Page 142 of The Eye of the Fifth
It grew stronger each time she used it. Bolder. If anyone could slip through those walls, she could.
Naal heaved a heavy breath.
Could she sense Kyra’s presence in her mind? Or did the intrusion present itself as a mere dream?
Kyra willed spectre-like hands to graze her wards, feeling for a discrepancy, a weakness that might allow her to pass.
They were as solid as the ground her physical body stood on, built hundreds of years ago and fortified with Naal’s wisdom as each year had passed.
But if the walls had been created by mental stone, a resemblance of the earth itself-
Kyra could break through.
She imagined it. Crumbling before her mind's-eye to nothing but ash and dust, stepping through the hole she’d made to find what she sought-
Then, exactly as she had imagined, it happened.
Those walls disintegrated into dust. She’d broken through Naal’s ward.
Kyra didn’t give herself time to think about what the fuck she had just done before throwing herself into the swirl of memories-
Show me the Eye,she told her magic.Show me where Naal has it hidden.
Kyra didn’t dare linger on any one memory as she combed through the pages of Naal’s life. It was a violation that she was even here in the first place.
Rifling through eight-hundred years of living, eight hundred years of memories, she begged her magic,Show me the Eye.
Then she landed right where she needed to be. She saw what she needed to see. And even through the memory, witnessing the stonehad a feeling of hopelessness slinking over her like a cold morning frost.
Kyra withdrew from Naal’s memory,slowlythis time. There was no Kawai to catch her if she should fall.
Darkness greeted her, and she half expected Naal to have woken, staring up at her with betrayal etched into every line of her wise face.
But the Air Warden slept on. Dreaming of the Eye of the Fifth, no doubt.
Heart in her throat, Kyra backed out of the room, not letting her gaze drop from Naal’s resting body. When she was safely on the other side of the door, she let out the breath that had gripped her the moment she’d seen the memory she’d been so desperate to see.
The Eye had been here the whole time. Fuck, she’d even looked upon it. Had felt the doom of its contents work its way under her skin as she’d beheld a room of despair and pain.
A literal eye, masquerading as one of Gallena’s own, watching over the crypts of the temple. Hidden in plain sight.
Kyra had to hand it to Naal: it was a stroke of genius. Who would question the piercing black gaze of the Air Mother? Who would ever know that Dohra and her miraqni lay squirming in their stony prison, embedded on the face of the Mother that was so revered?
And who wouldeverhave fucking guessed thatNaal Westerrahad stolen the Eye of the Fifth from the Four Mothers tomb in the first place?
The crypts were empty, save the dead. No longer needed as a makeshift infirmary, for all citizens of Phaenon had been moved back to the city that was being quickly rebuilt.
Luck was on her side, it would seem.
Kyra stood at Gallena’s feet, staring up at the Air Mother’s unmoving face.
Unmoving… but even in the flicker of flame-light, Kyra felt she was being watched. Judged. As if Gallena was glaring at her with the same disappointment she’d imagined on Naal’s face.
It was so quiet in the crypts. Eerily quiet. Her own breath resounded in her ears.
She began to climb.
Swinging herself from the statue’s left arm and ignoring the throb in her slowly healing ankle, Kyra landed on Gallena’s palm with the grace of the lone wolf from the pits. The quick and nimble Warrior Queen of the Arc.
