Chapter 31 #2
A growl erupted out of him, and Puko was making his alarmed croaking sounds.
Thain lifted me and covered me with my cloak, hiding my face.
Then he ran. His arms were bigger than my legs, and he easily swept us through Thanantholl.
I was rolled into his chest and couldn’t see the guards at the gate, but they didn’t speak a word as Thain ran past.
I’d had no idea the fae could run like this, or maybe it was his own wind that carried us through the streets.
I heard a few shouts of surprise, but no protests.
The shivering increased as I continued my own battle with the magic that was about to explode around me. I sobbed, and he gripped me tighter.
“Hold on.” His chest rumbled with the words. “Keep doing your breathing, focus on that.”
I swallowed and nodded into him. I brought up Schula’s voice in my head counting one . . . two . . . three . . . one . . . two . . . three . . .
“Good, Wren. You’re doing good. Keep breathing, keep it in,” he rumbled.
The sounds of the city flowed by me, but I barely registered them.
I knew we traveled over bridges and around corners, but where we were I had no idea.
It felt like hours as Thain ran with me in his arms, but I knew the pain was skewing my perception of time.
All I could do was count. One . . . two . . . three . . .
His body slowed down as he stopped somewhere. There were mumbling voices and a panicked knocking of wood, and soon after that I felt more hands on me.
“What in the hells?” It was Eberon. “Inside, by the fire.”
“Wren?” Schula’s voice was panicked.
“Schula, cool her back. Eberon, her body is freezing,” Thain ordered.
I was set on a cushion by the fire in Eberon’s house. A gaggle of other fae from the house were staring from every doorway.
“Out,” Thain snapped, and they scattered.
“What happened to her?” Schula’s cool hands ran up my shirt and over my seal and sucked in a breath. “She’s scalding!”
“I reached out my magic to hers,” Thain answered.
Eberon held my hands and forehead with his blissful heat. “Are you sure that’s all you did?”
They were in danger, and all I was managing to do was shiver uncontrollably while trying to contain my burning power and not throw up again.
“Help me close it,” Thain pleaded. “This is so much larger than expected. She’s not ready, and we have to get her somewhere safe to open it.”
The strain in his voice hurt to hear. I had thought the pain could get no worse until that moment when my heart tore open and bled for my stupid secrets.
“Are you insane?” Schula hissed. “The pressure is killing her!”
“She’s here because of me!” Thain’s tone sharpened.
“I brought her here. I convinced her to come to Thanantholl. She’s only being dragged around the whole of the Wyldes because I found a lost fae and took her to my king.
Now all the courts have eyes on her, and she’s burning herself up to remove these wretched markings because of me. ”
“Do it,” Eberon said, straining to warm my face. “She’s not ready. Thanantholl isn’t ready. What do we need to do?”
“It’s a simple in-and-out of power. Her magic is trying to come out; we push it back in and add strength to the markings.” Schula moved to cover more of my markings with blissful ice.
“That won’t affect how the seal works?” Eberon asked.
“I put a little power into it when she first crossed into the Summer Lands,” Schula said. “It worked then.”
The next sensation I had was like being put in a bubble.
I screamed, but my voice didn’t come out, or I couldn’t hear it over the rushing in my ears.
The magic was being pushed back into me, and it was like daggers of ice against a flood of fire that wanted out so badly it would rip me in two to escape.
The seal was being repaired, or reinforced, or whatever needed to be done, and at last the pressure was easing.
Eberon’s heat was finally seeping into the skin on my forearms where he held on, and Schula’s cool fingers relieved my back.
Everything throbbed with magic. It clawed at the edges of the seal, trying to get out again. Thankfully, the pressure was muffled under whatever they did, because I finally felt I could breathe.
“It’s a patch job, but it will hold for a while,” Schula said.
“She has to let this out somewhere.” Eberon ran his hands along my arms as he spoke softly, a furnace warming my frozen skin.
“The Sangolins,” Thain said.
Eberon scoffed. “DuVarick isn’t going to just—”
“He isn’t going to know.” Schula cut him off.
“Schula, you don’t have to come,” Thain said.
“I’m coming no matter where it is,” she insisted.
“Then pick somewhere else!” Eberon snapped.
“Where else can she let out this much fire and not set the Wyldes aflame?” Thain asked.
Eberon pressed his jaw shut, frowning at the others. I wiped the sweat off my brow, still breathing slowly as though I were meditating. One . . . two . . . three . . .
“The Sangolins are a wasteland of rock and snow.” Schula placed a cool hand on my forehead. “You can burn it all off and no one will be hurt, do you understand, Wren?”
I nodded weakly.
“It’s perfect.” Thain gave Eberon a look.
“DuVarick isn’t going to like this,” Eberon grumbled.
“I can handle DuVarick,” Thain said, low and dangerous. “She’s invited to the Winter Lands at any rate.”
“Not for this!” Eberon said, exasperation seeping from every word.
“What will he care? We were on our way to him anyway.” Schula continued to rub soothing cool circles on my skin with her fingers.
“A show of power like that? He’s going to want . . .” Eberon looked at me. Then Thain. Schula avoided eye contact.
“Even he has rules to follow,” Thain insisted.
“Who?” I blinked. I was going to ask more, but my head was swimming. Schula’s concerned face swirled in my vision, and then everything went black.