Before it, hands on hips, stood Lamiel.
Guard the tower, ward the stone. This was it. Whatever that obelisk was, this was what my bloodline existed to protect. A great tide of certainty swelled up in me: I couldn’t let her touch it.
I moved toward her, but it was like pushing my way through deep snow. Palpable horror radiated from that flat black stone, which loomed twice Lamiel’s height. I had the unnerving sense that it was alive, and hungry, and watching me.
That it knew me.
“Get away from that thing!” I shouted, my voice raw with fear and anger.
Lamiel’s eyes fixed on the obelisk with reverence. “So much power,” she whispered. “To think you’ve been hiding this all these years.”
She lifted a hand toward it. Sparks flew from her fingertips when they reached the edge of the circle inscribed on the floor, and she snatched them back.
“Another seal.” Her fingers twitched as if they yearned to touch the black stone. “And there’s one more on the artifact itself. What were they so eager to lock away, I wonder?”
Now that I’d forced my way closer, without the backlighting blinding me to details, I could see she was right. Precisely carved symbols and a perfect circle seal marked the center of the obelisk, laid down over a deep groove that bisected it top to bottom. Despite the unnatural warmth baking my skin, a chill shivered up my spine. There were potent magical seals all around this thing, and still it let off this much heat, this much raw power, radiating around and through me with sickening, crushing strength.
My resolve hardened like forming crystal. Lamiel had less caution than a dog trying to snatch meat off the table before its master came home. I couldn’t let concerns about her safety hold me back anymore.
I raced across the room and threw myself between her and the rune-marked circle, spreading my arms wide. Turning my back on that stone felt no safer than if it were a ravening battle chimera—and Lamiel was far too close, with not even two feet separating our chests.
“Leave or die,” I growled.
To my horror, the scalding waves of power coming off that rock resonated in my voice, a deep bass rumble in my belly. It flowed through me as if I were nothing, not even a leaf in a stream, carrying my words with it like some paltry wisp of smoke dissipating into the air.
Lamiel stepped back, eyes widening. Then she glanced down at my feet, and her lips curled in a satisfied smile. “You can cross this barrier too, I see. Perfect.”
I couldn’t help it. I looked down.
The heel of my right boot crossed the glowing circle that protected the obelisk, obscuring one of the runes. Red light poured up around my foot, and my leg tingled with the touch of magic, but I hadn’t even noticed it in the overwhelming press of energy coming from the stone.
“Pox,” I breathed.
In my moment of distraction, Lamiel struck.
She lunged at me, seizing both my arms above the elbow. Her fingers dug iron-hard through my thin shirtsleeves, her mage mark shining with determination. She shoved me through the now flickering ward—and plunged through the barrier with me.
“No!” I tried to catch my balance as I staggered backward, desperate to pull away from her. “Don’t touch me, you’ll—”
She’d hit me with too much force. My heels skidded out from under me.
The moment slowed, terrible and clear, each detail burned into my senses.
Lamiel’s face as her eyes widened with the first sense that something was wrong. The warm rush of magic in my arms, where her fingers clutched at me. The giddy swoop of falling, and the soaring panic of knowing what was behind me, waiting, hungry and awful as death itself.
My fingers tangled in Lamiel’s hair as I grabbed desperately for balance; life magic surged into me through my reaching hand. But it was too late. I’d passed the tipping point, and I was going down.
Searing hot stone slammed against my head and shoulders as I toppled into the obelisk. Pain flashed through my skull, and the breath whooshed out of my lungs.
A blinding light erupted all around me.
Horrible crawling pain ripped through my body, as if worms of lightning danced through my veins. The whole vast chamber vibrated with an unheard sound, and the heat of a furnace seared the air. Sheer panic shrieked along my nerves. No, no, good Graces no—not this, not this—
White radiance blazed from the stone at my back, stripping every shadow from Lamiel’s face as her mouth shaped a silent scream. It hollowed her cheeks even as her eyes went dull and glassy.
I shoved her off me, desperate; a thrill of magic coursed up my gloved fingertips. She tumbled to the floor, loose and limp, the pale threads of her hair spreading around her.
Ash and ruin. She looked dead. Please don’t let her be dead.
Power still blasted through me; I would shatter into pieces any moment from the force of it. I wrenched myself away from the stone with a cry.
It was impossibly difficult, the obelisk pulling at me like iron draws a magnet; the line down the center shone blindingly bright, as if the rock might crack open from the magic unleashed within it. With all the frenzied force of terror fueling me, I broke free, stumbling over Lamiel’s body.
The dazzling white brilliance began, ever so slowly, to fade.
Everything hurt. My whole body shook uncontrollably, and tears leaked from my eyes. A wild uneven strength coursed through me, and I didn’t know if it was Lamiel’s life energy or sheer panic or both.
Blood of the Eldest, I’d made a mess of this. I was stunned, numb, waiting for the full horror to hit. The Door open, Lamiel probably dead—this was a nightmare. No, my nightmares were never this bad.
I dropped to my knees beside Lamiel, unsure what to do. Curse it, she had the mage mark; if she’d anchored herself against my magic before touching me, like bracing for a tug-of-war, she’d be fine—but she hadn’t believed me about not being a Skinwitch, hadn’t listened to my warnings, and I’d yanked her life from her like rope from slack hands. Now she lay utterly still. She didn’t seem to be breathing.
If she wasn’t dead yet, my touch could kill her. But I couldn’t leave her here, with light still pouring from that cursed stone and dread building in the air like the sky’s own wrath.
“I’d get out of that circle if I were you.”
Whisper stood in the doorway, his tail a dark bristling cloud, his yellow eyes fever-bright. Strain roughened his usually silk-smooth voice.
“Is she—” My throat was dry to crackling with fear. “Did I—”
“Dead,” Whisper said. “A clean kill, though you might have done it sooner and prevented this madness. Now get out of there!”
No. Ashes, no. I couldn’t have killed her. He was only a chimera; he had to be wrong.
I grabbed fistfuls of Lamiel’s vestcoat, trying not to touch her, and hauled her out of the circle along the shining black floor. Something about the heft of her told me I was dragging a thing, not a person.
He was right. She was gone.
“I didn’t mean to.” My entire chest seemed to seize up, as if something was trying to fight its way out from inside me and I had to stop it. “Whisper, I swear, it was an accident.”
“That’s the least of our worries,” he hissed, glaring at the obelisk that still shone with a terrible, eye-searing brilliance. “Let’s get out of here—bring the carcass, to be safe—and seal the Door.”