Page 186 of Vicious Is My Throne

Lyrae rolled her eyes, but that was an actual smile on her face. “Well, I suppose that’s progress over calling me a horse thief. You didn’t think I would stay?”

“I don’t know what I thought.” I admitted, suddenly ashamed of how hard everyone else had been working, while I was giving up so easily.

“I’ll come back tomorrow. Try again.” I owed this world—my people—that, at least. “And I’ll keep trying, until we find something that works.”

“No one would blame you,” Lyrae’s eyes gleamed. “If you put all of this behind you.”

“Hey,” one of the soldiers squinted behind us. “What’s that?”

A haze of stars hung in the air above where I’d crouched, so faint only the Face soldier’s sharp eyes had seen them, lost in the harsh rays of sun cutting across the blighted wastes.

“A trick of the light,” I muttered, because what did stars matter when the world was dead?

The ground rumbled beneath our feet, the gravel vibrating like an avalanche was hurtling towards us. A sob caught in my throat as those vibrations traveled through the soles of my feet, up my legs, sending more ripples across the still lake of cold power at my center.

Not a stone skimming over the surface.

But some mighty leviathan rising.

“Holy gods. Look at that.”

The entire side of the hill shook, rock and gravel tumbling as pines shot out of the earth like spears. Crack, crack, crack.

Then all around us small, delicate plants unfurled from the barren ground. Ferns and flowers, tiny plants I would have called weeds just months ago…I wanted to scoop them up and plant them in fancy window boxes they were so beautifully green.

So wonderfully alive.

The stone in my pocket, pressed against my hip burned, sent pulses of pure power down along that black lightning strike.

Like I was…a conduit.

I dropped to my knees and plunged both hands into the ground, working my fingers between sharp rock and tumbled sand.

That leviathan kept spearing toward the surface and I braced myself, every muscle tensed for that inevitable collision. Magic—exploding stars and darkness and the frozen cold between—roared through me, down my arms, and into the ground.

Take the magic back, I thought, barely about to breathe beneath the onslaught. Everything that is yours and always has been. We had no right to thieve your power away. Take this magic and heal yourself.

Rivers of power flowed through me, cold and warm, ancient and brand new. I was nothing but a channel, funneling the magic back into the earth where the magic had been harvested from.

My blood turned to steam in my veins, coating my mouth, but I didn’t break the circuit. I wanted every last drop of stolen power ripped out of me.

I didn’t know how long I remained like that.

Time ceased to have meaning. There was only the magic and the earth and the keystone and me.

A constant roaring loop of rebirth, ice and fire flooding through my veins. Pain and joy and utter ecstasy, my heart pounding so hard I wondered if this might kill me.

But I did not break the connection.

The rotten air came alive; blight-blackened stone warmed with hints of green beneath the shade of a new pine forest. Rocks no longer cut into my knees, but soft, loose soil cushioned them, like the ground around my wrists.

Then the dry, desiccated soil between my fingers became rich, dark loam.

Hands tugged at me, harder and harder, then disappeared.

Voices muttered from somewhere far away.

Turned to panicked shouts.

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