Page 118 of Frost Like Night
He shakes his head in a long, slow rebuttal. “No.”
“Mather—”
“It’s too soon. My father—and now—” His voice cracks and he scrubs a palm over his forehead. I say nothing, motionless with my hands on his chest.
“I can’t think of any way to save you,” he finally says, all the pain in his life in those few small words.
I lift my hand to his cheek. “Once we get into that chamber, an exit will open—part of the labyrinth’s magic. Run for it as fast as you can—when it opens, it means people can access it from the outside for a short time too. And I don’t want to give Angra a chance to—”
“Meira,no.”
But I keep talking, unable to let myself stop. “—I don’t want to give Angra a chance to get down here. So run, don’t stop running, and I’ll run too.”
“Meira.”
“Ceridwen and Caspar will need you. The world will need you to help pick up the pieces—”
He silences me by laying his lips over mine. I didn’t think there was anything left in me to unravel, but his kiss dissolves my strength.
This moment—this is our last.
So I hold on to it for as long as I can, memorizing the rough edges of his lips and the way he tastes like salt and musk and joy, and the muscles that flex when I glide my fingers along his jaw.
We didn’t have enough time. But the rest of the world will. Jesse and Ceridwen, Caspar and Nikoletta—even Theron, someday. And Mather. Snow above, Mather—he’ll have this someday too. With someone better than me.
With someone who won’t break his heart.
I pull back from him, tears rushing down my cheeks. He looks at me, those jewel-blue eyes so familiar and perfect in the way they feel like home.
He entwines his fingers with mine and smiles. The smile that defined so much of my life, melting me and filling me top to bottom with resilience. That he can smile here, now, chases away my last bits of fear and worry.
He’s lost everything. His parents, and now me, too. And yet he’s here with me, beside me, offering support and a hand to hold.
I turn with him to face the light at the end of the hall. Itpulses and ebbs, gleams bright and fades, an endless kaleidoscope of colors.
If I had to pick a way to die, it would be this—to go out in a rainbow of life and energy. To know that my life was valued by others.
I glance at the solid wall behind us.
To know that I was loved.
One step, then another, Mather and I walk side by side down the jagged stone corridor.
Our steps accelerate the closer we get, until we’re sprinting.
As fast as I can.As fast as I can.This will all be over soon, before Angra can even find the exit that appears, before the battle above has to go on too long.
The hall ends, dumping us into a wide cavern that stretches in rocky sweeps in every direction. A ceiling soars untouchably high above; stalactites drip downward in gruesome teeth. The floor evens out into a solid cliff that ends after a few paces in a wide, fathomless pit.
And in that pit, hanging down from the edge, waits the source of magic.
I saw it once before, in one of the many visions Hannah showed—or whatever it was that showed me. The magic looks just as it did then, a brilliant ball of energy that snaps and sizzles as it hangs by sheer will in the pit.Larger than the palace, larger than all of Jannuari itself, the magic seems to be a living, breathing creature bobbing just beyond the cliff, its fingers of energy snaking out to strike rocks and imbue them with the power that made the conduits so many thousands of years ago.
The product of that magic shines from every corner, rocks in orange, gold, purple, red tones, soft glows in every color. Just like at the entrance, the air hangs heavy and humid, each particle sizzling with magic. Conduits, magic, everywhere, a field of power ripe for harvest.
A field of power that will end soon.
The cliff loops around one side of the pit, and the moment our feet touch it, the familiar vibrations tell us a door opens where the cliff slopes toward the ceiling far on our left.
