Chapter 25 Shadows and Storms
SHADOWS AND STORMS
My heart feels like it’s about to punch through my chest. Every instinct screams at me to run, warning of a danger that I can’t articulate when there are dozens of students milling around.
Still, I push my fatigued muscles into motion, weaving through crowds to lose the redhead. Usually, I’m good with directions, but my frazzled thoughts have me turned around.
A sudden gust of wind slams into me as I step outside, so strong it tears the door from my grip and slams it shut with a thunderous crack.
I stagger back, dropping into a crouch as my crystal link skitters across the sidewalk.
The wind doesn’t just blow—it attacks, battering from every direction like it’s sentient.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Just as quickly as it began, it stops.
I lift my head, finding the redhead from Runes standing before me, my crystal link dangling from his fingers. “Are you all right?” His voice is kind, but his eyes linger too long.
I rise in one fluid motion, gaining a few inches between us before reaching for my crystal link.
“I’m Ronan,” he says. “Do you need a ride or—”
“Hey.” Kai’s voice has the stranger releasing my crystal link. “What’s going on?”
“She tripped,” Ronan says. “Is there something you need, Rurik?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Kai replies.
Slowly, Ronan’s blue eyes shift over my face a final time. “I’ll see you around, Brielle.”
My name on his tongue sends a shiver down my spine. I never gave it to him.
Kai waits until Ronan disappears toward the parking lot before addressing me. “Stay away from Ronan Yuri. His dad’s on the council.”
“I was trying to,” I mutter.
Kai turns. “Are you coming, or do you plan on walking to Mysthaven?”
I don’t answer. And I refuse to jog to catch up. Somehow, we fall into step after a few strides.
“Griffin and Loch had to leave town for a few days, and Daire’s running late,” Kai doesn’t look at me as he says this.
That familiar brand of fear and awareness that has kept me alive for the past year simmers in my veins as we stop in front of a glider where Holden waits.
Kai gracefully climbs inside.
Pride has me sliding woodenly into the seat farthest from them, though it feels like a viper’s den.
Holden doesn’t acknowledge me, his gaze narrowed on his crystal link, thumbs moving in sharp, efficient motions. Kai resumes a similar position as the doors close.
The soft melody of notes plays, warning we’re about to accelerate.
I’m too distracted to notice whether we’re taking the same route, my gaze fixed on the turquoise sky and lush forest passing.
A throat clears. Holden stares at me. If I didn’t dislike him so much, I’d probably relish how ridiculously attractive he looks. Instead, I wait for him to throw another barb at me.
Literally.
“I want to apologize for my behavior today. It was unprofessional and inappropriate.” His words are flat and clearly rehearsed. He turns back to his crystal link.
“Are you referring to the plant you tried to attack me with? Or are you referring to breaking my desk? Maybe for attacking my partner and drawing attention to me after insisting I had to keep my head down and blend in?”
Silence.
“Apologies are merely words when they aren’t sincere,” I add, turning my attention back to the window overhead, though his stare presses against me.
“How did you create an air shield strong enough to stop us and then do nothing when I practically speared you with a poisonous plant?” His voice is laced with accusation and frustration.
“That plant was poisonous?” My anger falters just far enough for hurt to slip in, digging surprisingly deep.
“Why didn’t you stop it?” Holden grits out.
“Because you skipped past how to make a rune.”
“Why didn’t you use your element?”
Anger coils and spits in my stomach, but I work to remain indifferent as I press my thumbs against the knuckles of my middle fingers and then my forefingers.
My parents, teachers, coaches, and those monsters in the prison all used the same playbook: pushing, provoking, waiting for me to slip up and reveal something.
Only Holden knows I can light people on fire—and why—and he’s still pushing me.
Which tells me he was trying to make me break the rules so they’d have a valid reason to turn their backs on me. Or worse.
“Because even if you hadn’t threatened me six ways to Sunday for using an element, I couldn’t,” I admit, my jaw tight. “I can’t control them or use them at will—they just happen.”
He has the audacity to scoff. “An air shield is advanced. Most Air Elementals can’t stop objects, certainly not a whole damn Elemental.”
“Believe me, if I knew how to use my elements, you wouldn’t be sitting across from me right now.”
His eyes narrow. “Is that a threat?”
The anger in his eyes warns me to concede, but the realization of what he did overrides that voice of self-preservation. “I don’t know. Was trying to hit me with that plant a threat, Professor?”
The glider slides to a smooth stop, and if I felt confident about how to open the door, I’d swing it open and storm out, but I don’t, leaving me stuck in this staring match.
Only, he came prepared for this fight, and my tattered emotions are not, especially as I race to question what would have happened if I had created an air shield or flame in class today.
“You guys aren’t the only ones with doubts. I have a million, and I’m the only one being transparent about them. So stop attacking me with your goddamn plants and paranoia and ask your fucking questions.” I turn and press my palm against the small indent on the door. Thankfully it hisses open.
I slip into the heavily shaded yard beneath Mysthaven’s towering presence.
Kai follows, placing his hand on the panel that unlocks the front doors.
I storm inside and don’t stop when Kandi appears, greeting Kai with a dazzling smile and asking how his day was.
Instead, I climb the stairs and go to my designated room, where I open the large book Professor Anara had given me, Introduction to Charms.
The pages are thinner than anything I’ve handled before.
I read the origin of charms—a brief history that discusses one of the most powerful covens in history, whose members learned how to share and draw each other’s elements.
It’s believed that charms remained solely within that coven for a full century before an Elemental by the name of Isolde Aquitane witnessed a male Water Elemental get attacked.
Fearing he wouldn’t survive, she used a charm and decided that the trove of information allowing protections, healing, communication, enhancements, and more should be shared with all magical beings.
It goes on to say how charms require precision and focus and that incorrect casting has risks to both the caster and those nearby.
The fear of non-Elementals using charms ceased once it was realized that non-Elementals had a lethal outcome when attempting charms C121, C145, C1987, and C769.
I read the sentence three times before looking at each of the cited events that led to charm training being shared more widely.
My thoughts are in a million places, yet one thought plays on repeat.
Lethal.
Lethal.
Lethal.
I flip through the aged pages, scanning charms to change hair color, dry wet clothes, and an entire section for finding lost items. Near the back, I find a section of healing charms. While all charms intrigue me, learning to heal like Willow, Scarlet, and Griffin seems essential as I recall the way Lochlan held me against the wall, the threats, and the power I felt from other students today.
I study several healing charms, but they might as well be written in code.
I don’t know how long I’ve been reading—seconds or hours—when a hard knock at my door is the only warning before Holden appears in my doorway.
My stomach drops waiting for another strike I can’t defend.
“You’re supposed to be shielding with Kai.”
Sarcastic retorts blow away before they form as I take a final glance at the textbook balanced on my lap, knowing I don’t stand a chance if my words provoke him. I can’t fight him—any of them—and I have no way of healing from potential wounds. Not yet anyway.
He disappears before I bookmark the text and head for the doorway.
Tension buzzes beneath my skin, expecting another fight, not the smell of moonberries and cinnamon waiting in the kitchen.
Gwen stirs something while Daire slices moonberries with methodical precision.
It isn’t the first time I’ve seen him cooking.
Gwen stops talking and clears her throat.
“I need to get some spices for dinner. Brielle, could you watch this for a minute?”
She doesn’t give me the chance to tell her I’m late or that Holden might murder both of us, already striding toward the front door.
“Is she always so obvious?” I ask.
Daire’s smile reaches his amber eyes for the first time in days. “How was your first day?”
I think of the newness, the dangers, how it felt like a foreign landscape. A part of me wants to talk about it in detail, but a bigger part insists I don’t. I offer a vague nod as I stir the pot. “How was work?”
“Busy.” Daire’s response is equally vague. He sets down his knife, the berries arranged in perfect, uniform pieces. Everything he does is precise. Controlled.
The silence that fills the kitchen is tense and consuming.
“I’m not trying to confuse or hurt you.” His words have me twisting to face him. “I’m just trying to protect you from something none of us understand.”
“You’re not confusing or hurting me.” I refuse to give him that power over me.
He winces, his jaw going tight. “I don’t know how to do this.” He runs a hand through his dark hair. “I’ve recovered Elementals who didn’t make it. Elementals who drew too many questions.”
For the first time since I touched his flame and Lochlan pointed out it wasn’t reacting like they expected—like they thought it should—I see raw vulnerability in his eyes.
“Nothing makes sense. The prophecy, your records, how long you went unnoticed, how hard you were to track…. There are too many questions, too many damn possibilities, and when things don’t add up in our world, Elementals disappear.
” His amber eyes burn into me. “I won’t let that happen to you. ”
“If I’m that big of a risk, then why in the hell am I here?”
Something shifts in his expression as he takes a step closer to me. “Because every damn instinct in me says that you’re mine. That you belong with us.”
Mine.
The word lodges in my chest like a brand—hot and permanent and terrifying.
Something in me answers before I can stop it, a flicker of warmth beneath my ribs that feels too much like recognition.
I crush it instantly.
Words are easy.
Promises even easier.
I’ve learned to survive both.