The Heartstone spire was not a tower, but a geode. They passed through the parting of thorned light into a cavernous interior that took Elara’s breath away. The walls, floor, and soaring ceiling were all formed of the same milky crystal, shot through with veins of liquid silver that pulsed with a slow, dying rhythm. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and salt the smell of tears shed for centuries.
At the chamber's center, on a dais of rough, uncut stone, sat the heir.
She was not the ethereal vision from Theron’s memory. Lyra’s descendant was a wraith of a woman, draped in simple grey linen, her silver hair a tangled cascade around a face hollowed by grief. Her eyes, the color of a winter moon, were open but saw nothing in the present; they swam with visions of a past betrayal she
