Page 33 of Thief of Dreams
"I should have killed you the first night," she says, her eyes lighting up with insane fury. "You don't understand. Youarea worm. A pathetic, lying wretch of a worm. I thought we could be friends."
She lunges toward me with the dagger. I block her blow, propelling the blade past my nose and snapping a flat palm up into her elbow. Calliope screams, but then she's lashing backward with the blade, a weak blow, but a dangerous one all the same.
"Friends don't kill other friends!" I yell, slapping aside her vicious jabs. The disengage has barely hurt her, and it should have dislocated her elbow.
"My mother warned me," she continues, as if I've said nothing at all. "No one will understand my greatness. They'll seek to trap me in this skin. They'll betray me and hunt me down if they realize what I am. I have to evolve."
"I think your mother should have gotten out more."
"Don't you speak her name." Calliope drives toward me, and this time I have no recourse but to grab her wrist and slam her sideways into one of the columns.
She screams in thwarted fury, and then her eyes glow with golden magic. "So be it!"
Something grabs hold of me from behind. I fly backward, slamming into another column, my head cracking on the marble. An explosion of pain slams through me and white drenches my vision.
I hit the floor, momentarily winded.
Movement blurs at me.
Years of reflexes save my life. I Sift out of the way, and Calliope's dagger drives into the floor.
Up to the hilt.
The Sift disorientates me further. I stagger against the column. It's no longer pure white. Blood mars its shiny surface. My blood.
Calliope looks up with murderous eyes. "Well now," she whispers. "It seems I'm not the only one with a secret. Ismena was right. You'renota pureblood."
"Merisel!"
Prince Keir is running toward us, the flaming sword in his hands. And I suddenly realize he's callingmyname. Or the name he knows me by.
Calliope's teeth bare in a dangerous smile. "And here is my heart. Here is my key to transformation."
She stands and wrenches at the air with her fist.
The columns start shuddering, tearing away from where they're rooted to the floor. Tiles tear free from the roof, shattering on the marble floor. Prince Keir glances up, and flicks his hand dismissively.
Abruptly, the hall straightens as though nothing ever happened. I'm too dizzy to wonder if I imagined it or not.
Shadows blur. Nightmares twist themselves into reality at the wave of her hand. A Wyrdwolf leaps at the prince, but he beheads it with a stroke, and its body splashes into an inky sludge on the floor behind him.
Calliope hisses in fury, and then she turns to me as if she knows she cannot overwhelm him.
"It's over," Prince Keir calls in a dangerously soft voice. "This is my world, and no matter your power, you will not wrest it from me."
But she's closer to me than he is.
"It's never over," she whispers and waves her hand at me.
Something grabs me from behind. Cold stone hauls me back toward the wall, and I'm reminded of Narcissa's fate. I can't Sift. I can't escape it. I scream as my body starts sinking into stone.
The last thing I see is a blur of golden light as the prince leaps toward her.
And then marble is closing over my face. It flows into my mouth and nose, as if both liquid and solid all at once. I can't scream anymore. I can't breathe.
I'm going to die here, trapped in the walls of the fucking palace, and suddenly a riot of all the things I've never had a chance to do ripples through my mind. I've never known freedom. I've never known love. I've never had a chance to escape the misery of the life I own.
Then everything is shifting.
