The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy, #1)(39)

But Lira had six hands, and Ceony only had two animals—paper animals. Two of the hands crushed Ceony’s delicate paper creations in their palms and dropped to the floor. The other four rushed for her.

“Thane!” Ceony screamed, turning around and running down the hallway. She reached the door at its end, but its handle stuck. Locked.

Ceony held her breath and fished into her bag for something, anything. She felt sheet after sheet of paper until she touched something Folded: the paper fan. She whirled around and raised it.

The lead severed hand grabbed her by the throat just as she flapped the fan across her body.

A gust of wind burst from the fan and filled the corridor, striking the remaining three hands just before they reached Ceony. The wind pushed them back, sending them spiraling through the air.

The gale didn’t reach the hand around Ceony’s neck. It squeezed, cutting off her air. She choked, but flapped the fan again and again.

New gusts pushed the hands farther back and lifted the fallen ones off the floor, the crumpled bodies of her bird and fish flying with them. The hands, paper, and gales collided into Lira—one hand knocked the dagger from her grasp. The second gust knocked her off her feet, and the third made her skid across the stone floor to the opposite wall.

The prison walls began to melt as the vision held by Thane’s heart broke. Ceony dropped to her knees, red-faced, clawing at the fingers digging into her neck, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. Her face grew hot. Her eyes bulged. She pried off one finger, two—

Fennel launched himself at the hand’s thumb and chomped down on it as hard as a paper jaw could chomp, and with a hard jerk he pulled the hand away from Ceony’s neck. Hot air carrying the scent of iron and rot rushed down Ceony’s throat. She coughed so hard she thought she would wretch, especially with the bloodied appendage flopping on the dissipating stone floor before her.

Staggering to her feet, Ceony stomped her shoe down on the hand twice before it stopped moving. She stomped it twice more for insurance.

Sinking to her knees, Ceony rasped, “Good boy. Good . . . good boy.”

Her hand clutched the paper chain that wrapped around her chest and over one shoulder. The shield. She had Folded it wrong. Gotten overconfident.

But Lira—Lira was gone, for now. The pain in Ceony’s neck lessened as the Excisioner’s absence dawned on her. Lira had bested even Ceony’s pistol, but Ceony had won this round. Barely, but she had won. Thane would be proud of that.

Ceony leaned against the heavy door behind her, cracking it open. Fennel’s paper tail wagged wildly behind him as wildflowers in fuchsia, marigold, and amethyst grew beneath his feet. The gray hues of the prison lightened to deep orange highlighted by salmon, and a warm summer breeze tousled Ceony’s hair.

Slipping the fan—her fantastic, wonderful fan—back into her bag, Ceony rubbed her neck and stood once more.

The same scenery from the flower-covered knoll in the first chamber surrounded her—the hill looked over a thick tree line at sunset, and the broad plum tree reached skyward just ahead of her. Thane lay beneath it, but he looked as she knew him, not younger, and the woman beside him wasn’t Lira.

She closed her eyes for a moment, inhaling the sweet flavors of honeysuckle and earth, expanding her lungs and giving her heart a chance to calm down. She rubbed the lingering sensation of cold fingerprints from her neck before opening her eyes to the beauty once more and approaching the plum tree.

Her heart twitched in her chest as she neared, and while she wanted to believe it twitched from her nearly fatal run-in with Lira, she knew that wasn’t the case. However, the more she tried to focus on this new woman beside Thane, the more her image blurred.

Ceony paused just at the edge of the blanket. The woman . . . she wasn’t a woman, not really. She had no face, only the start of one, and her hair seemed to have no definite length or color. The lines of her body curved enough to show her womanhood, but not enough to define weight, height, or shape. Beside Thane—who watched the setting sun with such peace, with such light in his eyes—the “woman” seemed imaginary.

Because she is, Ceony realized, a second breeze tickling her skirt and blowing loose flower petals across her vision. These are the things Thane—Emery—hopes for.

She studied him, his peace and his contentment, the eyes that seemed to radiate life. She studied the shadowy woman beside him from head to foot. He wants to fall in love again.

Though she knew he would not see her, Ceony waved her hand before Emery Thane’s face, hoping he would blink and look up at her, wanting those eyes to notice her the way they had noticed Lira amidst cherry trees and gossamer. Because she needed his help. She needed Thane’s help to escape him, for if she didn’t escape him, she’d never save him, and Ceony felt she’d be doing both herself and the rest of the world a great disservice to let such a life-filling gaze vanish from existence.

And if Emery Thane died, some other poor chap with dreams of bespelling metal would be assigned to paper out of necessity, and Ceony certainly couldn’t let that fate fall onto anyone else’s shoulders.

She twisted her messy braid around her index finger. Hope. She wondered what her hopes looked like now.

She stepped onto the blanket, just at its edge, and knelt down, massaging her throat. She’d have bruises, surely, but nothing worse than that. Nothing she couldn’t manage. I’ve managed worse.