Chapter 38 #4
‘Thorn!’ Kyor cries as he is hurled away from me, his voice muted by the screaming winds of the whiteout and the ice that rains down on us.
‘Rose!’ Stefan’s voice is a distant screech. ‘Stop this. Stop it now!’ There’s not just pleading in his voice; there’s fear too.
My eyes squint, the brightness of the snow as blinding as walking through the Veil, but unlike the flames, this doesn’t end so easily.
The magic is still billowing from me, barraging outwards towards the mountains, and if it doesn’t stop soon, it’s going to form a Godsdamn avalanche that’ll take out half of Isthyr.
Stefan was right to take us so far out. We should be even further. Fuck, I’m going to kill people.
The fear causes another surge within me, bolstering the magic, and a deluge of hailstones joins the maelstrom.
Calm yourself! Fen barks at me. I can feel him and Elska bracing themselves against the storm.
I can’t!
‘Get down!’ I scream, but I don’t even know if they can hear me.
Find the light, Fen coaches me in my mind. You can do it, Rose. You can do it.
Fen using my actual name is like a slap across the face, and I take a shuddering breath, shut my eyes, and force myself to find that fucking light.
My breath is staggeringly shallow, but I can feel it. See it. A soft yellow glow, like the gentle parts of a freshly lit fire, tingling as it reaches my toes.
That’s it, Little Raven. Just a little more.
Fen’s encouragement feeds me as I draw my breath deeper still. The air quivers in my lungs, but I hold it a fraction.
Feel the light.
‘You’ve got this, Thorn,’ Kyor says. ‘Everything will be okay.’ The clarity of his voice tells me the air is clearing, but my eyes remain tightly closed, focusing on that inner light.
Only when I feel that tingly calm spread up to the top of my skull, and I know for certain that the howling winds have stopped, do I open them.
I gasp.
The sound feels thin, distant, like it’s come from someone else.
The desolation is complete.
The land is wild and ravaged, as if an explosion has taken place. Some of the surrounding mountain peaks are just … gone. Gone.
And as for the jotnar alarm, I can’t even fathom a guess as to where that is. But buried, certainly. The new landscape feels impossible to make sense of, to correlate with what was there before.
‘Gods, no…’ As my eyes scan the scene, I look between Stefan and Kyor, and then to the wolves, who have now joined us, as if one of them might be able to offer me comfort, deny that this was caused by me. But they can’t.
‘No, this… I couldn’t have done this…’ The words don’t sound right. Don’t feel real.
Neither man speaks false words of reassurance. They won’t lie to me.
My breath stutters, shallow and uneven as I look towards Isthyr.
The city, at least, is untouched. A single haven amid the chaos and destruction.
People didn’t die, I say to Fen. I cling to the thought desperately. It didn’t reach Isthyr. You helped me stop it before that. Thank you.
As I open my mouth to apologise to the men for putting them in danger, Stefan strides towards Kyor.
‘You see? This is exactly what I knew would happen. This is on you!’ He uses both hands to shove Kyor in the chest, making him stagger back.
‘Me?’ Kyor snarls. ‘You are joking, right?’
They’re arguing again. The sound grates, distant and too loud all at once, even muffled as it is by the pounding of my heart, which continues to race too fast. I can’t deal with this. Not again.
I need to move.
Need to get myself as far away from them, from what I’ve done, as possible.
‘I’m done,’ I say, my voice flat. I feel strangely detached as I walk towards Fen. ‘We’re done for today. That’s it.’
‘Thorn?’
‘Princess?’
I stop and turn back to find both men looking at me with apologies heavy in their eyes, but I shake my head.
‘I’ve got enough problems without this.’ I gesture to the pair of them.
Without waiting for a reply, I continue walking, only to hear the soft pad of footsteps quickening behind me.
‘I’ll walk you to the caves,’ Kyor says, reaching for my arm, but I shake him away.
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll take Fen and ride back alone.’
‘But I wanted to talk to you about something. Something important.’
‘Really? Well maybe you should have spoken to me before that dick-swinging contest nearly cost someone their life. I need some space.’
‘From me?’ he asks, and though his face is carefully blank, I see the flash of hurt in his eyes.
‘Right now, yes,’ I reply sharply before mounting Fen.
My body feels like a heavy weight on his frame as my hands tremble so violently that I struggle to hold Fen’s fur. I no longer feel the thrum of magic, but my pulse is pounding to the point of dizziness as tears blur my eyes.
Oel is the one who gave me this magic. Oel, the fucking God of Order and Logic. Does it look to him like there’s order or logic in what I’m doing right now? Because it really doesn’t feel like it.
And he expected me to be involved in some Great War. Ha! Right now, the biggest war I’ve got to deal with is myself versus the last stage of the Veil, and it sure as shit doesn’t feel like I’m going to win.