Free Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One by Karina Sumner-Smith Page A

free. She paused just long enough to watch dark streamers of her breath rise, and shifted her direction. And if her drenching sweat didn’t drip but lifted from her skin to stream behind her like fraying black ribbons, she could only pretend not to notice.
    Yes , the magic said, and pulled her forward. Time had no meaning: there was only the thump of her feet against the uneven ground, her rough breathing, and the sun’s slide toward evening. Did an hour pass? Two? She didn’t know, or care, until the last of her strength burned from her. Gasping, legs trembling, she stumbled to a stop. She swayed on unsteady feet, and neither the magic nor the fear of what might be happening to Shai was enough to push her forward again.
    Xhea lowered herself to the curb, only now feeling the ache of her thirst, the empty pit of her stomach. Slowly, she looked around. She’d never come so far into the ruins. The crumbling buildings were no more than pieces: slumped structures shadowed with moss and mildew; a standing brick pillar that might have been a chimney; a car’s rusted frame. The cool air was heavy with the smell of decay.
    Though she had stopped, her magic continued to flow. She exhaled it with every panting breath and watched as it curled upward. She’d come far, but not far enough: the line of dark reached toward a cluster of Towers on the City’s farthest fringes, though she couldn’t tell which. But it was something; maybe it would be enough to help Shai.
    Okay , she thought to the dark smoke of her breath. Enough now. Stop.
    As easy as stopping the rain’s fall.
    Xhea remembered her earlier thought: hurricanes and earthquakes, tidal waves and tornadoes. Forces beyond her will or control. Worse, she felt as if the magic had started to take pieces of her with it as it left her body, her strength and power and ability for rational thought, burning them surely as any fire. The sense of rightness and unnatural calm that the magic bestowed warred with a sudden helpless panic.
    She clenched her fists, ragged nails digging into her palms. Would that she had any normal magic, but a single renai in all her useless chits and chips, a bright spark to help her regain control. All she had was time, and pain, and fierce will. It took all three.
    At last she sank back against the shattered curb and looked at her hands. The scabs had broken open and her palms were smeared black with blood. She dabbed the cuts with her pants’ tattered hem until they stopped seeping, then rested her head on trembling arms. Pain brought clarity, but no comfort.
    “What am I doing?” she whispered. “Oh, gods, what am I doing?”
    Xhea didn’t need to look up from the cradle of her arms to know that the Tower she sought was still impossibly far away, even its low altitude an unthinkable barrier. She had no renai, no allies, no plan. She was as she had always been: stranded on the ground, yearning for things out of reach. Even if she could reach the Tower, could find Shai and her body—what then? She had killed the last such ghost she’d tried to help, body and spirit both. In truth, there was nothing she could do to help Shai, no matter what memories the ghost’s presence had stirred.
    She had to cut the tether. Her fingers trembled as she touched the knife through the fabric of her jacket pocket, placing her hand over the folded blade as if pressing it to her heart. Felt the solid thud of her heartbeat and the tether’s vibration. Closed her eyes and tried to breathe.
    No, it wasn’t just the desire to exorcise that ghost from her memory, the murder of his flesh and spirit, that drove her. There was something else—something deeper and more selfish. Xhea thought of Shai’s hand on her shoulder. Was she so desperate, so lonely, that she would grab at any thread of kindness, however thin or tentatively offered?
    Yes , the thought came, and she had not the strength to voice it.
    When Shai returned with that same cracking sound, Xhea did not turn,