Beth Wonders's Arc

Chapter 12 of 29

The door sealed behind Beth with a sound like a struck bell. She was alone inside the crystal tower, and her world was still coming apart somewhere she could not reach. The inside was one round room. The walls were faceted glass. Six doors circled her, each carved with a different star pattern. No handles. No hinges she could see. Beth turned in a slow circle and felt her wings twitch against the hum. Each door pulled at her a little, like six different tides. She pressed a palm to the nearest one. Nothing. The next. Nothing. On the fourth, the glass went cold enough to sting. She yanked her hand back. Frost. That door led back toward the ice. Toward the thing that had screamed. "Not that one," she said out loud. Her voice sounded thin. In the center of the room sat a crouched statue in amethyst. A winged woman, head bowed over her knees, wings trailing behind her. Beth had wings too. The statue looked like a warning. She circled it. On the floor at the statue's feet sat a tall prism vase, empty, its facets catching light from nowhere. Beside the vase floated a small ringed planet the size of an apple, purple and pink, its surface crawling with tiny constellations. It turned slowly in the air. Beth understood. The tower was asking for payment, and it was showing her the map. She cupped her hands under the little planet. It settled into her palms, cool and heavy. The constellations inside it shifted. One cluster brightened — a shape like a leaning cathedral with half its roof missing. Her cathedral. Her half-world. The star map knew where it was. She held the planet up to each door in turn. On the sixth, the constellation flared. That was her door home. But the vase was still empty, and the tower was still humming, waiting. Beth already knew the price. She could feel where her magic ran thin inside her own chest, the same way she felt it in a place. She had a vase of star magic stashed inside the cathedral. She did not have it here. All she had on her was what clung to her skin, and the small hot knot of what the merchant's spilled vase had left inside her. She tipped her hands over the prism vase and let it pull. Light drained out of her fingers in thin gold threads. The vase filled halfway and stopped. The humming softened. The sixth door swung inward on a dark corridor that smelled like her own moss. Beth was lighter by half. Weaker by half. She had bought one door home and closed off the other five, including the one that led back to Elijah at the entrance. She stepped through. The door shut behind her, and the tower kept the rest of her magic as its fee.