Ice Like Fire Read Online Free PDF

skin in thin layers that feel, somehow, just as Winterian as snow. That does little to abate the tension coiling in my gut when the tunnel before us ends at an opening.
    The other miners’ lanterns light up the puckered wall, clearly an unexpected expansion by the way rocks sit in haphazard clusters of debris along the ground. The remaining Winterian miners seem uninjured, which easessome of my worry. They all stand in the tunnel, gaping at the crack in the wall, too afraid to move inside, too awed to pull away.
    When they see us, they step back, all eyes snapping to me. But I’m just as afraid, just as awed, the lantern trembling in my grip, light pulsing in dizzying flashes.
    Someone made this space. Beyond the opening, perfect diamond cuttings turn the gray-black ground into a marble-like floor. The walls around the room are the same jagged rocks as the rest of the mine—but even that seems intentional, as it draws all focus to the back of the room, where the stone has been flattened into a smooth wall.
    In that wall stands something that makes me gasp with astonishment.
    I slide forward, past the crumbled heaps of rock, depositing my light at the threshold since the lanterns behind me brighten this new space. The moment I step into the room, the air crackles against my skin, a jolt like the electric charge of a thunderstorm preparing to unleash cascades of lightning. I shiver, bumps rising along my arms.
    The air hangs heavy and humid with magic.
    And I think . . . I think I’m looking at the door to the chasm.
    Theron touches my elbow and I start. I didn’t know he’d followed me into the room, but he seems the only one brave enough—or stupid enough—to venture after me. Everyone else remains pinned in the entrance, gaping in shockedhorror at the same thing that draws my attention like a gnat to a flame.
    A door towers over us, massive and thick, made of the same gray stone as the rest of the room. Four images are carved in the center of the door—one, a tangle of flaming vines; another, books stacked in a pile; another, a simple mask; and the last, the largest one centered above the smaller three, a mountaintop bathed in a beam of light with words arching over it, THE ORDER OF THE LUSTRATE .
    I step closer, my boots tapping against the stone floor.
    A beam of light hitting a mountaintop. Where have I seen that before?
    And who is the Order of the Lustrate?
    Theron hisses. “Golden leaves.” He slides forward a step. “Are those . . . keyholes?”
    I grab his arm, keeping us both from going too far into the room. This place feels dangerous, like it’s waiting for something, and I don’t want to find out what.
    But he’s right—in the center of each of the three small carvings sits a narrow keyhole.
    “Do you think this is it?” I whisper, barely loud enough to stir the air.
    Theron’s hand encases mine where I hold his arm and he nods, absently amazed.
    “Yes,” he says, smiling like a piece of him is rising up over the walls of fear that built within him. “We found it. We’re going to be okay now.” He looks to me, back to thedoor. “We’re going to be okay . . .”
    I glance over my shoulder at everyone still clogged by the entrance. Sir’s eyes meet mine, and I wheeze on the choking knowledge of what exactly this means.
    The last time our world had more than just the eight Royal Conduits, the Decay was created. People began using their individual conduits for things that harmed one another, murder and theft and evil, and that birthed a dark magic that infiltrated people’s minds, encouraged them to use their magic for evil, and started a cycle of despair.
    And when we open that door, if it does guard the magic chasm . . .
    We could be wrong. It could just be a . . . room. In a mountain?
    What else could it be?
    My throat clamps shut. This really is it, isn’t it? I should have stopped Noam long ago. I shouldn’t have let him do this to my kingdom—how did we even find this?
    Theron’s