Page 130 of The Eye of the Fifth
Focus. Focus.
Slowly, the rough walls in his mind came down for her. She was swimming in the swirling depths of all that was him, his memories completely unguarded now, as though he trusted her to see all of it.
It would have been easy, so easy, to learn everything there was to know about Kawai Astaveron in that moment.
She wanted to know him. But this wasn’t how she wanted to do it.
Nor was it what she was there for.
Shutting herself off to his past, to his mind laid bare before her, she delved within herself to find what she needed, pulling the picture of the Mothers tomb from the archives and projecting it to him, allowing him to see what she had.
Breathlessly, Kyra pulled herself out of Kawai’s mind. His hand shot out around her back to steady her before she could topple backwards.
Even using a meagre amount of her Warden power took an enormous toll on her body. But she’d managed to actually wield it. And without failure or devastation. Twice.
The tiny victory had her feeling giddy. Breathless, she asked Kawai, ‘Did you see it?’
He nodded.
Excited anticipation mounted, bubbling up like spilling lava within her. She was finally going to do it. She was finally going to uphold the bargain and free Oslan. ‘Do you think you can get us there?’
Kawai gripped her closer with easy arrogance, and grinned. ‘Hold me tight and don’t let go.’
Chapter Thirty Seven
Tomb Of The Four Mothers
???
Precise location unknown, Loros.
Kyra.
To put it bluntly, saliring was fucking awful.
Every single fibre of Kyra’s being had been squished and moulded to an incomprehensible size as Kawai dragged her through the very folds of the world.
Stupidly, and in her haste to find the damned Eye, Kyra also hadn’t anticipated the crushing weight of the ocean above them when they appeared, treading water, right outside the Four Mother’s tomb. Though thankfully, it wasn’t so deep that it was a pit of complete blackness; the moon’s silvery beams still managed to penetrate the thick water, casting some sort of light onto the monument before her.
It was far bigger witnessed with her own eyes than through Kano’s memory. But there was no time to marvel in its magnificence.
Kyra’s lungs could withstand the lack of air and pressure. Kawai’s could not.
She shot him a panicked glance and reached for him. Through a blurred, watery lens, she saw him turn to look at her, his hand squeezing hers. A confirmation that he was alright. For now.
Kyra ran a hand over the outline of the tomb’s stone doors, feeling for something, anything. There was no handle. She pushed at the doors with the palms of her hands, but to no avail.
Kawai grasped her shoulder. Alarmed, she whirled around, but he was pointing to something glowing above the door.
Four runes had been etched onto a thick lip of stone in a diamond formation. The rune on the bottom instantly snatched her attention. It was jagged in shape, like the rise and fall of mountains, its uneven edges glowing with a soft, silvery starlight hue. As Kyra swam toward it to gain a better view, it glowed even brighter.
It called to her, not in visuals or voice, but in the very depths of her soul.
The other three remained unimpressively, and perhaps unsurprisingly, dull and dormant.
As though a higher power were guiding her hand, Kyra whipped her dagger from the sheath at her hip and sliced diagonally across her palm. Pain lanced and blood welled instantly, tainting the water red around them, but she quickly pressed her bleeding palm to the glowing rune, and waited.
Nothing happened.
