Page 97 of All the Wandering Light

Esha struck her so hard it sent her reeling to the ground, where she lay unmoving.

Fury erupted inside me, and I surged forward. The star’s light seemed to waver slightly. It tore itself from Esha’s grasp and hovered in the air. How was I supposed to order it to do anything?

“Stop,” I said weakly. I felt foolish, speaking to a glowing rock, but I pressed on. “Undo it. Please.”

Nothing. Except, perhaps, the smallest flicker in the star’s light, so small I may have imagined it.

“Please,” I said again. “Don’t do what he wants.”

To my amazement, the star dimmed. The shadowy figures wavered like mist.

Esha’s expression was a storm of rage. He had barely glanced at me this entire time, and I found myself grateful that I had been spared, until now, the full horror of his attention.

With difficulty, I tore my gaze away and focused on the star. It was glowing painfully now.

“Send them back,” I said.

The star rose higher. Esha made a grab for it, but the star darted away. Guards and witches alike cowered, pressing their hands against their eyes. Tears streamed down my face, but I forced myself to stay focused on the star. I held out my hand, but the star bobbed once and darted between the columns and over the balconies, disappearing into the night.

It seemed as if everyone was staring at me, including River, blinking the light from his eyes. The shadow-figures were gone, though not the towers and ramparts, the doors that hovered like holes in the air.

Esha raised his hands, and shadows rolled toward me like vines.

I cried out as they encircled me. River wrapped me in his arms, and they surrounded him too. Rather than forcing the shadows back, he pulled them toward us, calling others with them so that we were briefly wrapped in a churning cloud of darkness. I clung to River, my hair whipping around my face. Through the swirl of shadow, I watched as the hall grew painfully bright and stark. River was summoning all the shadows in the vicinity toward himself, as I had seen him do in the Ashes.

The other witches cried out as the shadows surrounding them were torn away. River shaped the shadows into a net and flung it over Esha.

The shadows enveloped Esha like an enormous wave, thick and heavy. His hand briefly surfaced, grasping for something, before it vanished.

“The palace is lost.” River grabbed one of the guards by the shoulder and shoved him. “Get everyone out!”

The guards stood gazing at him with dumbfounded expressions. The witches seemed to be having a similar reaction—they stood blinking and disoriented in the unnatural bright of the hall. Their power was tied to the darkness, and without it, they were weakened. Clumsily, the guards began to retreat. One of them pulled Lusha to her feet and dragged her away.

“Kamzin, go,” River said, his voice strained.

I stared at him. “I can’t. Lusha—”

“I can hold them off for now. You have to go after the star. Esha will try to recover it.”

I looked from him to the guards, to Esha, pinned beneath a net of shadow. River’s jaw was set, his face pale. He was struggling to hold Esha, and the witches were regrouping.

“River—”

He shoved me roughly toward the balcony. “Go.”

I gave him one last look. Then I ran.

Thirty

SOMETHING LUNGED AT me as I darted through the balcony door—a shape that was half bird, half shadow. I swung my fist and felt it collide satisfyingly with something warm and feathered. The witch fell back, and I didn’t pause long enough to see if she would follow. My skirts flapped around my legs, and my bare arms and throat tingled in the cold air. I wasn’t cold, though—I was hot.

I had run the length of the balcony that framed the hall, past a few startled courtiers who had been too far away to hear what had happened, and now stood clustered together, uncertain. It had all happened so fast. The emperor. The attack. The star.

Something flickered above me—the star was still there, hovering over the roof of the palace observatory. Was it trying to launch itself back into the sky?

I jumped off the edge of the balcony, dropping several feet to the hillside below. The shadows were thick, and I shuddered, picturing Esha’s skeletal hand reaching out from the darkness. Could River hold him back alone? It seemed impossible that anyone could, and yet it was clear that River was stronger than Esha. I recalled the way he had drawn the shadows toward us—they had responded almost eagerly.

I thought of Lusha, dragged away from the banquet hall by the emperor’s guards, and felt a stab of fear. River had said he would protect her. But could he?