Amanda Lynch

“Faster. I have to run faster. Fear holds my throat shut as a tidal wave of death chases me across the sunburned field to where Tairn waits, his back turned. Wind roars around me, stealing every other sound, even my own heartbeat. Tairn’s going to die, and he doesn’t even see it coming for him. Gold flickers near the tip of his wing. Gods, no. Andarna. She’s here. She shouldn’t be here. The wave nips at my heels, transforming the ground beneath my feet into an ashen, desiccated wasteland. “There is nowhere to run, rider.” A hooded figure steps into my path out of nowhere, raising one arm. I’m yanked off my feet by an unseen force and lifted into the air, completely immobilized. The wave of death halts and the wind falls silent, as if he’s stopped time. He shifts his staff to the other hand, then pulls back the thick maroon hood of his floor-length robes with gnarled fingers, revealing the white of his scalp under his slicked-back, thinning hair. Shadows mark the gaunt hollows of his cheekbones on an eerily youthful face, and his lips are cracked and dry, just like the land behind me, but it’s his red-rimmed eyes, the distended veins spiderwebbing across his temples and cheeks, that have me fighting to open my mouth, straining to scream. Venin. “So disappointing,” he lectures, as if he’s my Sage and not the teacher of the dark wielder I killed on Tairn’s back. “All of that power at your fingertips, and yet you insist on fleeing over and over, using the same failed tactics, and expecting what?” He tilts his head to the side. “To escape?” My ribs tighten around my lungs as terror takes hold, and I force a garbled sound through my throat, but it does nothing to warn Tairn and Andarna. “There is no escaping me, rider,” he whispers, his fingers ghosting over my cheek but not quite touching. “Fight me and die, or join me and live beyond the ages, but you will never escape me, not when I’ve waited centuries for someone with your power.” “Fuck you.” It comes out as a whisper, but I mean it with every bone in my body. “Death it is.” He looks so…disappointed as he lowers his hand. Wind howls as I fall to the ground. A scream tears through my body as a wave of agony rolls over my skin and bones, leaching the very essence of my energy until— I wake, my heart pounding, my skin clammy, my fingers wrapped around my black-hilted dagger. Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream. …”
― Rebecca Yarros, Iron Flame