Prodigal Steelwielder (Seals of the Duelists Book 3) by Jasmine Giacomo Read Free Book Online Page B

to contain her.
    Dark, wet clouds slugged by overhead, slicking their way from the Twervel Sea, blocking out the stars. The deepening dark of the evening matched her mood, her hair, her soul, her clothing, even the polish she applied to her nails. She clicked the lacquered beads of her necklace together. Unlike her hexmates’ necklaces, every bead on hers was black.
    Tarin has her title now: Mistress of Flame. I am no one. A soul trapped in a chrysalis of my own making. I have given up what I was, but I’m nothing else yet. I’m still empty, so empty inside. The beads clinked against one another, and she wrapped her fist around them, squeezing, feeling the firm edges bite into her palm. And yet, overflowing.
    The depths of her emotions sickened her—the leftmost bead represented self-loathing. Some nights, always the darkest ones, she toyed with the idea of casting Waarden’s Oblivion. But I haven’t. Maybe I just like torturing myself too much to end it all. But I can’t stay here, not right now. Not sitting by the tunnel entrance like a beggar, for sints’ sake.
    As she stood, Stratus formed beneath her feet, lifting her from the grass. Just below the cold, feathery brush of the clouds above, Kiwani halted her ascent and looked down. Her night-wide eyes could barely make out the gray stone ring of the arena near a crossroads of three dusty, crooked lines that twisted away to the nearby towns. The land at the southern end of the Shawnash Peninsula was rolling, scrubby. Its foliage grew large leaved and low to the ground, unlike most of the nearby tropical areas that were populated heavily with palm trees and the like. Further south, the pale, jumbled stones of the Shadow Canyons beckoned. The area was rife with strange geological formations as well as legends both dark and violent.
    Kiwani felt quite at home there.
    With a tip of her head, she pressed Stratus toward the rocky spires. The chill penetrated her clothing and numbed her skin, and Kiwani welcomed it. She closed her eyes, briefly wondering how much it would hurt if she toppled off her avatar and fell to her death. She decided not to bother. She’d practiced recovering her avatar too often after an accidental fall. A single, stray suicidal thought wouldn’t be able to overcome all those hours of practice and training . That’s what training is for. To make us predictable, to force us to live to fight another day.
    She landed at the entrance of one of the easternmost canyons. Its sheer, twisting walls rose high above her head then veered off to the left before joining into a single ribbon of rock. Kiwani inhaled deeply of the heavy air that the cave breathed out, metallic and ancient. She had come to the Shadow Canyons more and more often during her time at the duel den. It hadn’t taken her long to give in to her curiosity, but something about its labyrinthine pathways and endless loops and twirls, never seeming to be the same maze twice, both soothed and tantalized her lonely soul.
    She closed her eyes and brought forth her elemental hexlings—small slices of elemental magic that she had previously created to accomplish specific purposes. She could easily recall to existence several at the same time: Flame to sense the day’s heat, Wind to propel her forward, Earth to guard against those sudden twisting turns. Then she shot into the canyon, riding the wind at a breakneck speed, feeling the world press around her like an uncaring womb. Her magic sensed the twists and turns of her passage, and she jinked up, then right, then down, losing herself in the maze, leaving behind all her inner darkness in exchange for darkness that surrounded her.
    Time passed unheeded, and Kiwani felt a growing urge to slam herself into a wall of rock. Even now, nothing touches me. She wrenched to a sudden stop in the center of a lightless cavern and hovered in the silence and dust. No, stop. Just stop it. This would never be what he wanted for me. Bayan…
    Her heart spasmed,