Page 3 of The Quiet Light

But I feel my power flaring, know that I will be glowing the same magenta as my eyes if there were anyone here to see as I gather my wrath, my will, and move.

That’s all it takes: Movement.

Simple; powerful.

I clench a fist.

And the Quiet shatters.

The dampening field has always felt in my mind like a miasma, a powerful magical aura unfurling from me at the center out into a sphere.

Now, it feels like a glass globe that has splintered into a million shards, abreaking, before the magic begins to dissipate into the air.

I expected to feel a backlash from releasing the most powerful working I—or possibly any single magic user, ever—have created.

Instead I just feel tired.

Like that was all I had left in me.

I should move. Get off this stone floor where I have lain for so long.

But that one movement took so much out of me, my burst of wrath after years of calm drifting spent.

Then I remember the dragon, low in power and facing a cohort of priests.

And I try.

My senses are scrambled—I’ve gotten used to sensing magic across the entire tidal island, which is connected to the mainland of the Empire of Kameya by only a strip of land that is most often underwater. The different scope is an adjustment—but just as I manage to sit up, I hear pounding footsteps.

They stop right on the other side of the stone before me.

Where, once upon a time, priests walled me in, to pressure me into doing what they wanted.

That had not gone well for them.

No priests remain here, so now I can break the wall and let myself out.

Just as soon as I can move again.

But then a hoarse voice asks, “Yora?”

I know this voice. I know this magic, low as it is.

The dragon.

He doesn’t sound lost like I feel; he sounds desperate.

I swallow convulsively, trying to wet my throat. Cough. Try again. “I’m here.”

The dragon sucks in a breath in astonishment.

Then he says firmly, “I’m taking down this wall. Can you back away?”

“Not quickly. But you don’t have to.”

“Yes,” the dragon says, “I do.”

I open my mouth to argue—he’s already so low in magic, and he’s long since done enough, my one anchor to the world outside—but then the stone—thestone—begins to heat.