Chapter IV. Ellery
IV
ELLERY
SUMMER
Freezing wind stung Ellery’s bare arms and face, threatening to wrench her training wand from her grasp. Cold seeped through her, and a disarming power tugged deep in her chest, faint yet oddly familiar.
Around the square, people bolted from the Winter magic whirling in the street.
The ghast within was still half-formed, hunched low and curled in on itself.
Fractals of ice circled it in a deadly, impenetrable vortex, snapping into place atop jagged limbs and a crudely arched spine.
Its silhouette grew with every heartbeat.
They had a minute, maybe less, before the monster finished spawning.
Ellery swore and glanced around. Cars skidded to a halt as their passengers joined the fleeing crowds, leaving behind stagnant vehicles belching exhaust. For seemingly the first time in history, Mercester Square had gone dark.
Ellery cast a light and shouldered against the tide of people as she rushed not away from danger, but toward it.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Barrow gasped, stumbling after her. His freckled cheeks and nose already gleamed with frost.
“We have to kill this monster as soon as it wakes. Before it can summon a winterscurge.”
“But Gallamere’s NDC patrols—”
“Are on leave for Summer. By the time they show up, we’ll all be dead.”
Winterghasts slaughtered with impunity, not for sustenance, but with a cruel, unceasing violence that could only be stopped by violence in return. And their storms could annihilate countless lives if left unchecked.
Barrow’s eyes bulged. “You mean it’s up to—to us.”
Ellery recognized his fear. After the fall of Nordmere, she knew it well. But when she’d arrived in Gallamere after losing everything, the Order had promised it was safe. No winterghast had breached the city limits in centuries, not since the Thirty Years’ Chill.
Until now.
Ellery’s own fear crept up inside her, as brutal and paralyzing as the cold. But she’d faced a winterghast before. She could face one again. And based on Barrow’s reputation, she’d likely be facing it alone.
No sooner had she pointed her wand at the maelstrom than it burst apart. The fully formed winterghast rose onto its hind legs until it loomed above them, then unsheathed twin sets of claws.
All ghasts bore different animalistic appearances, and this one resembled a mutated bear carved of ice, with a narrow, hideous face and shards bristling like fur down its back.
Blue eyes beamed at them like floodlights, and silver Winter magic emanated from its body, casting the abandoned cars and blacked-out buildings in an eerie glow.
Bile rose in Ellery’s throat as its jaw unhinged, wide, too wide, revealing rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth.
She readied an attack, but before she could cast it, a powerful burst of nature magic shot at the creature’s chest.
Stunned, Ellery twisted around to glimpse Barrow clasping his wand with two hands. Again and again, his spells blasted at the beast, glittering white. The gusts tore a hole through its stomach and the monster roared, flailing back.
Maybe Barrow had more skill than she’d given him credit for. But he’d clearly still skipped some crucial classes.
“Wind will only delay it,” she called out. The winterghast hunched over the curb, its wound already sealing. “Use heat. Light. Fight Winter with Summer, yeah?”
At first, Ellery wasn’t sure he’d heard. He only stared, stricken, at the monster. Then Barrow nodded and widened his stance. “Got it.”
Together, they pointed their wands at the beast. Ellery thought of warmth and light, sun and flame. But as their fire spells flickered to life, the ghast tipped back its head and let out a deafening howl.
A winterscurge descended.
The snow thickened, and the wind accelerated as the temperature plummeted.
Across the square, the neon movie theater marquee groaned and crashed to the ground.
Two billboards followed it, while a nearby newsstand blew over, its contents flying into the air.
A claustrophobic darkness prickled against Ellery’s skin like a tangible force.
Streetlights and starlight vanished, smothered by the storm.
Ellery’s spell winked out. Something else stirred inside her again, something terribly familiar.
It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be.
Beside her, Barrow launched a torrent of flame at the ghast, far larger than hers, but it snuffed out, too.
“It’s not working,” Barrow croaked. White blisters of frostbite already swelled across his knuckles, and as he gasped, a frozen sheath netted across his lips.
“I know!” Ellery tasted ice with every breath, yet her own skin bore no marks of frostbite.
Magic surged in her veins, pushing toward the surface, as though trying to rupture her skin from the inside out.
The winterghast roared again, and for a moment, its cry sounded not horrifying, but hypnotic, like a song she’d heard before.
The creature lunged for them.
Ellery and Barrow dove in opposite directions. The ghast’s claws raked across the asphalt where Ellery had just been standing. But as she whirled to face it again, she stumbled, slipped, and fell painfully onto her back. Her vision spun.
“Barrow,” she gasped.
On the creature’s other side, Barrow had toppled to one knee, his training wand shuddering against the wind. Spell after spell erupted toward the monster, but the ghast recovered from each blow instantly, strengthened by the storm’s power.
“I-I can’t do this anymore.” The frostbite had spidered up Barrow’s neck, and his chest heaved as he braced a hand against the ground. His panic seemed a living thing all its own.
Ellery stared at the ice-encrusted chassis of a nearby car, shattered headlights staring out like vacant eyes. They weren’t strong enough. They were going to die here. Them and everyone else in Mercester Square.
“I-I’m going to try something, all right?” Ellery rasped. “Be ready.”
“Try whatever you want,” Barrow choked.
The winterghast lumbered closer. Ellery squeezed her eyes shut, tears freezing before they could trail down her cheeks.
And just as she had back in Nordmere, she stopped fighting her magic.
Instead, she surrendered.
The power within her coalesced, brutally cold, as she desperately fed it into her training wand. And then Ellery recognized the winterghast’s magic. It was as though its ice coated her own skin, as though its roar was her own voice.
Ellery gathered it all, her magic, her terror, and cast the strongest spell she could.
Instantly, the wind slowed. The cold ebbed, warmth flooding through her until Ellery’s cheeks stung not with snow or sleet, but with melted tears.
She opened her eyes.
The winterghast towered over her, utterly still.
A fierce white light shone from her training wand, revealing the creature’s fearsome snarl, its fangs perfectly positioned to rip out her throat.
Its piercing blue eyes were dulled. Snow hung around her and Barrow, twinkling like constellations, as if they stood within the night sky.
The monster was Winter itself, a brutal horror, the villain of every Aldrish story.
And she’d frozen it.
She scrambled to her feet and cried, “Now!”
Immediately, Barrow pushed himself upright. Sunlight bloomed out of his wand like a flower unfurling, blazing brighter and brighter until it speared through the creature’s throat.
The winterghast wailed, thrashing against Ellery’s hold.
But its sounds weakened as its body began to melt.
Its blue eyes winked out like dying stars.
Steam hissed into the air as its chest collapsed in on itself, its claws clattering apart until its body crumbled into a heap of slush at their feet.
The storm collapsed alongside it. The winds quelled immediately, frost misting away, snow pattering into a soft rain. It mixed with Ellery’s tears and slid down the back of her dress. She scarcely cared, shuddering with relief as the city came back into focus.
The incandescence of Barrow’s magic swept across Mercester Square, banishing every last trace of the storm.
It illuminated mangled streetlamps and dented cars, smashed windows and scattered trash bins.
It shone upon the broken marquee, sparkled in every puddle, every windshield, every shard of glass.
Yet he was the brightest shape in Ellery’s vision. He rose to his feet, panting but steady. Water streamed down the curve of his brow, the hollows of his throat. He looked valiant. He looked radiant.
A final gust rustled out a death rattle, then stilled.
The winterscurge was gone. The winterghast was slain.
Mercester Square was safe. Gallamere was safe.
Barrow lowered his gaze to hers. For several heartbeats, neither of them looked away. Both of their training wands had broken—hers splintered, his snapped clean in half.
The longer Ellery stared at him, the less she recognized the boy whose reputation preceded him for all the wrong reasons, whose tragedy clung to him like a shadow.
Instead, she saw a powerful magician—shaken but still standing.
“Fuck,” Barrow said at last.
Ellery swallowed. “Fuck, indeed.”
She swayed, and Barrow caught her sleeve. Her entire body trembled, her clothes soaked and freezing. His warm grip melted the frost on her forearm. Steam sizzled through the air.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Y-you’re…”
Hollering drowned out the rest of his words. People flooded out of nearby buildings, their voices rising in a boisterous uproar. They pushed open storm shutters. They rushed from within the darkened movie theater and the department stores, from where they’d huddled in alleys.
The crowds were clapping and cheering—for them.
But Ellery couldn’t muster any true triumph.
For years, she’d believed her childhood was nothing more than a twisted, unreliable nightmare. Until tonight, when she’d surrendered to the very thing she’d convinced herself had never existed at all.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, pulling back.
She turned away from Barrow, from the growing crowd, and fled.