled so strongly of destiny by now that even my human nose caught whiffs of it. It was cold, sharp, electric. Thrilling and terrifying at the same time, two sides of the same coin. I thought about the choice before me. About what I wanted. What I needed.
And about reaching for it.
We stopped in the antechamber, standing in a rough half-circle in front of the doors.
“Ben.…” Yvera said, unable to help one last plea. And it was a plea this time—so uncharacteristically vulnerable that I looked away out of politeness.
And guilt. Was I doing the right thing by asking Ben to come with me? If it was a trap, as Yvera was convinced it was, was that duty…or selfishness?
But I knew even before Ben spoke that there was nothing any of us could say or do to dissuade him.
“No, Yv,” Ben said, but his voice was gentle this time. He pulled her into a tight hug. As I watched out of the corner of my eye, I swallowed painfully at how much easier the hugging logistics were between them. Yvera was so much more his equal—physically and otherwise—than me. Who was I to even hope, let alone reach.…
But Ben let go quickly, with a calm smile, clasping her arm like a comrade or a brother. “I’ll be fine. You’ll see. Besides, you’ll be right outside, ready in case we need you.”
“If we can even get in,” Yvera said darkly.
“That’s where I come in, dear rightwing,” Kor said. “Speaking of which, come here for a moment, Ben.”
While Kor placed his hands on Ben’s shoulders and a blue haze shimmered over him, Yvera sent me another of her threat-glares behind his back. I was getting tired of them. If I were the cunning, ingratiating assassin she thought me to be, I’d have gotten the job done by now.
Some of my exasperation must have showed because her glare shifted for a moment to some other expression I didn’t catch before she looked away.
“Your turn, Sarah,” Kor said, letting go of Ben and coming to me.
“What are you doing?” I asked warily.
He appeared amused rather than offended. “Giving you a ward of protection, just as I did for Ben. It won’t make you impervious, but it might save you from a surprise blow or an explosion.”
“And that’s it?” I said with a raised eyebrow.
“On my honor as a leftwing,” Kor said seriously.
I looked at Ben, but he just shrugged. It’s up to you. But his eyes glinted with worry.
The worry decided me. I looked back at Kor and nodded, trusting that if Kor tried anything else, Ben would know. He placed his hands on my shoulders, just as he had on Ben’s, and closed his eyes. Just as with Ben, a blue haze fell around me, tinting everything when it passed over my eyes. I felt nothing at first, not until the blue faded. Then a weight settled over me, like a heavy blanket, except coating each surface to perfection. Feeling as if I’d just been shrink-wrapped, I took several deep, cautious breaths and wiggled my fingers.
“Everything functioning?” Kor asked with a smirk.
“Fortunately for you, yes,” I said with a glare.
Oh, Kor said silently, I would love to explore what you meant by that veiled threat, but—
“Ready, Sarah?” Ben asked, unaware he was interrupting.
“Ready,” I said, passing Kor without a glance to come to his side.
Ben put a hand on my shoulder, clenched lightly in comfort, and gestured to the doors with his other hand. “After you.”
I took a deep breath and looked down at my palms for one moment. As if summoned, the energy in my body surged there. My skin shimmered again, and my arms from the mid-forearm down to my fingertips began glowing white. My vision seemed to somehow sharpen, the colors becoming more vivid, everything seeming so much more. Yvera inhaled, but I didn’t lose focus to glance at her expression.
This is me, I realized. This is mine, like this hold, like those lights.
Speaking of which, the lights began streaming into the antechamber through every path that avoided Kor, Yvera, and Ben. Yvera put her hand on her claymore, but Kor held out a hand to hold her back, murmuring something. I would have waited for the lights to finish entering the antechamber, but they sent me wordless encouragement to go ahead.
With that extra boost of confidence that this was meant to be, I took another deep breath and raised my hands to the brilliantly glowing doors and placed them on either side of the nearly seamless crack.
The doors swung slowly and soundlessly outward. Ben put a hand on my shoulder again as we waited for them to still. Then, with Ben’s touch at my back letting me know he was right there, I walked inside.
The moonlight overhead filtered through the ice rose in the ceiling, setting each line in icy white fire—so beautiful that my breath caught, and I could stare at nothing else until Ben and I reached the center of the chamber.
Meanwhile, the lights had streamed in behind us and begun arranging themselves in random patterns along the icy walls, gritty floor, columns, and air. Once in position, they waited, like audience members politely waiting for the rest of their fellows to take their places.
Once the last lights had floated through the doors and were in position, the doors I had opened slowly closed. Kor and Yvera stood in the center of the antechamber, so we could see them until the very end. Yvera seemed fit to burst with the strain of holding herself back, and Kor had a restraining hand on her arm. When the doors sealed shut, Ben let out a breath and relaxed a margin.
Then the only other light source—the moonlight through the ice above—went out. Plunging us into darkness.
Just as suddenly, we were standing among the stars.
Ben gasped. I did too, gaping at the exquisite beauty around us. It was better than the most immersive planetarium show. The darkness was astonishingly complete, with no ambient light from the stars reaching any of the walls or the floor that should still be there; even though I could still feel the grit under my tennis shoes, I could hardly see my hand when I raised it. We were surrounded by the stars, which speckled even the floor we could no longer see. The small lights had even dimmed themselves to varying degrees to represent distance or size or altered their pure white to different spectrums of blue or red, green or yellow.
Our hands found each other’s in the darkness. Ben gripped mine tightly.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed.
“It is,” he agreed in awe.
But stay close, he whispered in my mind. He shifted closer to me, turning so that we were almost back to back.
I felt a flicker of sadness that he couldn’t appreciate this marvelous moment. But then, his job here wasn’t to marvel, or even to receive the message that was coming. It was to make sure we both walked out of here alive.
Just when I was wondering what came next, a few stars broke from their positions to float toward us. Ben gripped my hand tighter, but I couldn’t see his expression well enough in the dark to know what he felt otherwise.
The stars resettled in a broad circle around us, growing larger and more distinct as they did so.
Ben inhaled sharply.
“What?”
“Kaldrir,” Ben said, staring at one of the two stars in front of him. This one was larger than most, brilliant, and from what I could tell, golden.
A flicker of understanding, a rise of excitement. “Your sun?”
“The sun of Ythra,” Ben said, already turning. “And that—”
He pointed at the other star that had been in front of him. “That is Kyalid.”
He kept turning, and since he never let go of my hand, moved me with him. “And Ashga, Olmen. Winalken. Yedrik, the star we came from.… All the six are here. But.…”
He stopped both of us in front of the lone star I had been facing in the beginning. Smallish, but bright and blue.…
My heart thudded with excitement at his long pause. “My sun? Sekinek?”
Though I still couldn’t see the floor, ceiling, or walls, I could see Ben well enough now in the light of all these stars that I saw him look down at me and shake his head.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” he said regretfully. “It’s…this sun. The sun that is near us now.”
I turned, and Ben turned with me to not break our grip. “But…but seven. That makes seven stars, seven worlds, right? Earth has to be the seventh, doesn’t it?”
Ben said, “That’s what I always thought, but.…”
He pulled us back to the solitary star.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
I hated myself for it, but tears stung my eyes. Perhaps the long day had finally become too much. After I had been on the cusp of understanding something in this new universe, the rug had been yanked from under me again.
The breathtaking beauty all around me faded. All I wanted in that moment was the simple. All I wanted was to go home.
After a few moments, Ben said slowly, “The Moontouched.… They only went to Earth because they had to. They were supposed to receive their own world.”
And so they shall, son of Flame.
The voice was not a voice. Not in a sense that I heard it with my ears—of that, I was certain. It was like the mental voices that the drakón used, and yet as different from those as speech was to their mental voices.
It was.
It was everywhere in the darkness and nowhere at once. The words were soft in volume and mild in tone, but the power and…absoluteness of them pierced my heart like an arrow and vibrated my soul like a plucked string. I put my free hand to my chest with a gasp, and for one second, Ben gripped my hand like a vise. I looked up at him in shock, asking for answers.
He just stared down at me, expression lost in the darkness. And the voice spoke again.
Even softer, even milder.
This time, I recognized the femininity.
Peace, Sarah Lind, My daughter, My precious one—the Heir I have chosen.
I gasped again, staring sightlessly into the darkness. I didn’t need Ben to tell me who was speaking anymore. I knew.
The Tree of Ice.
“Chosen?” I said.
Indeed. But fear not. You must choose as you are chosen, and that crossroads for you is not yet.
I swallowed. “When?”
Soon. When you return to Earth and appear before Me, I will offer My gift to you, and then you must choose whether to take it—or let it pass to another.
Over the next several moments, I took slow, deep breaths and considered my next question carefully. Finally, I said, “How am I to come to you?”
Well spoken. For that is what I brought you here this night to tell you.
Ben inhaled sharply and gripped my hand more tightly for a moment. All the suns around us floated closer, grew larger, brighter, more vibrant.
As the son of Flame said, each of these suns represents each of the Seven Realms—the Seventh being the Realm that I and My Sister have given to the Moontouched, beginning with you, Sarah. Whatever you choose, My daughter, this may always be your home and your refuge. For you will have need of both in the days to come.
Another clench from Ben’s hand.
Though I didn’t miss the ominous meaning in Her words, I was oddly calm. The peace the Tree had offered at the beginning was settling into my heart like snow blanketing the ground, bringing a soft hush.
“Thank you,” I said.
In reply, I felt a cool brush on my cheek and a tender, icy kiss pressed to my forehead. Far from being spooked by the ghostlike touch, I turned my face upward and closed my eyes. In my mind’s eye, I could almost see Her standing before me, and the moment I did, I wanted to for real. Desperately.
She spoke again, and this time Her voice—though still not a voice, and still coming from nowhere and everywhere—sounded closer, more immediate somehow. I knew it wasn’t just my imagination from how Ben started in surprise.
Behold the Seven worlds of the Seven Realms.
Each sun changed, turning from uniform orbs of light to colorful spheres of greens, blues, whites, and browns. Their sizes still varied, as did their continents, cloud formations, and ratios of blue, green, and brown. Each was beautiful in its own way, each teeming with life and promise. I felt with a suddenness and intensity that shocked me how precious each world was, how dear the life each held.
Ben looked behind us, at the sun he had first stared at before, which was now one of the largest of the planets around us, covered with vast swaths of browns.
Home, Ben whispered. With such raw longing, I wasn’t sure he had meant to speak to me or if I had somehow heard a private thought.
Ythra. Birthplace of the dragons, Realm of the Sunfilled. Ben’s home, which he had seen too little of in this past year. The year he had spent searching for me.
My heart clenched.
Before the Moontouched left the Six Realms for Earth, on each world they made a gate. Not a sungate, made of flame and light, but a moongate, made of ice and night.
I inhaled. “Like the one we found on.…”
I looked up at Ben.
“Ykran,” he supplied quietly, pointing at the world directly to our left, a smallish one covered with vast stretches of uninterrupted green.
Indeed. And in finding and activating, it is now unlocked to you forever.
“You mean we can go back through it?” I asked eagerly. “How? The gate seemed…dead…before.”
The gate you entered is meant to receive, not to depart.
“Oh!” Ben exclaimed, as if the Ice Tree’s answer not only made perfect sense, but he should have thought of it himself. When I glanced at him questioningly, he shook his head and sent silently, I’ll explain later.
For the Tree continued. The sister gate to the one you discovered on Ykran is now ready and waiting for you in the chamber you call the Rim. I concealed it until this moment so that you would not pass through before I could speak with you, but you may now use it at will.
“How did you know I called it that?” I asked, a bit of unease stirring the snow settled over my heart.
The voice held a trace of amusement and tenderness. I know all your thoughts, daughter. As I know all the thoughts of My children, wherever they may be. It is you who have not yet learned to know Mine.
Well, that was…something to think about. Or not.
And so I must speak with you in moments like these, when both our powers are at their highest and our connection the strongest. That time now grows short, and I have not yet answered what you have asked of Me.
“Sorry!” I said. “I’ll be quiet and listen now, I promise.”
Then hear Me.
The worlds turned in a slow circle around us. In contrast, my mind had not only resettled, it felt crystalline, with each word the Tree then spoke carving themselves into the bedrock of my soul. I doubted I would forget a single one.
You have found one of the seven gates with a sister in this hold. Each of the five other realms under Flame’s dominion holds another, with the last remaining on Earth under Mine.
A light drifted over to the space between us and the circle of planets, positioning itself lower to not block our view of the other worlds. The light expanded and changed to form a world so blessedly familiar that I gasped and reached out.
Earth, slowly turning on its axis, just in front of me. There was Asia, Europe, and Africa, the Atlantic…North America. My fingertips could nearly brush it: the globe, the continent, home. And yet, it was still just out of reach.
Find and unlock the five other gates under Flame, and My Sister and I will unlock the last here, in this hold, for you, that you may return to Earth and come, with the son of Flame and the eleven others of your kin, to Me.
At Her last words, a white dot of light shone brilliantly in the middle of Greenland. I started at first, then realized that only made sense. A Tree of Ice, in the middle of one of the most barren, icy landscapes on Earth.
I nodded, memorizing the spot as best as I could. “Got it.”
Finding all five gates would probably be harder than I could even guess—not to mention convincing my entire family to go for an adventure in Greenland with me—but at least I finally understood. We finally had a goal. I finally knew my way home. My heart lifted.
Good. Then hear My warning: by the reckoning of Kaldrir, you have ten days.
“What?!” Ben spluttered, gripping my hand like a vise. He addressed the Tree for the first time. “Lady of Ice, with all due respect, You have given us the task of a lifetime, and—”
And it must be completed in ten days, the Tree said with the weight of a glacier. Or your people will suffer a blow from which their recovery may be nigh impossible.
Ben froze, breath catching. I was losing feeling in my fingers, but I didn’t protest. My heart was clenching, the peace once again disturbed.
Shadows, the King had said. Did he know what was coming?
Did Ben?
Have faith, son of Flame, the Tree said in a kinder tone. We would not ask this of you both if it were not possible. We will provide the way.
“But…so soon?” Ben choked out.
The Tree’s voice became the softest yet, like the feather touch of a snowflake on the cheek. We cannot hold it back any longer.
I felt a different chill than the one brought by the Tree of Ice. “It?”
The Devourer comes.
A tremor went through me, a terrible feeling of premonition. The turning worlds stopped where they were in the circle, with the one Ben had called home in front of us.
It comes for all Our children on all Our worlds, but first to Ythra, in ten of her days.
As the Tree spoke, a shadow blossomed like a sickly plant somewhere near the equator. And grew, its tendrils snaking over the entire world. Ben choked out a cry and rushed a couple of steps forward, straining uselessly with his free hand toward the globe.
To drive it back, the King of Flame must have the aid of My Heir, after My Heir has been vested with My power.
A golden globe of light surged outward from the original spot of shadow, but the darkness swiftly swallowed it up.
Or Ythra, then all the worlds—even Earth…
The shadow now blossomed over the white light in Greenland, overcoming it to spread its darkness over my world.
I couldn’t help it. Even knowing this was just a vision, I reached out with my free hand as I choked, “No!”
I grasped the weightless globe loosely in my hand, ignoring the electric shocks going down my arm, but though the glowing power I summoned to my hands drove the darkness back from the areas I touched, the darkness resurged only a moment later and overcame the entire world.
…will fall.