Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(105)

Nothing could contain me as I soared through the blackness between worlds and breathed in the devastating glory of darkdust.

I was immense. Immeasurable. Infinite.

I bridged the spaces between stars with my fingertips. I crossed galaxies within breaths. Aeons poured through me like thoughts, and my inferno heart beat with the tempo of the end of the world.

If this was what it felt like to die, it was almost a mercy.

BUT THEN.

My heart beat a new rhythm.

One. Two.

One— Two—

One. Two— Three.

One. Two—

M-I-R-A.

Mira.

Mira Minkoba.

AGAIN, I COLLAPSED.

I plummeted through the stars, falling to a world that glowed with crystalline light, with islands shaped like gods, and an ever-encroaching mainland. The waves reached up to greet me.

My fall left streaks of embers and ash drifting in the dark sky, and slowly I became aware: my wings were gone, my brilliant light had faded, and my sense of rapture evaporated.

I was a girl again.

Shivering.

In the dark.

In the soundless void.

Alone.

NOT ALONE.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX




I OPENED MY EYES TO PURE DARKNESS.

It was familiar now, this complete blackness. I knew it well enough to brace for the panic—

But the panic didn’t come. It was all burned up.

Rubble bit into my knees where I knelt on the hard floor. When I groaned, there was no sound, not even a rumble inside my head. But air stirred, and my skin itched, and I knew I was alive.

I tried not to be disappointed.

::Mira.::

The tapping came on my shoulder.

“Aaru?” But the darkness swallowed up my voice. I lifted my hands until my knuckles brushed against tattered fabric, and then I found his shoulders. I let my fingers curl over his skin, feeling the ridges of bone. ::Aaru?::

::You’re alive.::

I nodded—pointless, because he couldn’t see it. But his hand cupped my cheek and everything inside me seized.

::Are you all right?:: he asked.

I felt tiny. Frail. My whole body trembled and a sense of loss folded around me like a silk cloak. But I was whole. The dark and silence were probably Aaru’s doing; it would come back, and then I could take better stock of my injuries. ::Yes,:: I said. ::And you?::

::Unharmed.:: His fingertips breezed over my ear and down my jaw. How could such a simple touch make everything inside me feel so complicated?

::Where are the others?:: I asked.

::They ran. Your friend took them. The dragon, too.::

::But not you? ::

::I could not go. I fell at your feet and pretended to be dead.::

::Did they all escape?::

::I don’t know.::

The spell of silence eased, and gradually, I became aware of the sound of my breath, the patter of rocks somewhere nearby, and the deep thrum of the world. A gentle glow rose up like mist.

Ruins.

The cellblock was in ruins. Noorestone dust floated through the air, lighting rubble and hollows and complete destruction. There was a small crater around Aaru and me, filled with black ash.

I’d done this.

I couldn’t say how—I suddenly didn’t remember anything after yelling for my friends to escape—but I knew I’d done this. A fact. Like numbers. Like objects falling. Like daylight fading.

Aaru watched me taking stock of the place that used to be our prison.

I dropped back and sat on my feet. “Why did you stay?”

He took my hand in his, both of us with a faint sheen of powdered noorestone making our bodies glow, and tapped his words into my palm. ::You stayed with me after the chair.::

“But it was my fault you were there to begin with.”

His mouth pulled in a slight frown. ::You came back for me when you could have escaped from Bopha.::

“You risked your life.” I swept my free hand around the room, stirring the motes of light. “How are you still alive?”

::Silence.:: He lowered his eyes to our joined hands. ::You were covered in flame, like a creature made of raging wildfires and noorestone light.::

“So you silenced everything?”

He bowed his head. ::Like before.::

All the noorestones in here. All thirty-four of them that had been flooding their energy into me. He’d smothered all of them? I couldn’t imagine what kind of courage it took to stay here and help me.

::You control noorestones.::

A strangled laugh fell out of me. “I don’t know what I do. I feel like it happens to me.”

::Practice might help.:: He pressed his mouth into a line. ::I need to practice too.::

“I’ve never heard of anyone channeling noorestone fire.” I lowered my eyes. “I don’t know what it means, and I’m afraid of what will happen when people find out.”

::I will keep your secret.::

As if he could tell anyone. He hadn’t said a word in nineteen days. Maybe twenty; I wasn’t sure how much time had passed since Altan dragged me into the interrogation room. Aaru hadn’t spoken, though, and that was my fault. Like all this destruction, his silence was because of me. He couldn’t tell anyone. Not unless he wrote it down, or someone else learned the quiet code, and—

Aaru bit his lower lip, not quite disguising a smile.