POV: Queen Amethyst Walker Reynolds
The palace felt hollow without Jackson. The silence that had once seemed peaceful now felt like a predatory thing, crouched in the corners of the high-vaulted ceilings. As the sun dipped below the jagged western peaks, casting long, bruised shadows across the stone floor of the Great Hall, I prepared myself for the tethering.
I stood in the center of the Star-Chamber, the highest point of the palace, where the ley-lines of the mountain converged in a literal knot of telluric energy. Jumanah stood by the arched window, her silhouette dark against the rising moon. The map Jackson had found in the vault was etched into my mind. I could feel the seven nodes of the North pulsing—some faint, one scorched and screaming—waiting for a Weaver to pull them back i
