Dawn of Cobalt Shadows (Burning Empire Book 2) by Emma Hamm (best e ink reader for manga .txt) 📕

she could find. Unfortunately, that seemed to be housed in the skulls of dead animals jangling at her waist.

Eivor turned around and began to walk away, talking to the beast inside the skull. “Yes, Grim. I know we’re not supposed to show anyone but she isn’t really anyone, now is she? I agree. It’s important that she sees it. Maybe this will explain more than the matriarch is doing. After all, it is part of our history.”

“Our history?” Sigrid called out. “What are you talking about?”

“Come with me, dragoness. There’s something I want to show you.”

“What? Eivor, slow down!”

The Medicine woman sped up. Sigrid was forced to race after her, chasing her through the snow and running across the barren wasteland at the top of the mountain. The flat shelf was made of snow and ice. No footprints marred the pure white. It was as if she had died. Perhaps she had. Maybe she’d fallen off the ice and couldn’t remember at all that she had slipped from the cliff and fell to her demise.

Sigrid ran until her thighs burned, eyes locked on the small figure in the distance. And then, as if she’d never existed at all, the medicine woman disappeared.

Slowing, Sigrid tried to catch her breath and spun in a slow circle. “Eivor?”

The woman was well and truly gone. How did she do that? She’d done the same thing in the cave system, disappearing into the landscape.

Magic?

No, that wasn’t possible. Sigrid was a logical woman. She knew there was no such thing as magic, other than people turning to beasts at will and dragons coming back to life after so many centuries of…

She shook her head. “Stop thinking that,” she muttered. “There’s no such thing as magic. Eivor is not capable of something like that. Get your head on straight, Sigrid, and find her.”

There, on the horizon, a small slice in the ice shelf created a crevice. The medicine woman must have slipped down the hole, or perhaps leapt directly into it, seemingly disappearing from the horizon.

A smile split Sigrid’s face. “You’re crafty. I’ll give you that, medicine woman. Whoever taught you how to hide did a damned good job.”

She eyed the crevice, wondering if she could even fit down it. Her square shoulders didn’t make it all that easy, but she’d managed in the cave system well enough. The memory flickered to life, fear seeping into her pores. She didn’t want to be crushed between two halves of a mountain, but she also didn’t want to remain up here.

Eivor had said there was something here. Something that Sigrid should see, because it was her history. There was so much she wanted to learn and so much that was being withheld from her.

Taking a deep breath, she hovered one foot over the open space, eyed it one last time, and then leapt into the shadows between the ice.

The cold wall behind her pressed against her back, guiding her into what she quickly realized was some kind of tunnel, or perhaps mine shaft created to transport people. Sigrid crossed her arms over her chest and held her breath.

The last thing she needed was to break an arm, because she flailed them in an attempt for balance. Space around her grew progressively smaller and tighter. The front wall of the ice pressed against her chest, freezing her lungs and stealing her breath.

She’d be okay, she told herself. Other people must have come this way before. The ice hadn’t shifted, otherwise she was going to hit Eivor rather soon, and they’d both be stuck here.

Not particularly a comforting thought. Of all the people she’d thought to die with, she hadn’t imagined it would be a crazed medicine woman with a rat she talked to on regular occasions. A dead rat, she reminded herself. Or whatever Grim was. She honestly wasn’t certain that Eivor thought Grim was a human. Maybe it was just something else she’d stolen the soul of.

The ice behind her shifted, curving slightly until her movements slowed. Gently, she slid to a stop at the end of the tunnel. Wiggling, she pulled herself out of the ice and into a cavern where heat blasted from the ground.

The ground was warm here. She set her feet on the mossy ground, staring around in awe.

Giant blue flowers grew up in bell shapes. Their petals opened as she passed, as if the sound of her footsteps were all they were waiting for. Green, toothed flowers opened as well. The interior of their petals pink as a blush.

Water bubbled up from the ground, creating meandering paths that looked almost like stone. The water was charcoal in color. Steam rose from the snaking rivers. Large trees grew in the distance, their leaves like the fan of a peacock’s feathers. Brightly colored, so vivid they shouldn’t have been able to exist in a frozen wasteland.

Standing stones dotted between the streams of steaming water. Perhaps that’s why the rivers led there. Each stone was carved through the center, one circle and a line straight through the center to the ground.

Standing, Sigrid stooped and pulled off her boots. She left them at the mouth of the tunnel, stepped into the hot water, and waded into the stream.

Eivor was nowhere to be found.

Did it matter? Sigrid realized she didn’t really want to see the medicine woman when the trickling music of waterfalls filled her ears. Eddies swirled around her ankles up to her shins. Moss grew on all the stones, lush and emerald in color. An archway of stone, ancient and crumbling, curved above her head.

What was this place? Some kind of ceremonial tomb? Or perhaps a home of a long forgotten race.

She stepped hesitantly, trying not to tread on watery plants that kicked away from her movements and tumbled down the stream back toward the original hot spring which had given such life to this place.

Letting the furs around her shoulders fall to her elbows, she saw ahead of her a ring of standing stones. Similar to