Tris spoke a word of power, and a curtain of fire roared around him. No flames lit the dungeon-the fire bathed the Plains of Spirit, scorching hot. The dimonns screeched in fury, pushed back by the flames. At the edges of perception, Tris sensed other, equally dangerous spirits watching, waiting to feast on him should he fail.
Drawing hard from his remaining energy, Tris sent another blast of white-hot power across the spirit plains. A clap like thunder echoed in his mind, nearly blacking him out. Quickly, while he could still follow the fragile
thread back to his mortal body, Tris fled the Plains of Spirit. A tendril of darkness streaked after him, and sharp teeth opened a gash on his ankle. Tris sent a final salvo, burning along the passage between realms with a cloud of fire. He slammed his wardings into place as his spirit rushed fully back to the mortal world, staggering to keep his feet. He waited, magic at the ready. Silence.
Head pounding, Tris took a step toward the door and stumbled, falling hard against a work table. He caught himself and mumbled the words to lower his wardings. He grabbed for the door and opened it, holding on to the door post for support.
The guards reached out to steady him. Tris found the strength to wave them away. "Get me back to my rooms," he rasped. One guard led the way while the other followed. The midnight bells tolled in the tower outside as Tris reached his rooms. When the door was shut behind him, he leaned back against it, closed his eyes, and tried to remember if he had ever felt quite so weary in his life. Sure, he told himself, pushing a sweat-soaked strand of white-blond hair back from his eyes. Last week, when you cleansed the other cell. Then there was the time you got captured by slavers. And those weeks of tent rigging for the caravan when you were trying to stay out of sight. And don't forget the training at the citadel in Principality. It might be easier, he thought, to recall a time when he didn't feel exhausted. Before Jared's coup. Those days seemed like another life, although the anniversary of his family's deaths had not yet passed.
The servants had set a pot of water on the hearth to boil. Gratefully, Tris made himself a cup of tea, mixing in the last of the headache potion his healer left for him. By now, the guards and the healers expected that every cleansing in the tainted areas of the castle would come at great cost to their king. Neither he nor they were surprised when he returned barely able to climb the stairs. But even when expected, the consequences of working strong magic were painful.