“I don’t know how!” I whispered.
Help is coming.
“What do you mean?” I asked the question inside my own head, so that only Asteria could hear it. “How do I get out of this? I can’t summon the Darkness, but I can’t let Nova die! What do I do?”
There was a pause, then I thought I heard a ghost of a laugh.
Duck.
“Huh?”
DUCK.
My brain was still questioning her, but my body obeyed. Without warning, I threw myself on the ground, covering my head, just as something large erupted through the wall behind me.
22
Veronica and Nova screamed. The room exploded in a choking haze of dust and sand and rock. I lifted my head, and looked toward the source of the sound, just as a cold, salty wind whipped at my cheeks.
Three figures stood silhouetted in the gaping opening that had been blasted through the side of the cavern. The Vesper Sisters, bathed in moonlight, looking at once beautiful and terrible, their hair tossed around their faces like boats on the sea that crashed behind them: Rhi, on the right, her hands clenched at her sides, her tiny figure, yet somehow intimidating in her power. Persi, looking like an avenging siren that had just stepped from the waves, magic sparking in her fingertips like sparklers. And my mother, Kerridwen Vesper, her long hair loose, her face transformed with rage and fear, her hands extended out in front of her, fingers wide. And all around her, vines and branches were writhing and twisting and blooming like a pit of snakes, forcing their way through the stones across the floor.
“Wren!” Her voice called out sharply, cracking.
“I’m here!” I tried to answer, coughing and choking on the debris still settling all around me. “Nova! Where’s Nova?” Myheart was in my throat. I hadn’t heard a gunshot, but the explosion had been so loud…
I heard an answering groan, and turned to see Nova crawling out from behind a huge, jagged piece of the wall. She was coated in dust, but I could see the blood on her forehead.
“Nova! Are you… did she…?” I choked, trying to crawl toward her just as my mother reached me, and pulled me around to face her, shaking my shoulders.
“Wren, speak to me! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I… no. I mean, yes, I’m okay. No, I’m not hurt. I’m worried about…”
But Rhi had already crossed the cavern to help Nova to her feet, examining her wounds and fishing in her pocket for a handkerchief to help stop the bleeding.
“Wren, are you okay?” Nova was calling, shakily, as she blinked blood out of her eyes.
“She’s fine, honey, it’s you we’re worried about,” Rhi said. “Now, stay still so I can get some of my calendula salve on it.” Nova yelped. “Did I mention it stings a bit?” Rhi added apologetically.
“There’s another entrance back here,” Persi called from somewhere behind the rubble. “Damn it all, I think she’s gone!”
“Are you sure?” my mother called sharply. “All that rubble. Are you sure she’s not…” But she couldn’t bring herself to complete the question.
Persi understood, however. “I’ve cast a detection spell, but it’s still very—ugh, Kerridwen! Calm down!” Persi had to yank her ankle out of the curling tendrils of a nearby plant that was attempting to climb her.
“Sorry, sorry. I’m out of practice, I… damn it, hang on.” My mother shook her head as though to clear it and closed her eyes, taking several long, slow, measured breaths. As she did so, therioting vines and branches slowed their spreading until, after maybe ten seconds, they had stilled entirely.
Ensured that she wouldn’t be strangled by a wayward vine, Persi was able to concentrate on her own spell. She held a hand out over the rubble, and began to walk slowly from one end of the pile to the other, murmuring an incantation under her breath. We all watched, no one daring to move or make a sound. My lungs felt like they’d been restricted to pinholes; I couldn’t seem to get any air into them at all. Was Veronica under there? Was she… had she actually…?
“No,” Persi said with a level of certainty that no one would even consider questioning. “I don’t know where she is, but it’s not under this debris; more’s the pity.”
I didn’t know whether I should feel relieved she wasn’t dead, or alarmed that she had escaped. I gulped, swallowing back some monstrosity born of emotional turmoil, a hysterical peal of laughter, or perhaps an onslaught of sobbing. I never found out which. I fought it off, choosing instead to try to stay in the moment.
“Pers, you have to get Ostara on the phone. Or Davina, or Xiomara, whoever you can get,” my mother ordered. “They need to know who?—”
“I know, I know, I’m on it,” Persi said, striding across the room to the gaping opening, her phone already at her ear.
“Rhi, can you go check on?—?”
