He was right. After months of waiting, of having our hands tied behind our backs, we might have something. If that was Sain, then Sain wouldn’t be at the cathedral…
Everyone might tell me I was overreacting, but I couldn’t trust him. I doubted I ever would, not while he was telling everyone I was an undead, bleeding puss nugget.
Or whatever he was doing.
Ilyan’s lips twitched at that, his hand moving quickly as he took a step toward me and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me into him.
You’re not an undead, bleeding puss nugget.
And you’re not the king of France.
“Well, not now. Many years ago, however…” he said with a smile, the emotion fading quickly into a pained grimace as the deep stress of what we were really facing plowed into us.
I cringed against it, leaning against him.
“We need to go,” I gasped, not only because of the urgency of the task before us, but because of the painful wave of magic that had moved through me. The heavy heat that spelled danger.
With one quick sweep, I felt them. At least twenty of Edmund’s men were one street over, looking for us.
I was sure it was no coincidence they had chosen this exact spot at this exact time to attempt to stage an ambush.
Pulling away from Ilyan enough to see him, I felt his body tense beside mine, tension rippling through me as it did him. I could feel his need to attack them, to catch them, to try to glean some information out of them.
If only there was time…
My chest heaved as I fell back into him, apprehension winding through my spine in a need to leave.
We had one chance to catch Sain. We couldn’t waste it.
“There’s no time. We have to go,” I reminded him.
He nodded then wrapped his arms around me as his magic swelled, ready to pull us back into the void. With a gentle kiss against the skin of my forehead, my magic reached to meet his. The colored specks of light were triggered in the darkness that surrounded us as the army of Trpaslíks rounded the corner and Ilyan’s magic pulled us into the void, away from the striking ribbons of colorful magic that would have brought us death.
Everything tightened as we were pulled into the usual suction cup of pressure the void held, my heart tensing in preparation for the pain, for the black.
Except, everything was different this time.
The tense pressure I was used to was gone, my body calm in a space that felt more open, more alive. More than that, it didn’t end. A stutter that usually took seconds stretched on, my anxiety and confusion growing as I tried to understand what was happening.
Forcing my eyes open, I expected the black of nothing, expected to be trapped and lost.
And alone.
But I wasn’t alone, and I wasn’t in the dark.
Ilyan still held me against him, his hair flowing around him, eyes closed, and face at peace. He was beautiful, frozen as he was in the space between time.
I could have gazed at him until we returned to Prague, let him be my anchor to the disorientation that was still plaguing me. Nonetheless, something else pulled my attention and slammed into my chest like a ton of bricks.
It was my magic.
It was ribbons of smoke and color that stretched away from me like cloth and air. It felt the same as every time I spread the magic from me, as every time I used the sight.
But this time, I could see it.
I could see the tendrils of my ability. I could see ribbons of sight that played the past and future like a movie reel.
I watched them move away from me in awe, a heavy vise squeezing my body and threatening to collapse me. My legs lost all feeling as Ilyan held me against him, his body frozen in this odd, suspended space.
As my head spun, the ribbons of sight shifted, their movements speeding up into a blur I couldn’t focus through. Heart pounding, I clung to Ilyan, gasping for breath, watching the vivid pattern of light and dark. Everything spun; everything moved so quickly I wasn’t sure which way was up or down or what was happening … until it stopped.
The movement ceased as though someone had pressed stop, leaving Ilyan and I hovering amongst lines of color so vibrant and brilliant I was sure I had never seen anything so beautiful before, not even in the world I had been raised in.
Staring at them, mouth agape, I watched the strings of never-ending colors stretch through the tunnel in tessellating motions of sound. I watched sight, watched life, watched sound that stretched beyond us, before us, and behind us. It was like we were trapped in them, like we were moving through them.
Staring at them, my head spun more, the heavy weight of what I now recognized as sight pressing against my chest.
A sight.
Could this be sight? I wondered. A sight inside of a stutter? The thought was as ridiculous and far-fetched as a bad sci-fi movie, but I couldn’t shake it.