20. Chapter 20 #2
And that one word, spat out with not just hatred, but a lot of fear, told her everything.
But she was going to make Jaxon fucking say it.
It didn’t matter that she was a grounded air witch—Zephyr was still a fucking powerful one.
He could use his breath to speak, to tell her the truth, or he didn’t need to breathe at all.
Her magic stole the air from his lungs. A better air witch could have fought her, but not Jaxon. He sputtered and choked until his hands fell away from her face. He dropped to his knees, and she watched until he held up a frantically waving hand.
She released the spell. “Speak, or I’ll just do it again.”
Still on his knees, Jaxon threw his head back and laughed. “Have you not figured it out yet? Thirty-three, your broom is cursed .”
All that wasted time, wondering what she had done wrong. Believing the crash was the result of her own hubris. But it had been Jaxon all along. She demanded, “When was it cursed?” How long had he let her fly a cursed broomstick?
“The night before your last race. You really should have noticed something was wrong sooner. You were supposed to notice sooner, but you’re so fucking stubborn. You just kept flying. Until you nearly killed yourself.”
“My pit chief checked my broom before I flew. I know he did,” Zephyr argued, but she knew Jaxon would shatter that belief.
“You didn’t treat them well. They didn’t even negotiate when I paid them off.
” He stood up suddenly and leaned into her, nearly kissing her ear, and confessed, “I was going to be nice about it. Make you a wife, then make you a mother. A baby would have stopped you from racing, but I ran out of time. My sponsors were going to drop me if I lost again, and you didn’t even care. ”
“So, you tried to hurt me?” Zephyr was suddenly glad she couldn’t see his eyes.
She didn’t want to know if they were crazed or just dead .
If there had been any remorse at all within them.
More disturbing than the attempted murder was the idea that her almost marriage had been nothing but an attempt to ground her, too.
Fighting the urge to vomit or sob, she turned toward the announcer, screaming, “Ground the racers! Ground the racers! ”
Whatever madness that had taken hold of Jaxon waned, allowing logic to creep back in. “You’d better keep quiet about this—” His words turned to choking as Neil’s arm barred around his neck and dragged him away from her.
Neil waited until Jaxon caught his balance and faced him, steady, before his fist caught Jaxon’s jaw. His sunglasses tumbled off as he fell on his side. Zephyr could only think how lucky Jaxon was that Neil was the least “witchy” witch she knew. Neil’s magic could have done so much more damage.
Maybe she should have punched him herself, but stealing the air from his lungs had probably been overkill.
Jaxon dropped to one knee, a hand cradling his jaw. Neil hauled him to his feet and snarled, “My niece is flying with a cursed broomstick because of you!”
“She’s what ?”
No, no, no. Zephyr whirled, finding Karah standing behind them, her eyes welling up with frightened tears. The mother dropped to her knees. Zephyr jumped forward and soothed, “Karah, it’s going to be okay.”
Neil released Jaxon and ran to his sister. He fell to the ground alongside her, grabbing her into a fierce hug and muttering reassurances Zephyr couldn’t make out. Hattie stood from her chair, a blanket wrapped around her as she silently stared, searching, into the sky.
Zephyr averted her eyes from the family.
She needed to move. To push past her shock, and fucking fix this.
Already, thanks to her warning, the race was dissolving.
The announcer, in a booming voice amplified by both magic and technology, ordered the racers to land until they had more information. But what if Levina couldn’t land?
An owl flew out of the tree line, heading straight for Zephyr.
In a puff of white smoke, Tawny shifted from her owl-form to her human one and landed awkwardly on the grass.
She rubbed her eyes, blurting out, “Every racer is accounted for, except yours. Zephyr, she wouldn’t land.
She just kept rising toward the mountains, and I couldn’t keep up with her. Dale’s with her, but he’s tired.”
Thunder crashed violently, almost hiding the heartbreaking wail of a grieving mother.
“You have to hold it together,” Neil shouted through the rising wind. He and Karah became the eye of a storm while the sky over Pumpkin Hollow blackened with clouds. Neil begged, “Karah! Please!”
Zephyr ran to him, to Jaxon . So pathetic. His broom lay forgotten on the ground, left there from when Neil had hit him. She scooped up the broom and held it out to him. “Jaxon, go get her. Dale should be with her. Just look for him—”
“You’re going to ask me to do this? After everything you’ve done to me?” Jaxon hissed.
Rain poured. There was no softness to it, no lead up.
Within seconds, Zephyr was already drenched, but she could only think about Levina.
How was she going to fly in such weather?
On a cursed broom? The storm was moving in fast, and at Karah’s unwilling command.
Karah needed to settle her emotions, her fears, but for a woman already holding it together by a thread, with her daughter’s life in peril, what hope did she have?
Zephyr tried again. “She’s just a kid . I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll race for you. I’ll never race again. I’ll pretend everything is okay.” Tears, hot and free-flowing, blurred her vision. “I’ll be good. Just please , save her .”
And Jaxon did take his broom from her, but only to shove it against Zephyr’s chest, nearly toppling her. “In this weather? It’s suicide, but, please, Thirty-Three, be my fucking guest.”
Lightning flashed, illuminating half of his face, and he had never looked so inhuman.
Zephyr’s hand curled around the handle of his broom.
There was a strange calm in her rapid heart.
She nodded. Of course . How could she trust Jaxon with Levina’s life, anyway?
Maybe she was a coward now, but she would always be better than him.
“Okay.” She shook her head, staring into his eyes. They were dead. She spat at him, “You could win every race for the rest of your life and still be a fucking loser.”
She spun away from him, and her feet took her toward the start line until Neil caught her. He pleaded, “You don’t have to do this. Let me calm Karah down first—”
“She won’t calm down until Levina is safe.” Zephyr pulled away, and he let her. “And we both know that I have to do this.”
She saw it hurt him to let her go, to risk herself when he could not, so Zephyr didn’t give him a choice. She rose into the storm.
The wind almost drowned out Neil’s strangled plea. “Zephyr, come back to me.”