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

A feeling, part-fear, part-excitement, clenched in his gut. “Well done,” he said softly. “And now, I think, it’s time you returned to your body, Arabella.” Her exertions had done her spirit no good—her feet had completely lost shape, so that she appeared to be gliding on a column of light.

“Yes, but what of that?” The hell hound appeared on the horizon again.

“I’ll get you on your way.” His last life line had, as planned, found her body. He grabbed a hold of it for their last shift.

They landed in a different place this time. Under a polished silver sky, the hard silver ground was strewn with gem stones, like pebbles on a shore. Some were cut and polished, others still rough. They glittered in a rainbow of colors. Ruined structures and worn statuary were scattered throughout.

It wasn’t far enough. The hell hound had already turned even before they manifested, was already arrowing right for them.

The creature had known he would save this for last.

The creature? Or its master?

Arabella looked wildly around. “Oh!” Her stare fixed on a yellow topaz, clear in parts, smoky in others. She reached down to touch it, then sprang back, hiding her eyes, as it flared to life.

A portal stood where the stone had been, stretching into a tunnel that seemed to be made of water, walls rippling in bands of blue, green, and grey.

Arabella hurried eagerly towards it—it could hardly be helped, since the tug of her body at the other end was so strong.

But, incredibly, she checked herself at the entrance. “What about you?” she asked. “I can’t leave you with that thing!”

Her misplaced concern was touching. “Have you no faith, Miss Trent?” said Trey lightly, going up to her. He dropped a kiss on her upturned forehead. “I’m the Shade Hunter. Now get going!” He gave her a little push; the portal did the rest.

Currents of color, smelling of good earth and green herbs, enveloped her. The portal vanished.

Trey swung Sorrow, the blade whistling through aether. “Come on, you hell hound! Come and fight!”

It came at him, bigger than a house, bigger than a church even.

Yes, this would be a tough battle.

One that he wouldn’t have to fight.

As the hell hound galloped up, its reek of old blood and rot surging ahead of it, drool splattering and smoking, Trey felt that familiar pinch between his shoulder blades.

About time, thought Trey, as Winter and the rest finally got ahold of him and yanked him back to Vaeland.

Trey opened his eyes and sat up, his hands clenched around the sides of a thinly-padded mahogany box too much like a coffin.

This was one of the reasons he didn’t much like spirit walking.

By the grey light creeping through the attic windows, he could tell it was morning. Trey looked around at the strained, exhausted faces peering at him and found Winter.

He said, before Winter could scold him for his actions regarding the anchoring spell, “There’s going to be a miasma attack.” Trey stood up and stepped over the side of the box. “At the Viewing.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jonathan Blake was uneasy, a feeling that lay like lead in his gut. The soft dimness of dawn reigned inside the old Keep, the Vaelish people’s first and oldest safe haven. Night’s chill seeped through the stone walls of the long waiting chamber, the woolen tapestries depicting scenes from Vaeland’s perilous past doing little to hold back the cold. The air was still and musty; a reverent hush filled the place. Any inadvertent sound—a scuffle, a deep breath—seemed to be amplified tenfold.

This was not the first time Blake had drawn this duty, but familiarity had not taken the edge off his wariness.

Unknown to most, this was the most dangerous time of the Vernal Rites, this in-between time as night gave way to day on the morning of the Viewing. The Mirror of Elsinore was already in place in the ancient solar, and the only physical entrance to that chamber was through this room.

The gilded and gaudy artifact that the city burghers paraded in the streets later that day was only a decoy for the real thing. Two Guardians had brought the Mirror from its secret home in Flurrey last night and installed it in the solar, where they waited to complete the rites of renewal.

After last year’s Incursion and the long winter, the restoration of the Mirror’s powers was desperately needed.

Swan, the aquamentalist, shifted next to him. This was her first big assignment, and nervous excitement and determined duty were writ all over her square face. Short and curly-headed, she seemed to disappear in the large wraith cloak she wore.

The wraith cloaks. Another thing that only increased Blake’s unease. Fantastically expensive, the cloaks were woven out of phantasmia, spider silk, and the light of a half moon. He had no idea how Internal Affairs had managed to come up with six of them for the elementalists and magicians that guarded the Mirror.

They hadn’t ever done so before.

Maybe this was caution after the Great Incursion last year. Or maybe they suspected an attack.

Wraith cloaks to protect against Shadow Lands demons and shades.

Blake didn’t like this one bit.

He queried Ember, his fire elemental. The salamander, uncharacteristically serious, was on patrol duty, stretching thin strands of purifying fire across windows and doorways.

Should anything unclean enter the Keep, he would know it.

Swan said in a whisper, “Aria and Crescendo report no trouble, sir.” She almost managed to keep her voice even.

“Good. Ask them to come back in.” Blake called for Ember, and the salamander leapt from the wall to his shoulder in a flame-colored streak. Cool, sinuous bodies brushed past Blake as Swan’s undines flowed from the wall and coiled up her legs. She took their watery bodies in a hand each, petting and cooing, and they curled into twin bracelets, grey and ropey, on her wrists.

A movement in the short hallway leading out of the solar caught Blake’s attention. The Guardians emerged and stood in the doorway. The