Read The Fifth Magic (Book 1) for Free Online Page B

around them.
    "Stop, Sinjin! Please, stop. I don't need to know. We can go home now!"
    Her words were lost to him. Comets whispered of their power, enticing him. The energy flowed through him as he had always wished it would; only it didn't feel at all like he'd imagined it. Drawing the air toward them, he fed the waves and made them taller, stronger, and more devastating when they struck the fortress. The mighty monolith swayed in concert with the waves.
    Then he saw the entrance and pointed. Kendra looked back as if he were crazy; then she shrugged and urged Gerhonda downward.
    "No!" Sinjin screamed, knowing the entrance was not yet clear enough to safely traverse. Much more had been visible when he and Valterius had last been there; right after his mother had made him swear to never tell anyone she still lived. Gerhonda showed her courage by swooping into the blackness only slightly darker than the obsidian stone surrounding it. Sinjin waited. Valterius was poised to follow, and he dived before Sinjin was ready. A monstrous wave crashed on the Black Spike just before Valterius thrust himself toward the still emerging portal. Cold overwhelmed all other sensations. Valterius swam deeper at the same time the water receded. The dragon swam as quickly as he could, knowing the water would return with deadly force. It roared up behind them, slamming cold air against Sinjin's back. They were thrust upward toward jagged stone formations, which supported the dock and stairs above.
    Narrowly avoiding lethal and unforgiving stone, Valterius and Sinjin broke the surface a moment later. He sputtered and gasped for breath. Kendra sat on the dock next to Gerhonda; neither appeared pleased.
    "Were you trying to kill yourself?" Sinjin asked before he could think better of it.
    "You pointed at the entrance," Kendra said. "Far be it from me to disobey your orders."
    "That certainly wasn't an order," Sinjin said, but he was cut off by a deep and guttural growl that made Sinjin's bones vibrate.
    "You are not welcome here," a voice deeper than his mother's usual voice said. It was louder and more powerful than any human voice alone. "You have come uninvited."
    "I cannot keep this boiling secret any longer!" Sinjin cried. "I have kept my word, and I've told no one. But I can put my wife off no longer. She deserves to know, and I deserve a life without secrets. It's tearing us apart."
    The silence was heavy with anxiety. Kendra showed signs of shock, realizations, perhaps even regret. "I don't need to know," Kendra said. "I'm sorry. I didn't understand."
    Again the deep growling made Sinjin's teeth hurt, even in the following silence. It was a trial of the soul. He wanted to give his wife the respect she deserved and still be a good son; that last thought hurt physically. No one wanted to be a bad son or daughter, but all felt that shame at some point or another. For Sinjin, it was intensified. He knew there would be consequences. He didn't know yet what they would be, but the world was falling apart anyway. How could this make things any worse?
    "Kendra must know," he said. "She must know what it took to make me keep secrets from her. Too much has happened, to many feelings hurt because I made a promise I shouldn't have made."
    "No, Sinjin. Stop. Please don't," Kendra said. "I'm so sorry. I could not see your pain."
    "This ends now," he said, more determined about this than anything he'd ever done in his life. Though he hated to stand up to his mother, she needed to respect his marriage.
    "He's right," came his mother's voice, and the sound of it made him cry. So many emotions washed over him as she spoke, he could only weep. "I asked you to keep my most precious secret. It was too much to ask; I knew it when I asked it of you. There is a kind heart in you, and I do not fault you, but I had hoped you would last a while longer.
    "How did you survive?" Kendra asked Catrin, her face gone pale.
    "Kyrien and the feral queen mated. It was a violent