Shadow City Read Online Free PDF Page A

back on the feather’s magic. She needed to fall.
    According to Scooter, most people found the door to the abyss between worlds accidentally when they tripped over the threshold of life and death. He wanted Max to find the door so that they could travel together. She had no idea where or why or for how long. He wasn’t saying. As for the door, she wasn’t at all clear about why he just didn’t open it for her. With all his power, he was perfectly capable. But he said she had to do it herself, and since she had no choice, she agreed. So, he was doing his best to bring her to the brink of death. A couple of times, she’d thought she’d gone over the edge, but he’d brought her back. It’s good to be a god. If only he had a better way of showing her the path into the abyss. Apparently, he wasn’t omnipotent. Too bad for her.
    Suddenly, time seemed to stop. For a split second, Max could feel every artery, vein, and capillary in her body. Each cell seemed lined in diamond fire. She caught her breath—slow, so very slow—pain igniting as fiery needles pierced her healing lungs. She thrust it away impatiently. She needed to think.
    Other pain gnawed at her. It caught her head in a steel bear trap. A searing ache wrapped her ribs, and her tongue throbbed where she’d bitten into it. She tasted the coppery flavor of her blood, and her stomach lurched. For once, she could neither ignore the hurt nor draw strength from it. Her mind wouldn’t focus. Instead, she pulled away, retreating down into the depths of herself, into that cold place where she didn’t have to feel anything at all. It was her fortress and armor. It gave her strength to do what she had to do when things got too hard.
    She slipped inside, feeling everything else slide away. Her focus sharpened. She could still feel every cell of herself, her blood pulsing, her heart squeezing and releasing. She visualized a door again and reached for it. Her hand went through it, and the vision dissolved.
    Fury flared inside her and then tugged away into the frigid chill of her inner fortress.
    Into the frigid chill of her inner fortress.
    Realization struck her at the same moment she bounced onto the ground. She lay there, the burst of agony a distant feeling. She concentrated on her newfound knowledge.
    Ever since she’d been tricked into becoming a Shadowblade, Max had used her inner fortress as a haven, a way to survive the endless torture, the helpless fear, the hate, and the betrayal. In order to overcome Max’s furious resistance, Giselle had tortured her until she could no longer fight the layering on of the Shadowblade spells. In order to keep herself sane as the years went on, Max had created the fortress. But now she knew it wasn’t just a bulwark of emotional and mental protection; it was her door.
    Scooter was right. He couldn’t show her the entrance into the abyss. But she’d found it anyway.
    She reached out to her body, still hyper-aware of every sinew and hair. She gathered herself and
yanked
. It was like dragging a house through the eye of a needle. She strained, refusing to give up. She might never find this clarity, this control over her body, again.
    The world
wrenched
.
    Max tumbled down into the dark cold of her stronghold. Everything went black.
    She found herself hanging motionless in a starless night. In the distance, tangles of colored thread and thicker yarns spilled across the sea of ink. Flutters of rainbow caught her attention. Streaks and tatters, droplets, and bits of confetti. They swirled and drifted. Clouds of them formed and then dribbled away in streams or dove like flocks of starlings. They spun on invisible whirlwinds and fell like rain.
    This was the abyss between worlds. The tangles of thread were pathways to other worlds. Scooter had told her that much. The dancing colors were bits of magic. All around her, she could feel movement, like ocean currents. They moved in all directions, pulling and pushing at her. She held