Page 127 of Claim the Light
Something new.
I close my eyes and focus on the sounds, trying to hear what the woman is saying. Hers is the first female voice I’ve heard since my mother died. The man’s voice is raised and threatening.
But still, their speech is inaudible. Rising to my feet and hurrying to the wall, I press my ear up against the cold surface, desperate to make out what they’re saying through the magic coating the stone.
Searing heat suddenly burns across the side of my face.
I jump away from the wall with a cry, staring in shock at the way the rock has turned crimson red, as if it’s being heated from the other side.
My eyes widen at the power it would take to reach through stone this thick.
The blaze stops then starts again, much lower to the floor. I jump farther backward as it bursts across the stone in a wavy line for several feet, leaving the smooth rocks glowing.
My ears suddenlypop.
It’s painful and sharp, as if the pressure within my cage changed. My mother once described being carried into the air and the way the weight changed within her ears. I wonder if this is the same kind of thing.
Crouching low, I dare to hold my hand, palm up, toward the glowing stones, but I’m wise enough not to make contact. Not yet, anyway.
Searing heat radiates out from the stone, scorching my palm even at a distance, but it’s not so much the temperature that intrigues me now.
It’s the way the air around my hand shimmers with energy.
Slowly extending the claw on my right forefinger, I press it against the rock.
To my shock, my claw sinks into the stone.
All the way through until my finger is burning from the contact.
The magical seal is gone!
I wrench backward so fast that I land on my backside. I don’t know exactly how it happened. Possibly because of the source of heat on the other side. Or maybe some other magic is at play.
But the seal is gone.
My heart is in my throat, my thoughts churning at the possibility that escape is finally within my reach.
But how to make it happen?
The stone is hot and soft, like heated metal that will soon form a hard surface once more. I know this because my mother taught me all about the properties of metal. All about a lot of things.
She taught me everything she knew. Every miniscule piece of information, no matter how trivial it seemed, in case it would one day help me.
She taught me basic physics, chemistry, and biology. She taught me math and how to read. She convinced Zadkiel to bring us books, although he seemed only to agree because he could subvert her intentions, never bringing what she asked for: like a children’s picture book when she asked for a book on natural sciences.
Sometimes he would bring books in other languages that she couldn’t read. But she was never deterred. She would use whatever he brought her, even if only for the illustrations, and would simply change my lesson.
She educated me about humans and supernaturals and all the different kinds of magic.
I learned about lust, greed, sex, envy, politics, basic medicine, technology, and food—anddamn, I want to try cupcakes one day. The pink, frosted ones with sugar decorations on top.
I learned that the sky is blue, not gray like my cage’s ceiling, and that there’s such a thing as ‘fresh’ air.
It was also clear that, for my mother, who had lived under a blue sky and breathed fresh air, being kept in this cage was a misery her body couldn’t sustain.
For her final lesson, she taught me about death.
But I found out all by myself the meaning of loneliness.
