Page 38 of Storm of Fury
Zorja made an expression Ishtar couldn’t read, and gently disentangled their thoughts. “Use your words, Ishtar.”
It was far easier to merely link.
She could never quite explain herself with words. But Zorja would insist.
“I can’t stay.” Her throat felt rusty with disuse. “They’re coming for me, and it is time to leave.”
“Who?” Zorja’s voice grew sharper.
“Friend Tormund.”
Zorja looked at Illarion sharply. “Tormund? I’ve never heard that name before.” She let go of Ishtar’s hair. “Who is this Tormund? Where did you meet him?”
“I haven’t met him. Yet.” She’d only ever seen him in her dreams—when she let her mind slip into the future.
Zorja pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re not making any sense. I know this is frustrating for you. But it’s safer for you to stay here, where nobody knows—”
Ishtar pushed to her feet and walked away. They all wanted her to stop using her magic. Even Marduk promised to protect her from it. But she might as well cut off her foot. It was a part of her.
And she’d tried to explain but they couldn’t understand her.
Her entire world gleamed with green, and it had taken her long years to realize her foster mother couldn’t hear the constant ebb and flow of the Song. Sometimes if Ishtar hummed along in tune with it, the veils would part and the world would thin, until she could see directly into another world.
It was everywhere.
And she couldn’t stop seeing it.
She couldn’t stop touching it.
She couldn’t stophearingit.
She had tried to ignore it after she collapsed the throne room, but with every breath she took, she could sense the magic on her breath.
Ishtar reached out and touched the walls, feeling the power ebb through the stone. Sometimes she imagined she was in the great belly of the Goddess herself, and every shiver of stone was the goddess’s breath. Blessed Tiamat had been a creature of Chaos, and she was revered by everydrekiin the court.
So why then, was it wrong to touch the Goddess’s magic?
“I’m only trying to protect you,” Zorja told her, having followed her. “There aredrekiwho would kill you for your magic.”
“I know.” Illarion had told her that too.
The only one who understood how it felt to see the world through a veil of magic was the voice she heard when she looked at the full moon.
“If you help me,” he had whispered in her head, “then I will help you. Free me, and I will show you a world that no longer fears your magic. They will no longer fear you.”
But if she tried to tell her foster mother that again, Zorja would only grow angry. She didn’t like to hear about the moon.
“Ishtar.”
She just had to wait a little longer. She could hear the whisper of distant feet echoing through the earth, even down here. One. Two. Three sets of footsteps. It wouldn’t be long now. Friend Tormund was coming to rescue her.
And then she could free the moon.
“Ishtar.”
She heard a soft sigh behind her.
“I will see you on the morrow then,” Zorja said, turning to walk away.
