Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(13)

Heath leads her away. They pass through the parlor room not once but twice, and then a third time before reaching the front door.

“It’s happening already,” Heath says, pulling her over the threshold.

Once outside, wind grasps at Aurora’s cloak and her hair, whirling them in a frenzy around her. For a few seconds she feels she is the wind.

She’s so distracted by the myriad sensations racing across her skin that she doesn’t realize what she is seeing: the trees in the royal forest. Moving. A dark green mass of pine needles swaying, limbs branching before her eyes, trunks rearranging themselves—the entire woods shuffled like a deck of cards.

Heath begins to run, and she struggles to keep up, dazzled, dizzied, nearly tripping several times and almost losing her cloak to the creaking reach of a tree branch. If she weren’t so disoriented, she might be tempted to slow down in wonder as shafts of sunlight interplay with the shifting forest. It’s more beautiful than anything she’s ever seen.

And then, with a gasp, Heath stops, thrusting his arms out to catch her. Aurora crashes into him. He holds her steady as a swirl of mist surrounds them, the green of the forest blending into the gray of fog. She sees with terror that they are standing at the very lip of a precipice that drops as far as the cliffs of Deluce, though she cannot tell whether land or water waits at the bottom.

One step farther and she would have fallen.

Thunder rumbles from the chasm, and then a massive flock of blackbirds shoots upward in a frenzied cloud, circles overhead, flapping hard before flying off.

Heath’s breath is in her ear; his chest rises against hers. “Wait,” he whispers. “Wait.”

Slowly, as though in a foreign dance, he steps back, guiding her body against his. Then to the side. Then a turn. Then they are no longer by the side of a cliff but instead staring at a high stone wall that seems to go on endlessly in either direction.

Heath sighs, and she does too, finding relief as soon as he has let her go.

“Come, help me find the rift,” he says, tracing his hands along the ragged face of the wall.

She’s never been more confused in all her life. “Rift?” The word floats out of her and away. A forest, and then a cliff, and now a wall, each trading spots with the last as though rearranged by an invisible hand.

“Somewhere,” he says, reaching back to her and placing her hand against the cold stone. “We may not be able to see it, because of the illusion.”

Aurora has so many questions she doesn’t even know where to begin, but she wants to get out of here as badly as he seems to. Her sister—and a prince, and an entire kingdom—are waiting for her. So she reaches up and out, beginning to inch along the wall as Heath does.

Aurora takes in the wall’s story through the pads of her fingers—she’s unused to all the information that can storm her body this way. Her fingertips tingle and ache. It’s like the cold texture of the stone carries an emotion. Touching it makes her feel raw and exposed.

“Ow!” she cries, pulling her fingers back. “Something . . .” Like the prick of the spinning wheel. “Sharp.”

She squints through the fog and then sucks in a breath.

“What is it?” Heath asks urgently, coming to her side. “Did you find the rift?”

She shakes her head. “There’s . . . there’s something in the stones. Can you see it? There’s . . .” Terror and disgust rise to her head like a toxic fume. Through the mist, she makes out a suit of warped armor.

But it’s not just armor. It’s the anguished form of a dead soldier, his body crushed by the stones.

And yet . . . somehow, he’s become part of the stones. She can see the mangled profile of the man’s face, his arm wrenched backward, his helmet jutting out jaggedly—that’s what she’d scratched her hand on.

She shudders, her ears ringing, her chest frozen with shock.

“The queen’s guards,” Heath says, his voice barely more than a whisper.

She continues to gape at the scene of desperation and violence, preserved in stone like a gruesome sculpture. “But why would her own guards be trying to get through to her? Wouldn’t she keep them close?”

“They weren’t trying to get in,” Heath says. “They were trying to get out.”

She backs away. Her arms are trembling wildly. Around them, the forest has risen up again, and she’s afraid that if she turns her back on the wall, it won’t be there anymore. That even Heath won’t be there anymore. She grabs at his sleeve. “I don’t like this.”

Heath’s voice is hard as he moves on, continuing to investigate the wall. “Neither did they. Four of her best men. Story goes they hacked through with an ax, and that’s what left the rift. Long before I was even born.”

Aurora’s beginning to feel completely overwhelmed from running her hands over the stones, every variation a forlorn mystery, when finally something changes.

She hears Heath’s quick intake of breath. “This is it,” he whispers.

The wall appears intact, but Aurora discovers she can pass her hand straight through the stones. She pulls it back hastily. What if the wall clamps down on her, as it must have done with the four guards?

Heath lunges forward.

In seconds, he is enveloped by the illusion, and dread replaces all other sensations. For all she knows, he has disappeared, leaving her alone. She cringes, tense, waiting to hear the horrible sound of stones moving, of crunching bones.