“We’re not goingnearthat dungeon,” Archie said, every bit the affronted aristocrat. “You and the other professors have been ill, to the point of being bedridden, for almost two months. Wethought you’d never recover. And now you’rehere, acting as if it’s nothing? Taking us down to the dungeon, no less?”
“Don’t be silly,” Professor Obralle intoned. “Festra wills it. Come along.”
“I’m sorry,whowills it?” Archie spluttered.
Gwyneth’s eyes went as wide as twin moons, her fingers grasping Archie’s sleeve and twisting. “Did you say…”
“Festra,” Ru breathed, taking an involuntary step back. That name, the professor’s empty countenance, the dungeon door behind her…
Instinct took over then, a rush of adrenaline that spiked her senses and made her desperate to run, to go back to her room and lock the door. But she managed to stand her ground.
Archie moved to her side. “Lord D’Luc put an end to demonstrations,” he said.
Obralle stared at them all, and the lack of emotion on her face was horrifying. Then her eyes found Ru, and for a moment, they sparked with something different, something old and dark and feral. Ru had seen that tenebrous glint in the Children’s eyes before when she had first coaxed darkness from the artifact. When they had seen what destruction she might one day sow.
“Come now,” said the professor.
Ru reached for someone, anyone, and found Gwyneth’s hand. She squeezed it hard, trying to calm her speeding heart. She thought inexorably of Fen, how he had always been able to calm her, to center her mind, to bring her back from the brink of panic.
As if hearing Ru properly for the first time in nearly two months, more readily and eagerly than even during the last demonstration, the artifact’s presence roared forth inside her.
Gwyneth turned sharply at Ru’s intake of breath, Ru’s fingers tightening around Gwyneth’s. “She can’t go down there,” Gwyneth said, almost pleading. “Please, Professor. The lastdemonstration… there’s a reason Lord D’Luc put a stop to them.”
Obralle only stared. “She must continue. For Festra.”
Hardly registering Obralle’s words, Ru gripped Gwyneth’s hand as if it were the only thing tethering her to reality: Gwyneth’s delicate bones, the heat of her palm, her skin against Ru’s.
But Ru’s mind kept faltering, veering away from the present moment. The artifact’s voice, so sudden in its reemergence, was strangelyangry.It felt like a pulse of vibrant energy against the film of her mind until her head was reeling with it. She had lost control of her breathing. Her thoughts were falling apart, fracturing.
Ru had always imagined that the artifact was tethered to her by an invisible thread, and in her mind’s eye, she saw the thread go taut. As it did, her vision burst in black and gold and flashes of white. There was no comfort here, no reassuring presence as the stone had once been to her. There was only a reflection of her own terror and rage, unbridled with nowhere to go.
She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment, then opened them, trying to ground herself.
There stood Gwyneth, holding Ru still in a maelstrom of pain. There stood Archie, his form blurring into the background of Ru’s terror. And Lyr, a solid presence that was fading fast… and finally, Obralle.
The professor’s eyes were specks of unwavering night.
“I can’t,” Ru said. Her hands shook, her lungs were full to bursting. Dizziness swept across her senses. “Gwyn.”
“She’slosing it,” Ru heard Archie say from far away.
Her friends’ voices came to her as if from a great distance, fading in and out.
“Fen used to—”
“Don’t mentionhim. Dolt.”
“…taking her back to her room.”
“D’Luc said…waiting…”
“What the hell is going on?”
That demanding voice cut through to Ru like a slap to the face. Lord D’Luc.
“I brought her here,” said Professor Obralle. “Please forgive—”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” said Lord D’Luc, and Ru saw him moving toward the professor as her vision focused and blurred and refocused. He was dressed in white, golden hair haloing a savior’s face.
