Read Online The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas - Free Book Online

“Exstinguare.”
    The stone statuette turned into dust. “Now what are you going to use?” said the woman, with a chilling smile.
    Suddenly the air inside the trunk was so thin Iolanthe became light-headed. It felt as if someone had pushed her face into wet cement. Try as she did, she could not draw a single breath.
    Faintly, very faintly, she became aware that something burned against her left thigh. Then everything went black.
    Â 
    As he arrived below the open trapdoor, Titus heard Lady Wintervale speaking.
    â€œWhat have you done?” Her voice was low yet frantic. “Never again, remember? You were never, never to kill again.”
    A blade of fear plunged into Titus’s heart. Lady Wintervale’s paranoia ran deep, and her sanity was not always reliable. Was he too late?
    He wrapped a muffling spell about the rickety steps and climbed up. The moment he had Lady Wintervale in view, he pointed his wand. Tempus congelet, he mouthed, not wanting her to hear his voice before the time-freeze spell took effect.
    If the spell took effect. He had never used it in the real world.
    Lady Wintervale stilled. He darted past her to the trunk.
    â€œAre you there? Are you all right?”
    The trunk was as silent as a coffin.
    He swore. The chains did not respond to the first few spells he tried. He swore again. If he had more time, he could coax the chains. But there was no time: the time-freeze spell lasted three minutes at most. And the girl, if she was still alive, must be let out right away.
    He looked about. There was nothing he could use. A moment later, however, he saw that the chains did not go around the trunk all the way, but were instead fastened to plates bolted to the side of the trunk. And the magic that anchored the plates to the trunk was ordinary enough that a stronger-than-usual unfastening cant did the trick.
    He flung back the chains, but the trunk lid lifted only a fraction of an inch. What more obstacles stood in his way?
    â€œAperi.”
    The sound of something unlatching. He hoisted up the lid. The girl was slumped over, her face invisible beneath her still-wild hair.
    His mind went blank. She could not possibly be dead. Could she?
    Reaching inside, he lifted a limp wrist and searched for a pulse. His heart thudded as he encountered a feeble throb in her vein.
    â€œRevisce!”
    No reaction.
    â€œRevisce forte!”
    Her entire person shuddered. Her head slowly rose. Her eyes opened. “Highness,” she mumbled.
    He was weak with relief. But again, no time to indulge. “Hold still, I will get you out. Omnia interiora vos elevate. ”
    Everything in the trunk floated: the girl, who gasped and thrashed to find herself airborne; her wand; her satchel; and a great many items of clothing that must have been packed before the trunk was closed the first time. Not a single piece of clothing was nonmage. If the trunk had been entrusted to the Wintervales, it would have been before their exile.
    He caught the girl, her wand, and her satchel, and let everything else fall back into the trunk. A quick swish closed the trunk. An undo spell set the plates and the chains back into place. Then he was easing the two of them out the trapdoor, with an “Omnia deleantur” tossed behind him to erase his footprints and any other traces he might have left in the dust of the attic.
    â€œDid she hurt you?” he asked at the first stair landing.
    â€œShe siphoned all the air from the trunk.”
    He looked down at the girl in his arms. Her breathing was labored, but she hung on to her composure remarkably well for someone who had just endured an attempt on her life—or perhaps she was simply too breathless for hysteria.
    â€œWhy did she want to kill me?” she rasped.
    â€œI do not know. But she is disturbed—she lost her father and her sister in the uprising. Her husband also died young.”
    Back in Wintervale’s room two stories below, he sat her