Ghostlight (The Reflected City Book 1) by Rabia Gale (i can read with my eyes shut TXT) 📗

“Drink,” Shahandra said, holding it out. The cuffs of her sleeves extended up to her fingers. “You must be thirsty. The Shadow Lands sap your strength. Drink, and refresh yourself.”

Looking into that clear water, Arabella realized she was indeed desperately parched.

Without thinking, she reached out her hand.

The cat screamed again, the sound clawing down her nerves. Arabella jumped, and the whole clearing wavered in her sight. She frowned and rubbed her eyes, but the smear refused to clear. It was as if she were seeing double, one image on top of the other.

Arabella looked at Shahandara, who smiled with mild concern, still whole and solid, holding out the chalice. “I fear that you are rapidly losing substance,” she went on. “Drink and be restored.”

Thirst burned in Arabella’s throat. Her insides felt withered. She yearned for that water with a ferocity that shocked her.

Her hands clenched into fists. Pain shot through her right finger—her mother’s ring biting deep into her incorporeal flesh, insistent.

Arabella looked down at it. The sapphire glowed.

A slight frown marred Shahandra’s smooth white forehead. “You come bearing some interesting magic,” she said. Her voice came from far away. The rippling of the clearing around her made Arabella sick to her stomach. It was as if something was straining to come out of the very fabric of the place itself, like children revealing themselves from behind draperies.

Her hand throbbed, the ring a band of heat around her finger.

“Ah, you’re in pain,” said Shahandra. “Quickly, take it off and cast it aside before it consumes you!”

Did the Master cast black magic on Mama’s ring? Arabella wrenched it off her finger. Sparks shot up her arms. She raised her hand to fling it away.

And remembered.

She remembered this pain.

It was the same as the time she went through the barrier at All Saints’. A fierce, purifying sort of pain.

The ache was concentrated in her eyes. Her vision was washed with white. Arabella had the sense that someone was trying to tell her something. Something important.

“Hurry!” Shahandra said urgently.

On impulse, Arabella held the ring up to her right eye, peeping through the hole.

She stifled a squeak.

The warm golden light that had suffused the clearing was gone, replaced with a cold silver one. Twisted and blackened tree stumps tore through the soggy ground like rotten teeth. Each bore a clutter of relics in rusted and tottering piles—wicked knives with serrated edges, blood-stained clothing, cracked goblets, and chipped plates.

Shahandra too had changed, her skin a dead white, leached of all life. Her ebony tresses twined and hissed like snakes, her coronet was a rusted circle of iron thorns. The woman’s eyes were chips of obsidian and her dress stained with things Arabella did not wish to identify.

In her hands was a human skull, full of a thick and dark liquid.

“Drink,” she said, reaching out, speaking in a voice that seemed to emanate from the grave itself. “Drink!”

“Absolutely not!” Arabella slapped the skull out of Shahandra’s hands. It clattered to the ground, spilling foul ooze.

Shahandra gnashed her teeth. Her jaw came unhinged, scales crept up her face.

She lunged at Arabella.

Arabella skipped back and yelled, “Cat! Come!”

It worked. With a snarl and a pounce, the cat was there, in the clearing. Arabella ducked behind Shahandra, now writhing, her dress clinging to her lengthening body.

The cat hit the woman in the chest. They both went down in a whirl of fur and scale, hissing and spitting.

Arabella fled to the other side of the clearing, slipping the ring back on her finger. She glanced at the weapons as she passed, each one full of malice and pain and bloodlust.

She didn’t want any of them. She ran.

Moments—or hours—later, Arabella came out of the forest and into a narrow valley, filled with stones and pebbles.

Here she paused. Because instead of one pull, she felt two.

They led in different directions.

And for the first time she could see them, manifested as two slender threads, faintly gleaming.

She had no idea which one to follow.

A woman’s voice, pleasant and well-bred, said, “One leads back to your body, the other to the one who came into the Shadow Lands.”

Arabella spun to face the woman seated on a boulder.

Not another one!

Arabella eyed her warily, this woman with pale hair slipping out of its knot, in a dress with fuller skirts and lower waist than current trends indicated. She sat as if she had all the time in the world.

At Arabella’s expression, the woman shrugged and said, “See for yourself.”

Arabella bent down and touched one thread. A familiar sensation ran through her—she smelled Aunt Cecilia’s perfume, the powder she dusted her neck and arms with, and clean sheets warm from the sun.

The other thread felt as if spun of steel, hard and biting, leading somewhere wilder, colder.

She looked at the woman again and thought she looked familiar. “I’m sorry, but have we met?”

“No, never,” said the other composedly. Her hands were clasped loosely in her lap; there was something very restful about her.

Arabella frowned, unable to shake off the nagging feeling she’d seen the woman before. It was hard to tell the color of her eyes save that they were light, and the moonlit glow had bleached her hair to silver.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Arabella gravely, “but I must perform a test.”

The woman inclined her head in assent. Arabella pulled off her mother’s ring and, feeling foolish but determined, peered at her through it.

The woman remained the same, as did her surroundings.

“You ran across Shahandra,” she guessed as Arabella replaced the ring.

“I did.” Arabella made a face.

“It took me,” said the woman, expressionless, “two years to disentangle myself from the sorceress’s clutches.”

“I had help,” said Arabella, thinking of the cat. “Was she really a Guardian?”

“Once. But it’s not good for anyone to linger in the Shadow Lands. Not even the purest can resist the taint.”

Arabella gave her a speaking look.

The woman smiled. “Oh, I haven’t been here that long. Only about nine years by mortal reckoning. I will