Page 67 of Sightwitch
And I needed it too. I had all along, hadn’t I? Since that day at the Sorrow when the world had tilted sideways. When he’d flashed a single smile.
I would not let this moment slip past.
In four long steps I was back to him. Rolling onto my toes and looping my fingers behind his head.
His hair was as soft as I had dreamed it would be.
Then our lips touched, and it was over. I had kissed before. A hundred girls around me, and I was bound to try. But I’d never met someone who made me want to keep kissing like he did.
Twice, I had to pull back to catch my breath. The room spun. His face spun.
But I could not stay away for long. A heartbeat, perhaps two, and then our lips were crushed together once more.
This was it. This was what it was all about—this was true Sight, true understanding of what life really meant.
The general and his daughters had been the change to shake me loose, and I knew that from this moment on, I would never be the same.
I knew what I had to do. It was what Tanzi wanted me to do, what she’d wanted me to do all along.
To go beyond.
To be free.
All these hours and days and weeks, I had had only one purpose: to reunite with my Sisters and my Lazy Bug.
All these years, I’d thought this was my future. I would become a powerful Sightwitch Sister and join the ranks of those who protected Sirmaya—and who one day joined with her forever in sleep.
But my Goddess was dying. If I finally took hold of what I’d always wanted, it would mean turning my back on a world that needed me.
I couldn’t do that, and Captain had been right all along. Back on the Way Below, he’d been right: there was not one set path for me. I could choose another. I could make my own Sight with clarity and purpose and thinking beyond.
Tanzi had said there was another way to heal Sirmaya, so I would find it.
I splayed my fingers on the ice, right over Tanzi’s heart. It was so silent now. So still. “I’ll come back for you,” I whispered. “I’ll heal the Sleeper, and you’ll wake up again.”
Then I gathered up Eridysi’s diary and the gold leather pouch, and with my chin held high, I left behind all the people I’d ever loved.
The ice, however, had a different plan in mind. I reached the exit, ready to march back into the main spiral, when a loudcrack! rattled through the room. Everything shook, hard enough to topple me.
I found my gaze level with Trina’s. She looked so young within the ice.
Ice, I realized, that was moving. Too surprised to react, I watched as three crystals lanced out from beside Trina’s head.
More cracking sounded around me, echoing and solid. I looked down to find ice rising up from the floor.
It wasn’t until the ice slid its claws around me that I finally moved.
I bolted for the door. Ice erupted from all angles. Bigger, fiercer. Stalactites to pin me down.
This tomb did not want me to leave.
I dodged. I leaped. I hit the spiral pathway, where the Rook hovered in place, panic clear in his frantic wingbeats.
He saw me. He cawed. Then he folded his wings and dropped like a stone.
“Curse you!” I screeched, slinging left. “I can’tfly!”
I couldn’t blame him for leaving me, though, for as I launched my legs high, ice began to fall. A tremor from a dying—acleaving—Goddess.
