Page 88 of Kept

I saw Jordan in a library, a blush in his cheeks as he looked at Varick across a table.

The past flowed around me, the scenes of my life tumbling as quickly as I did. Jordan stood in another library and touched a ribbon that dangled from a book.

“Those who read closely enough know the sword of the Kings of Eldenvalla didn’t always stay in its scabbard.”

I saw Rhys smiling before the fire in the Great Hall at Aberwas.

For a moment, he tumbled beside me, the wind whipping his hair.

“We knew you were special.”

I fell. And I saw Rolund weeping over a tiny bundle. Elissa stood dressed in black at his side.

I saw night-blooming roses. The obsidian walls of the Sanctum. Laurent’s blood splashing into a golden bowl.

YOU ARE GIVEN, Lega said, her golden eyes glowing above the black glyphs shimmering on her cheeks.

“This isn’t the end!” Queen Vara cried. “Speak it into being, my king. Use your gift.”

Avenor shook his head. He looked at me across the dusty floor of the hall of statues in Vai Seren, his blue eyes the same shade as my own. “I give the last of it to you.”

I stopped, my gasp echoing in my ears.

Blackness.

It was everywhere and nowhere. I hung suspended above it, my body parallel to nothing. Not the ground. There was no ground in this place. There was nothing at all in the Shade.

As soon as I thought it, I felt him.

Midian.

He was part of the nothingness. Formless and ancient. Jealous and full of hate that had no bottom. There was power in it, just as there was power in blood.

Blood and life and death. Three in one and one in three.

He was everywhere and nowhere, and he was more dangerous because of it. I couldn’t see him. There was nothing to see in the Shade.

But I could make him reveal himself.

I could make.

Light.

It flooded my vision. The light was everywhere, but I was still nowhere, with no sense of up or down.

Sky.

It stretched overhead, the same hazy blue I’d seen in my dreams my whole life.

No, I thought. Not dreams. I’d made it. And I could make more.

Tall, fragrant grasses. Plants and trees.

They appeared, the Middling forming in the void. The temperature was perfect. White blossoms drifted through the air and disappeared before they touched the ground. I looked at the sky.

Sun.

I made all these things with mere thought. I didn’t have to surrender through sex. Didn’t have to open my veins and abdicate my will as Laurent did when he petitioned the gods. I’d already surrendered, leaving my will at the edge of the Rift.

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