Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Blair instinctively clenched her fists. Had she unknowingly drawn her dormant power up and revealed it to Evelyn and Kade? The shadows didn’t whisper across the cobblestones. The wind didn’t sing as it tunneled down the alley.
“Burn it to the ground!” Circe’s voice rang down the street. “Show all of Nūa what happens to witches who turn against us!”
Blair’s heart dropped like a stone into her gut. Knowing flushed through her.
“No,” she breathed, rushing forward.
“Blair, wait,” Evelyn hissed.
She didn’t listen. Didn’t care. It was too late to stop her. Blair stepped onto the street, revealing them all, and stumbled to a halt. Pain pierced her heart, and the winds surrounding Nūa howled.
Flames engulfed Blair’s townhome. Beams groaned and split. Windows burst as flames curled out to scorch the brick. She felt the death of each of her books as if their stories were tied to her soul.
Vermilion climbed and devoured the many years of Blair’s work and reduced it to cinder. In a world where she didn’t belong, where she was constantly reminded of her otherness, those four walls and three levels had been her one place to find solitude.
Hers.
“Blair, we have to move!” Kade hissed, war raging in his eyes.
“That is my life. Everything I’ve worked for . . . It’s gone,” she said, words brittle.
Haunted whispers filtered on the wind, like Blair’s ancestors, the ones who’d endured the Great Burnings, had awakened at Circe’s atrocity.
The Elder stood ahead of her townhome, and the light of Blair’s burning life painted the Elder’s haunting, sharp face in a fiery glow.
Fifteen Guards stood on either side of the street, forcing Blair’s neighbors, who had been evacuated from their homes, to move back.
Children cried and clung to their parents’ legs, shivering in their sleeping gowns.
A tentative hand grasped her wrist. “Blair.”
Evelyn’s anguished tone ignited her anger. Her sister was the closest to lash out against.
“This is your fault,” she bit out.
Her sister flinched. Believed her words. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“Get them!” Circe shouted.
“Stars above.” Kade’s sword cried as he unsheathed it.
Blair whirled, and despite her anger and all the hurtful, sharp-edged words stuck in her throat, she dragged Evelyn close, intent on protecting her sister.
“We need to leave,” Kade called over his shoulder. “Now.”
“But Maxie and Bleu—”
Rook cawed from above, and the thunderous hooves of a gray beast echoed down the street. Kade’s horse sprinted towards them, and the Guards positioned in a line darted out the horse’s way. Bleu circled them, huffing and neighing as if agreeing with his owner’s assessment of the situation.
A ball of fiery red fur joined them next, Maxie darting between Evelyn’s legs.
“Unless you want a cell inside Tùir,” Kade growled, “I suggest we fucking leave.”
“Blair.” Evelyn’s gray stare begged.
Apprehension seeped through her. She was a scholar, not a third born on the run, protecting Sorin. No. She couldn’t leave. Her place was here. Her life—
What life? A nasty voice hissed. She had no position in society. No title, books, or home.
The rising smoke meeting the clouds taunted her with that truth. Blair had nothing. But if she left, she was running, doing the very thing she’d belittled her sister for. Rook landed on her shoulder, cawing as if to say, Do we have a choice?
No, the winds answered for her.
She spun her shillelagh and drove it into the cobblestones. Air spun in a circle. She stretched her power for hundreds of miles, all across Sorin to a werewolf village tucked into the Vadon Mountains, a place she swore she’d never return. She found she didn’t have to draw much power.
Because the lands answered.
Winds whirled down the street from the sea and plains, weaving into the danu she created.
It drowned out Circe’s protests, and Blair didn’t dare look back.
Kade ushered Evelyn through first and followed.
Bleu and Maxie went through next. Rook dug his talons into Blair’s shoulder, and she counted—one, two, three.
And stepped into the western lands of Sorin.
She collapsed into the muddy snow, her danu snapping shut. Beside her, Kade wretched from the great distance they’d traveled, and Evelyn sucked in a breath, a small “no” rasping from her.
Blair peered up. Shock rooted her in place. The Drengr Village was ablaze; the aftermath of a battle lay around them. Smoke, death and flurries hung in the air. They’d escaped destruction, only to walk into another.
“Here.”
Blair snapped her attention left. The most beautiful witch she’d ever seen—hair as golden as summer, eyes bluer than the Sapphire Sea—outstretched her hand.
“Belle,” Evelyn whispered.
Realization dawned on Blair. She recalled the name of the young witch who’d helped Evelyn inside Drystan Castle, and she possessed a water bronntanas, one of the rarest elements witches wielded.
“I need your winds to put the fires out,” Belle said. “Can you help?”
Blair swallowed, drawing forth her wind bronntanas to her fingertips.
Her shadows answered, too, but she was too tired to care, too spent to worry.
She stood on shaky legs and took hold of Belle’s dainty fingers.
There was a pureness, such light in the witch’s magic as it met hers that Blair winced at the contrast.
Water and winds whirled as they called upon their bronntanases. Blair drove everything into her power—sorrow, loss, and anger.
Gray churned above. Clouds darkened to a shade of amethyst. Rain poured, and with the push of her winds, Blair guided it over the village until only steam and numbness remained.