21. Chapter 21
R ain. Thunder. Lightning. Wind. The combination made the attempted rescue so damned cold.
Zephyr’s hands, unprotected, were stiff on her broom handle.
As she hovered in the air, far above the Hollow, she searched for any sign of Levina or of Dale.
She chanced letting go of her broom and rubbed her hands together, working out her joints.
She had already thrown up twice. If anyone had been directly below her, she’d apologize later with a cake. And then find a way to apologize for her terrible baking skills.
Whenever she blinked, canyon walls flashed in her periphery for a split-second. Impossible as it was, she felt every one of her scars like they were red hot.
This is all mine , she thought. This storm, this wind I’m fighting against at every turn. This ice-cold damned rain. The dark. It’s mine, and still, I’ll rise.
She opened her eyes, squinting and searching.
There! A lightning strike revealed a small flash of red zipping back and forth just above a cluster of trees.
Zephyr dove, rain stinging her face, until she brought her broom to an abrupt stop.
Dale crashed against her chest, and she tucked him inside her jacket.
“You’ve done well,” she whispered to the exhausted bird. “Rest now. And hang on.”
Zephyr flew in circles above the trees until she finally spotted Levina. Her heart leapt into her throat. Levina flew in erratic sprints, heading straight for a tree before she was able to gain some control and avoid crashing into it.
It was bringing back flashes of the canyon, and Zephyr smacked her forehead, as if that could keep her trauma away. “Levina!” she screamed. She followed Levina as best she could, but because she was also trying to stay safe, she was falling behind.
“Zephyr!” Levina cried back. The rest of her shouting was swallowed by the wind and thunder.
Could she convince Levina to jump? Could she even catch her? Zephyr’s left wrist had never been the same, even after surgery and extensive physical therapy.
It was hard to see, to hang on with frozen hands, and, she realized, as she watched Levina rise up one of the peaks of the White Mountains, it was getting hard to breathe.
Nothing Zephyr screamed into the storm stopped Levina.
Her old broom, the unwilling traitor, suddenly stopped, nearly bucking Levina off, and turned toward a cliff face in the mountains.
Zephyr used that pause to lie against her broom, becoming as aerodynamic as possible despite her trembling core, and fucking flew .
She realized it wouldn’t matter. Her speed, her determination, her courage.
None of it would be enough to save Levina.
She was easily hundreds of feet in the air and closing in on a sheer wall of stone.
Levina didn’t even know her broom was cursed.
She would be blaming the wrong turns, the stops, the drops, all on her own magic.
She wouldn’t let go until it was too late.
Zephyr didn’t think. She dismounted the broom mid-air and launched it like a spear, sending along with it the greatest gust of wind she could magic. The broom flew like a bullet without her, and Zephyr watched it as she hung there, using her magic to keep her in the air.
“Catch it, Levina. You have to catch it!”
She used to hate Jaxon’s broom. It was so shiny .
But in this dark storm, it was enough to catch Levina’s attention.
The girl caught the broom one-handed and she was gone, torn off the cursed broom and now dangling from Jaxon’s still-flying broom but heading away from the cliff.
The cursed broom smashed against the mountainside, an explosion of splinters and sparking, red magic.
Inhale. Exhale. Zephyr had taught Levina how to remount a broom in midair. She would be safe. She was safe. Zephyr was not.
The storm had not ceded, and a sudden gust of wind caught her off balance. Her spell sputtered out, and she fell.
THIS FALL WASN’T SO BAD, but then again, Zephyr hadn’t hit the ground yet. At least there weren’t any canyon shelves to bounce off of. Her body appreciated that. She would, however, likely be impaled by a tree.
She quickly opened her jacket, releasing Dale so he could fly himself to safety. He buzzed above her, panicking. Her arms flailed, sending out gusts of air in an attempt to right herself. But she was spinning and spinning and—
Something hit her stomach so hard she nearly puked. And, inexplicably, the ground beneath her was rushing past in a blur of greens and browns, instead of coming at her. “What the hells—”
“You are so heavy,” Levina complained.
She came back for me , Zephyr realized, and she laughed, cutting it off quickly as she realized she sounded hysterical.
Zephyr hung from Jaxon’s broom handle, folded in half around it.
Levina dared to grin at her as she struggled to keep them steady.
Clutching her stomach and the broom, Zephyr moaned, “Oh, gods. I thought I was impaled.”
“Impaled?” Levina scoffed. “You have so little faith in your student.”
“That’s because my teaching methods are questionable, at best.”
“And your broom sucks . Why was it trying to kill me?”
“That’s a long story. To keep it short and PG-13, it’s because men.”
“Ah.” Levina started their shaky descent. “Hang on. We’re going down.”
“On purpose?”
“Mostly.”
Zephyr simply sighed. “I hope you remember how to fall.”
The broom’s magic gave up on them six feet from the ground. They tumbled off the broomstick together, rolling in a soft, though utterly soaked, meadow.
The adrenaline keeping her sane through all of it left Zephyr at once. She stared at the unforgiving sky, no longer the master of her fear, and began to sob. Levina, for once, was polite enough to pretend not to notice.
THEY CROSSED THE FINISH LINE side by side, with Dale hovering overhead like an over-sized hummingbird. Zephyr’s arm was slung over Levina’s shoulder as they limped forward. There was a scattered crowd, and before anyone noticed they were coming, Zephyr shouted, “What’s our time?”
Shouting and laughing and a lot of crying commenced from the waiting crowd. Karah pushed her way through them all, and as she caught her daughter in a fierce embrace, the clouds parted.
“You’re grounded,” Karah sobbed. “You’re grounded forever .”
Levina didn’t argue. She held tight to her mother as her grandmother watched from her chair, a half-smile cutting Hattie’s wrinkled face.
The rain did not stop, not for everyone. After ruffling Levina’s windswept hair, Neil came for Zephyr. While the storm his sister conjured dissipated, Neil approached in a cloudburst of his own making. Rain spilled in a five-foot radius around him, and Zephyr gladly braced for his downpour.
His eyes shone, and her ribs protested when he kissed her so hard they both tumbled to the ground. She landed underneath him and used his body to shield herself from the torrent.
Her doctor might disapprove, but Neil was worth the pain. Zephyr kissed him back, and she tried to convince herself that kissing in the rain was romantic. Especially when it was magicked by the man holding her so tightly.
Neil pulled back, only to mutter into her neck, “You’re crazy .”
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night,” she recited in return. It was not the official motto—she had looked that up after Hattie had questioned her on it—but Zephyr decided that she loved it, anyway.
“You make me crazy,” he said. His voice broke then, raw and honest and breaking her heart.
“She’s okay. I’m okay.” Zephyr squinted up at him. “None of this is your fault. You know that, right? I mean, I’m not sure how I feel about you digging through my garbage to secretly fix my broom, but you couldn’t have known—”
“This isn’t your fault, either,” he said. When her eyes cut away, he repeated, “This isn’t your fault.”
She almost asked where Jaxon was, but she found she didn’t care.
But she hoped Hattie had given him the evil eye before he had vanished.
Unfortunately, the evidence of his curse had been smashed against a mountain.
Without it, she doubted they’d get justice—at least where the law was concerned.
But later, she could make a few phone calls…
Neil dragged her attention back to him. He kissed her forehead, her nose, and then her mouth. His hands wandered, but only so he could ask if she was hurt anywhere and if he needed to get off her—
“Yes, please. Get off her,” Levina demanded. “As if today couldn’t get any more embarrassing.”
The last of the rain cleared as Neil stood, bringing Zephyr to her feet along with him.
Zephyr posed with her fists pressed against her hips.
“Now, when the Pumpkin Hollow Gazette asks what happened here today, make sure everyone throws the words hero and humble around. I want the front page to be accurate tomorrow. Or I’m not delivering it. ”