Chapter 38 Astrid
Astrid’s ribs feel like they’ve cracked and splintered where her heart has been wrenched from her chest cavity.
Hot tears scorch her cheeks, her throat is raw, but she’s stopped screaming at least. A buzzing fills her ears, her eddying emotions shrink and tuck themselves away deep inside her, and she draws her eyes from Jessa’s lifeless body.
Wrath surges up through her, blistering and ravenous, and she looks for somewhere to direct it.
Time slows as Skylar obliterates a spear in midair, metal reduced to shards, and Astrid watches as she begins to glow, the milky-white tendrils of her power wreathing and swirling around her.
There’s a yank, something urging Astrid toward the dragon heir, and her own Gift rises in answer.
How hadn’t she felt it before? This connection she has to others’ magic.
It’s so obvious now that she’s aware of it.
She’s an Amplifier. Can make others more powerful—Blooded and witch alike.
Then Skylar is running, faster than any human should be able to, like the very wind urges her on, chasing the man in the distance.
The man who murdered Jessa. Astrid grips one of Bastet’s huge shoulder blades, vaulting onto his back like she’s done it a thousand times before.
Her little familiar, her Bastet, is the fabled winged panther of her house.
And he is magnificent. Taller than a stallion.
Larger even than Bjorn. But she doesn’t have the headspace for that right now. The only thing on her mind is death.
“Fly,” she seethes, and Bastet roars in response.
People around them scream, pushing and falling as they try to flee.
Bastet bounds forward, building speed to launch himself into the air.
He leaps and for a moment she is weightless, stomach in her mouth, and she’s gripping Bastet’s gleaming black fur, fighting to stay on as he rises higher and higher, soaring beyond the confines of the ball and toward the pulsing power of Skylar and the ruin she leaves in her wake: the ground bleached white, the trees shriveled, their leaves disintegrating like ash.
“Faster, Bastet,” Astrid demands. His wings pump harder, the powerful muscles of his back strain.
“There,” she shouts. The assassin is outside the castle walls.
How he’s made it past the guards she doesn’t know, but it might explain how he got in.
How he was able to kill her Jessa. The image of her friend, still and bloody on the ground, invades her thoughts, the ragged wound graphic and immovable in her mind’s eye.
Useless.
Useless.
Useless.
SHE WILL NOT MAKE IT OUT OF THE CASTLE. Bastet pants, watching Skylar.
“Yes, she will.” Astrid focuses on the dragon heir, on the thread that connects them; and the taste of smoke fills her mouth, shadows and ash engulfing her senses, and she wills her Gift to flow into Skylar.
Bastet stutters in the air, then rights himself, grunting.
Astrid pares back, not wanting to take too much magic too quickly.
But in this form his power feels infinite to her, as though she could pour her magic into the entire damn Vatran population and neither of them would tire.
Skylar is at the walls. They tower above her, as tall as Mjolnir, but she’s not slowing. With a final burst of speed, Skylar leaps and a yowl bursts from Bastet.
Because the dragon heir is flying.
She’s above the walls, Dreki shouting, then she’s over them, falling back to the earth.
She lands—and the cobbles crack and splinter—but she’s already running again; and though there’s no way Skylar can see the assassin, she tracks him, as if she can scent him.
Astrid marvels at what she’s seeing, at the sheer power emanating from Skylar—she’s never seen anything like it from any magic-wielder.
The assassin is sprinting down steps carved into the side of the cliff face, making for a cove below and—Astrid sees—a boat.
She feels an insidious pleasure bubble within her.
Even if he’s able to outrun Skylar, he can’t outrun Astrid: the sea won’t save him.
The assassin jumps into his boat and is already on the move, his magic driving it atop the water.
Bastet crests the edge of the cliff. There’s a crackle behind her and she whips her head around just as Zryan Teleports in, his eyes wide and on her.
He darts to the cliff’s edge and looks down.
To where Skylar is on the beach, waiting.
Waiting, because the boat is coming back to the shore; the tide is working against all laws of nature, carrying the boat back to where Skylar stands, arms outstretched.
The assassin’s face is reddening; he’s trying with all his might to overpower Skylar’s force, but it is futile.
Skylar is too strong. Every element at her mercy.
HOW? Bastet marvels. Astrid only grins, pouring as much power down the link as she can.
“Get down there, Bastet,” she says, and he plummets to the sand, to Skylar.
They land just as the boat tips the man onto the beach.
He gasps, claws at his throat. Skylar has him caught in the grip of her power.
Astrid remains on Bastet’s back, watching with a grim satisfaction as the man chokes.
She senses Zryan’s presence but doesn’t seek him out.
Instead she gazes at Skylar, and slowly the dragon heir turns to look at her.
Skylar’s eyes are wholly black, her brown skin drained and wan, spidery blue-black veins marking it like a map.
But unlike when Kaida hatched, Astrid can still see the woman behind the petrifying facade.
She’s unmoving, and Astrid knows Skylar’s waiting for her, to see what Astrid wants to do.
Because it was Astrid’s friend, her sister in every way but blood, who died.
Who was murdered by the coward now trembling before them.
And he is Astrid’s kill if she wants it.
Astrid delves into her Gift once more, the well of power so deep now she knows Bastet will barely feel it, not in this new form of his.
She aims it for Skylar, finding that bond between them; it’s an answer to Skylar’s unspoken question and a command.
Make him suffer. Make him pay. Astrid sees Skylar’s eyes widen as Astrid’s Gift fills her up.
Energy pulses from Skylar, blasting harmlessly into Astrid and Bastet.
Zryan shouts something, but she can’t hear what.
The hairs on her arm rise like an army of tiny soldiers as Skylar pulls on her Gift, drawing more of it into her; and Astrid watches in horrified awe as Skylar rises from the ground, hair floating around her head like the flame of a candle.
She levitates above the assassin, her face cold, unfeeling. With a flick of her wrist, the man’s knee disintegrates. He howls. Another flick of her wrist and the other knee is pulverized. He screams, sobbing, begging. Pisses himself.
“Who sent you?” Skylar’s voice doesn’t sound mortal. It echoes across the beach and Astrid shudders.
“Please, please.” He sobs. “They made me do it. Said they would take me away, take my family to the camps if I didn’t.”
Skylar sneers in disgust, and he gasps as she snaps his spine. He passes out, but she holds him up, like some grotesque rag doll, and wakes him somehow, as if she has control of his very person.
“So you took the lives of two others, attempted to kill again, to save yourself,” she spits at him, this time crushing his forearm. He faints again. Astrid laughs, humorless, the sound alien. But she wants more, wants him to hurt as much as she does.
“Don’t let him die yet,” she commands Skylar, and the dragon heir inclines her head in acquiescence. Skylar wakes the man and he retches, his eyes rolling.
Skylar lowers to the sand, walks to the man, and slaps him. His head snaps to the side.
“Who?” she demands.
The man gurgles, trying to speak, but the pain is too much for him.
“Astrid, one of your vials.” Skylar holds out a hand.
Bastet pads over to her as Astrid pulls out a healing solution and hands it to Skylar.
She wrenches the man’s jaw open, smashing the glass vial into his mouth.
Blood spurts from his tongue, his lips, until the potion begins to work, healing the very wound caused by the vial.
His breathing eases, his eyes clear, but the terror doesn’t leave them.
Skylar crouches in front of him. “Who sent you?”
“I don’t know who they were, I don’t know. They were masked and hooded, gave me no name.” Skylar raises her hand but he shouts. “Please, I only know that they came from the castle!”
“How do you know that?” Astrid demands.
“I followed them—they were known to the Dreki at the gates, I’m sure of it.”
Skylar’s head spins, those strange black eyes unnerving as she looks at Astrid.
She rises and slowly pivots to Zryan, who has been observing silently.
He shakes his head in denial, in apology, Astrid doesn’t know or really care.
A dull ache throbs where her heart once was.
She can’t believe that an hour ago she let him kiss her, hold her.
Was reveling in him when she could have been with Jessa, could have protected her friend.
She never should have let Jessa swap masks. Disgust with herself rears up.
“It’s not him,” Astrid says, because that, she does know. Zryan would never do anything like this. Skylar cocks her head at her. “It is not him,” she repeats.
Skylar regards her and then nods. Turns back to the assassin, limp within Skylar’s invisible restraints.
“Astrid.” It’s Zryan, his voice like she’s never heard it. Agonized. He takes a step toward her and Bastet growls, but it’s Skylar who stops him, her power snaking out and blocking his path.
“You don’t go near her.”