The Name of All Things (A Chorus of Dragons #2)

by Jenn Lyons

My vision shifted, and I saw the universe differently. Suless didn’t stop there, though. I felt her slip into my mind, silken and cold and so very painful as she began to change contents. Rearrange thoughts.10 Moving down old roads, long forgotten … I’m standing just off from the main stage, waiting to go on, my nerves so taut I feel like they’re about to start making their own noise. I look across the room and see A’val, and I smile at her even as I curse that she’s talked me into doing this. I never intended to go into politics … yet here I am. “C’indrol, it’s time.”11 She motions to me, and then I’m walking in front of the Assembly to give my first speech … I remember when the demons first come, and I remember screaming when they kill my sister and then wear her body like a skin while they chase down my family. I remember the pain and the terror. I escape, but I never forgive myself for living, when they didn’t … An impossibly bright light flashes through my apartment windows. I run to the door leading upstairs to our rooftop garden. I manage to step through the door when the blast wave’s edge hits. Then I remember nothing … I ride on the back of a wagon while we travel down an old dirt road through an impossibly dry, hot desert. I shift my veil around my neck to catch the sweat while I practice chords on my father’s harp. One day, I hope to buy my own harp … I’m crying as Valathea takes me into her arms, and the vané woman’s lips are soft. I still know this is goodbye....