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

“And what is that, ma’am?” queried Arabella.

“Right now, it’s to tell you what your choices are,” answered the woman dryly. “Have you picked?”

Arabella gave a longing look at the thread that led back to her body, to safety and home and warmth.

“This one.” Arabella picked the thread of steel, winding it between her fingers. It stung, but not as much as she’d expected.

She had to do it. She had to take the chance that the one looking for her in the Shadow Lands was Trey, not the ghoul nor its Master. If she didn’t find Trey, he could still be drawn into the trap.

And there wasn’t much time left in which to warn him of the coming attack on the Mirror of Elsinore.

The woman nodded. “Very well, then. Off you go. You haven’t a lot of time.” There was nothing in her straightforward tone to tell Arabella whether she’d chosen rightly or not.

Arabella started up the path—of course it had to wind uphill into broken, stony country. Then she paused and turned around. “Thank you, ma’am. And,” she added impulsively, “I hope it goes well with you, in the end.”

A smile flickered on the woman’s face. “And you, too, Arabella Trent.”

Arabella started but the woman was gone.

She was alone, holding the shining thread. It jerked in her hands. “I’m coming,” she told it and resumed climbing.

Halfway up the path, a howl rose up behind her. It echoed against the flat sky above, filled her ears with thunder.

Arabella peered over her shoulder as the dark bulk of a monster heaved itself up over the landscape. Oh no!

Run!

Chapter Thirteen

Trey arrived first, as he always did when walking the Shadow Lands in spirit, at the place he called Wildcross.

This was the Shadow Lands version of Whitecross Abbey, the ancestral home of the Shields. But here, the bow-shaped lake was darker and deeper, the drop from hilltop to lake a straight plunge, as if cut by a knife. No house overlooked the lake, though the Shadow Lands kept trying to manifest one.

The trouble with houses was that they tended to attract inhabitants.

An old ash tree stood in the place occupied by Whitecross Abbey in the mortal plane. Its bark was a pale grey, its branches spread silvery-green leaflets up to a tarnished sky. Clouds of aether, fine and white, stretched like cobwebs overhead.

Trey put a hand on the ridged, diamond-textured bark, felt the flow of pure sap in the heart of the tree. The ash protected this corner of the Shadow Lands, and every summer and winter he renewed the rites that kept it pure and strong. Its unseen roots plunged through the soft, unstable ground and anchored in Vaelish soil.

This was an outpost, a small, safe place in a hostile land.

The ground around the ash was fuzzy with the short blades that passed for Shadow Lands grass. They rubbed against his spirit like razor burn. The land rolled around him in sullen hillocks and dispirited hollows. Intermittent items of interest broke the monotony—a stand of sickly-pale birches; a topiary shaped like a knight on a charger, clipped to within an inch of its life; a well in a hollow.

Most of these were temporary; save for the well, they changed as the seasons passed. Trey guessed, like the roots of the ash, the well too drew its water from good Vaelish soil. He had never figured out where on the actual estate it was, however. This made him leery of taking a sip, despite the winch and wooden bucket hanging above it.

Once assured that this place was as safe as the Shadow Lands could ever be, Trey stepped away, questing for Arabella.

Time and space were fluid in this realm. It might’ve taken one moment to snatch Arabella from Merrimack’s courtyard and spirit her to her present location, but from his perspective, her route could be long, tedious, and meandering.

And most probably, dangerous.

Trey pulled a wry face as he looked down at the cuff on his wrist. A band of silver with darker threads running through it, it connected him to his body in Vaeland—and to Sutton’s overseeing, Winter’s runes, and other magic besides.

He felt like small child on leading strings.

But these were the conditions Winter had set, so Trey dismissed the feeling and drew phantasmia from around him.

Phantasmia was the potent magic of the Shadow Lands, far more dangerous than aether, not as malevolent as miasma. Trey’s use of it in Vaeland was severely curtailed, but here, he could give full rein to his gift.

Here, he could really be a phantasmist.

The strange, half-alive stuff of the Shadow Lands coalesced inside his hands like thick smoke. Trey spun it into fine wires and sent them looping off in a hundred different directions. He breathed memories of Arabella into them and cast them out to go seek.

Now was the part he hated.

He had to wait.

If he’d brought his body, he could’ve tracked her himself. Trey surveyed the dull landscape, his gaze arrested by the black smear on the distant horizon.

Memory supplied the features he couldn’t distinguish. It was the ruined city, of course, never far from Wildcross, a constant reminder of his oldest failure. Border Walkers before him had searched their whole lives for just a glimpse of the place; meanwhile, he could never quite shake it off.

Even from here, he could taste bitter despair on the air. If he strained, he’d hear the toll of its tongueless bells. He knew, none better, how it’d warp the sky and land around it, turning them into a swamp of miasma.

He had to act, before the city’s presence jeopardized the already fraught operation.

Sorry, Winter.

Trey paced away from the ash, down the gentle slope away from the lake and past the well.

Despite what the vista promised, it didn’t take long for him to reach the boundary of Wildcross. The mist beyond was colored like ice, with hints of blue and purple. There was a weighty feel to it; Trey