Which meant he was about to destroy me too.

I had awoken in the night long enough to know that I was in a wagon, that someone was aware of the fierce pain in me, and that they were trying to keep it as far as possible from my heart. It was no use. I was dying.

I tried to speak, and someone who identified herself as Wynnow offered me a drink from a skin. I didn’t remember anyone named Wynnow. And I wasn’t thirsty. I wasn’t anything.

The sun was high in the sky before the wagon stopped, I knew that much, though I didn’t know where we were.

A man said something about Blue Caves. I’d heard of them before, somewhere.

“Why are we

slowing?” a woman with an older-sounding voice asked. “She’s running out of time.”

The hourglass had already run out for me. My time was finished, so why did my crushed heart keep beating? Something was sustaining me, something beyond myself.

It was that woman who’d just spoken. Loelle? Somehow, I felt her connection to me. She was using magic to keep me alive, even as Endrick was using magic to kill me.

“We have to be sure there’s no Dominion around,” the man said. “The last thing we need is a fight here—or worse, to find Lord Endrick.”

Lord Endrick. Hearing his name sent a wave of pain through me and I moaned. I didn’t want to fight him anymore, I didn’t want to fight anything anymore, not even for my own life.

“Hurry!” Loelle said.

“I’ll protect us,” a girl said, though I faded before she finished speaking.

When I awoke again, I was being lifted from the wagon by a set of arms and then whoever they belonged to was running. Wherever we were going, the air around us was changing. It was bitter and icy cold. I began shivering and vaguely heard a voice say, “Something’s wrong.”

“No,” Loelle said. “She senses the magic.”

“Then is she awake?”

Silence passed. I wasn’t awake, but I wasn’t asleep either. I was just … existing.

“Give her to me,” Loelle said, and my all-but-lifeless body was passed into her arms. She grunted under my weight, and I perceived through my closed eyes that the light around us was nearly gone.

“Where …” I mumbled. That was all I managed to say, and it was a waste of effort. I knew these were the Blue Caves. I knew where I was. I wanted to tell her not to take me inside.

But after a few steps, I felt differently. The cold embraced me, enveloping me in its own protective shield. It swirled around me and within me and became part of me. I felt myself breathing easier, breathing deeper, and with each breath, I felt more alive. Light slowly began to fill the darkness, but it wasn’t the white light of death or the yellow light of the sun.

It was blue.

Blue like the skies on a summer day. Or like the Ashwater Sea just north of Highwyn. A warmer shade of blue even than sapphires, the same stones that were set into the eyes of the Sentries outside the capital.

I opened my eyes and saw an enormous cave of black rock that appeared almost turquoise in the light. What was causing the strong shades of blue in here? My head felt foggy, making it hard to think.

“Don’t be afraid,” Loelle whispered. “I’ll stay right beside you.”

She lowered me gently into a bed of water, where I drew my first comfortable breath in hours. The water was cool, even cold, but I felt warm. More than that, I felt life pouring into me such as I’d never experienced before. It was healing my heart, or returning it to me, freeing it from Endrick’s power. I flattened my palm over my chest and felt each beat, stronger than the one before it. I was an Ironheart no longer.

“I should be dead,” I whispered, then glanced up at Loelle. “You saved my life.”

Her smile was kind. Obviously, this wasn’t the first time Loelle had heard those words, but it was the first time I’d ever spoken them with a full realization of how inadequate my gratitude was.

She said, “You will leave these caves a different person than you were before. What will you do with this second chance at life?”

I smiled back at her. “My hopes are what they always were. I want my final words before death to simply be that I lived.”

She nodded, pleased with my answer. “Then you had better begin.”

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