Nights of Salt and Shadow (Skyelorn Chronicles #4)

Chapter 1

Prologue (Five Days After the Battle of Magira)

Three hunched bodies slouched towards the burning ruins in the middle of the night, while the rest of the city slept: a man, a young boy, and an old woman outfitted in hole-ridden robes.

Just days ago the woman could barely move, let alone climb, but now a new energy surged through her old bones and lent her the strength that she needed to carry on.

She could hardly explain it. For nine years — nine years — she had sat huddled in a home for the sick and dying, resigned to fading away slowly as her worn body gave out. Her family had decided that's what was best, after all. Who wanted the burden of a useless, old Mage?

But as she watched helplessly through her tiny window while the city was ravaged by creatures of shadow, something amazing happened.

The sky and the Sea cleared.

And then — even more shockingly — she had felt strength fill her ruined legs, felt the fog clear from her time-worn mind. Her magic, which she hadn't used for nearly a decade, returned in full force. And with the renewed youth came the Voice.

Get up, it had said, startling her from her bed. Go to the palace.

She'd never been particularly religious, but she could only imagine that the Voice had belonged to a god, that it was the cause of her sudden health. And so she'd obeyed, stumbling out of her bedclothes to the utter shock of her nursemaids.

For that first day, she felt like some sort of one-off phenomenon, a freak of nature. But she quickly realized that her experience wasn't quite so singular.

Now, the old woman glanced over at the man and the young boy who were leading the way towards the smoking pile of ash that was once the great Magiran palace, spurred on by their own Voices.

When she first came across the man after abandoning the home for the elderly, he had been sobbing in the middle of the street, bellowing something about his lungs. As it turned out, he'd been bedridden, too, barely able to breathe until the Miracle. She wasn't quite sure yet about the young boy, but she assumed something similar had happened to him.

How many others like them had been healed, or delivered from their lives' vices?

"Onwards," the man said, trying to keep his voice low. He nodded up towards one of the tallest towers, leaning upon the rubble. She heard his breaths, fast and strong.

He knows the way, the Voice echoed in her mind. Just as you do.

The old woman nodded and set her mouth resolutely, following her two compatriots up the smoking remains. She knew it was only a matter of time before this tower, too, was consumed by the Enchanted flame. It spared no one, and nothing.

Which was why, during the Battle of Magira — as people had started calling it — someone had rigged a series of explosions that destroyed the electrum mountain and the palace that sat atop it. A dark part of her was glad to see the city in ruins. It had done nothing for her all those years. Her magic was deemed useless for battle, so what did she matter to the Empress?

The woman's fingers, once riddled with arthritis, grasped easily at each handhold and soon she caught up with the young boy.

"What's your name?" She asked, barely out of breath. Just days ago, she wouldn't have survived such a climb.

"Everyone calls me El." His mouth twisted, and his wide dark eyes bore into hers. He couldn't have been older than twelve. "Can you hear the man, too?"

"Yes." She patted his shoulder, understanding that he was referring to the Voice. "But he's good. You shouldn't be afraid."