33. Morgan
The rain’spelting us now, each drop stinging like tiny needles.
“Are you sure you can’t fire travel with both of us?” Blaze asks. “Bring us to the opposite side of the valley?”
I hesitate, thinking.
“I’ve only ever done it alone,” I tell him. “Adding another person could… well, I don’t know what it could do. Drain my magic? Leave you here alone? Hurt you?”
“Your magic is strong.” He takes my hands and squeezes them, as if giving me strength. “And if you end up on the other side of the valley, you can just come back, and we can try something else.”
I glance across the valley. The storm is intensifying, lightning streaking across the sky like the veins of the gods, and it makes my stomach fill with dread.
Do it, the wind seems to call out to me. Fire travel with him. Hurt him. Turn him to ash. Kill him to save yourself.
It doesn’t matter that it’s basically impossible to kill a witch with fire, since it’s the element we control. Fear travels up to my throat anyway, and it takes everything in me to swallow it down. Fear for Blaze’s safety, and because this magic is invading my mind, forcing me to consider injuring this man who I’m growing to care about more than I thought possible in such a short timeframe.
“No,” I say, both to Blaze and the wind, yanking my hands out of his.
Frustration splashes across his face, but at least the wind shuts up.
“Fine,” he says. “Any other ideas?”
“Fire shields?” It comes out more like a question than a statement. “We can use our fire to repel the rain and throw off the lightning.”
“How do we make fire shields?” he asks.
“Just call on your fire magic, and… picture it surrounding you like a shield,” I say. “Want to give it a test run right now? Before we cross?”
He nods, determination etching his features. “Let’s do it.”
Closing my eyes, I focus on the warm, flickering energy within me. I envision a flame, small and fierce, growing from the palm of my hand. Then, with a deep breath, I push that image outward, expanding it until it envelops me in its warm embrace.
I open my eyes to see a shimmering veil of fire circling me, the rain hissing as it evaporates on contact.
“Amazing,” Blaze says, his eyes wide with awe and excitement.
Then, focusing on the palm of his hand, he mirrors my actions.
Come on, I think. Work.
A fiery shield springs up around him, wilder than mine, with sparks flying off in random directions. But it holds strong, so it should be just as effective. The shield is simply a reflection of his personality. Bold, wild, daring, and brave.
Everything I’ve always wanted to be, but didn’t feel like I was until leaving the Blood Coven to fight for the good of the world instead of for personal gain at the expense of civilization as we know it.
“Looks like it works,” he says, his grin breaking through the tension.
We share a nod, and without another word, begin to move forward. There are a few groups of trees throughout the valley, but for the most part, we’re exposed to whatever the elements throw at us.
The shields hold strong, repelling the rain and lighting our path through the dark, stormy valley. It takes effort to hold them up, but we’re doing it.
Then, the air grows thicker, the sky darker, the temperature colder. The lightning becomes more aggressive, striking closer and closer.
A bolt strikes alarmingly close, zapping the ground merely ten feet ahead.
I jump, and my shield sputters, giving the rain a hole to pelt down on my face.
A glance at Blaze shows that his shield is weaker than when we started, too.
Fire travel to the end of the valley, the wind urges as it swirls around me. Leave him. Save yourself. Let the lightning take care of him. He’d do it to you.
Panic seizes me, rain slapping my face as I imagine doing everything the wind’s howling in my ears.
Blaze grabs my arm, pulling me out of the trance and pointing to a cluster of trees. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get under there. Take a moment to regroup.”
“Good plan,” I say, and we sprint toward the makeshift shelter, our fire shields flickering against the increasing ferocity of the rain and wind.
As we duck under the dense foliage, relief fills me to the bone. The rain’s assault softens, and for a moment, we can take a second to catch our breath.
But as I steady myself, the wind’s already picking up speed, sending the leaves at the edges of our shelter swirling into the storm.
“This won’t hold for long,” I say.
Blaze looks around, his expression grim. “This storm clearly isn’t natural,” he says. “I don’t think it will stop until we get across the valley.”
As if to punctuate his point, a bolt of lightning strikes a tree nearby, splitting it down the center with a deafening crack.
The ground shakes, the air smelling of charred wood.
My heart stops, panic tearing at the edges of my vision.
“Do you have any blood spells that can help us?” I ask Blaze, although I can’t imagine what he could possibly do to stop an entire storm.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I have to write the spells in Latin. I haven’t memorized most of the words.”
“Right.” I glance at his pack. “We need the book.”
“You want to bring it out in this?” He looks around in horror, and for the first time, he seems protective over the book that a few days ago, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with.
Still, he has a good point. The rain is coming down in droves. If it gets on the ink and smears it, it could ruin the book forever.
Although, if the lightning strikes us, we could be ruined forever, too.
I curse internally.
What are we supposed to do? Because even if we’re able to read the book without ruining it—which I have low faith of happening—the text is so small, and the writing is so dense. It’ll be nearly impossible to find something like that on the fly.
“You know a few spells,” I say to Blaze. “Tell me some. Maybe we can make something work.”
He runs a hand through his wet hair, racking his brain for something—anything—that could be of use. “Somnus,” he says. “It means sleep. Fumus creates steam. Recludam means unlock?—”
Thunder claps from above, jolting him out of concentration.
“Anything else?” I ask, unable to think of how to use those spells to get out of our current predicament.
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head, frustrated, and kicks the dirt beneath his feet.
I look back out, just in time to see multiple bolts of lightning strike down on the field.
We can’t make a run for it.
I know the chances of being hit by lightning are technically slim… but that’s not magical lightening in a valley that supposedly makes people vanish.
Blaze doesn’t seem like he’s going to pull any more spells out of thin air.
Leave him, the wind says again, stronger in the storm. Fire travel to the end of the valley. One of you dead is better than two of you dead. Let nature take care of it, so you don’t have his blood on your hands. He’s going to betray you eventually, anyway. You’ll be doing the right thing.
I look around, dread returning to my stomach at the worsening storm. The leaves are being blown away. The lightning is getting closer, and a bolt of it strikes the tree next to us, splitting it in two.
But it doesn’t make me want to abandon Blaze.
It makes me want to focus, and it helps me push the wind’s poisonous words from my mind.
There’s only one thing I can do to try getting us out alive.
Use my blood magic to scry for a word he can use to get out of here.
It’s not the ideal way to reveal my secret. But abandoning him is not an option, so what other choice do I have?
“I can help,” I say, and then I lower myself to the ground, pull out my dagger, slice open my palm.
I don’t look at him as I do.
It’s just me, my magic, and my desperation to get us out alive.
Focusing on the ground, I make a fist, squeezing the blood out of my palm and onto the mud. Water is pooling on the ground, but I don’t have much to work with here. Hopefully I’ll see something before my blood washes away.
“Show us a way,” I whisper, and then my magic does something I’ve never seen before.
It glows.
I expected it to give me a word for Blaze to use to get us out of here, but instead, the light weaves through the valley, a safe passage shielded from the storm’s fury.
I stare out at it in awe.
“That’s it,” I breathe. “The way out.”
“What?” Blaze’s eyes are alight with curiosity, confusion, and undeniable anger.
I can deal with that later. For now…
“The path.” I stand, pocketing my dagger, looking out to the glowing trail ahead. “Come on. We have to follow the path.”
“What path?” He squints into the darkness, but it’s clear he’s at a loss.
He doesn’t see it. Which means…
“Just follow me,” I say, and when I move forward to test it out, it’s surreal, like stepping onto a bridge made of moonlight. “Stay close, and step where I step. I’ll guide us through.”
He hesitates, and then he reaches for my hand—the hand that a minute earlier, was dripping with my blood. “Okay,” he says. “Lead the way.”
I can barely look at him as I tighten my grip.
We’re going to have a lot to discuss after we cross this valley.
But first, we have to successfully cross it.
One step at a time. Literally.
And so, I steady my breathing, focus on the path ahead, and lead us forward.