Page 56 of Sightwitch
Yet this feeling nags. Plus, I’m often left wondering when I will meet his general. If this man is so important to our plans, then why does he never come?
Like before, Lady Baile tarried after the meeting, waiting until all the others had left. I knew what she would ask before her lips could even part, and I flushed to my toes at the prospect of it.
So before she could utter a word, I blurted, “How did you know Bastien was your Heart-Thread?”
Her pale eyebrows sprang high. “The wise Sightwitch asking me for advice? What a strange twist.”
Heat burned hotter on my cheeks, and she laughed. “I should not tease, Dysi. My apologies. And to answer your question”—she leaned onto the edge of the table and patted at her heart—“I knew Bastien was the one for me because I felt it here.”
“Was he your Heart-Thread in … past lives?” I hesitated with that question. The Paladins spoke rarely of their reincarnations, and I’ve never known if it was because the subject was uncomfortable or if they’d simply forgotten that this body was not the one they’d always had.
Judging by Baile’s easy response, I decided it was the latter.
“No, he was not my Heart-Thread in past lives. And perhaps he never will be again. Heart-Threads are not fated, nor are they necessarily singular. Like any relationship, a Heart-Thread is a choice you make.
“The bond forms from respect and shared experience, and though attraction can sometimes play its part, it is not necessary. Love is love, and is the most powerful connection we humans have.”
She paused, her lips pursing to one side. Yet again, my blush would not abate, and I found myself glancing down at my hands like some child trying to impress her mother.
“Dysi,” she murmured at last, and with a gentle flick of her finger, she tipped up my chin. Then she offered me the smile of one who has lived a thousand lives and loved a thousand loves. “If you have found someone you care about,” she said, “and if that person cares for you in return, do not let it slip past. It will be your greatest regret if you do.”
She withdrew her hand, and before I could summon a worthy response, she rose from the table and our meeting was officially over.
1(?) hour left to find Tanzi—
Paladins’ Hall.
If I had thought the lair of the shadow wyrms massive, it was nothing compared to this cavern. For as far as I could see, the ceiling crooked up and up and up.
And for as far as I could see, it plummeted down.
Captain and I stood on a crooked outcropping, the tunnel we’d just abandoned at our backs.
There was nowhere to go save for a stairwell charging up to our left. Yet the map clearly showed seven doorways at different levels and depths, as well as a path straight through the hall’s center.
“I expected a bridge,” I said, stretching the map wide and holding it before me. “See? Right here, it says a bridge will take us up to the door I need.”
As I spoke, the Rook rubbed his beak against my ear. I absently scratched at his neck. “See anything useful?” I asked him, but all he did was coo.
“Maybe the bridge fell?” Captain suggested. He strutted to the rocky edge. A tilt of his long body, a stretch of his neck, and he peered straight down.
I shuddered. “You’re making me nervous bending over the edge like that.”
“I am rather close, aren’t I?” He flipped his smudged hand in my direction, flashing his Witchmark. “I think my body knows it can fly, even if my mind says, ‘Absolutely not.’” With that, he straightened and declared, “There’s nothing to see anyway. Whatever bridge there was, it isn’t here now.”
I sent a frown up the stairs. The map showed a doorway up there, but it was not the one I needed. In fact, it distinctly saidNobeside it.
But there was no alternative, and every moment Captain and I stood here was one less moment I had to reach Tanzi.
Time was running out. I didn’t know precisely how long I had left, but I knew it couldn’t be much.
So up the steps we went, the Rook by wing and Captain and I by foot. Fifty-four steps in total, each one uneven and awkwardly steep.
Captain found the steps an easy height, yet even he was panting by the time we reached the top—where we faced a second uneven outcropping as well as the door marked on the map.
It was not a true door but rather an archway twice my height and four times my width. Gray rubble blocked half of it, as if a brick wall had been destroyed on the other side.
Everything within the archway glowed with the faintest blue light, and I’d have thought it from the ice or the foxfire had there actually been any nearby. But there wasn’t. Instead, the cavern wall was empty save for six fat sconces stacked on either side of the ledge. They all burst into fiery life as soon as my feet left the final stair.
