Alyss’s bloodcurdling scream echoed through the empty house.
Eira ripped herself away from Olivin’s grasp and took the stairs two at a time. Noelle’s soundless scream rang in her ears. Frost exploded from underneath her feet. She wouldn’t let it happen again. She wasn’t going to send off another of her friends to the worlds beyond.
The men were close behind as she rounded the stairs and continued up to the third floor. Just as Olivin had instructed. The door was open. Pushed aside.
Snow drifted through the air around her as she turned the corner. Eira was ready to unleash all manner of frozen death upon whatever awaited her. But Alyss stood alone in the center of the room.
Her quivering hands covered her mouth. Eira slowed to a stop, chest heaving. The footsteps of the men slowed behind her…all save for Olivin.
He staggered forward, eyes fixated on the singular point none of them could look away from. Olivin reached up and touched the wall. His fingers came away bright red. Sticky, like the sick horror and rage that was coursing through Eira’s veins.
“Blood,” Cullen whispered.
“Damn her!” Olivin screamed. His knuckles cracked the plaster of the wall, strips of wood jutting out like freshly cut teeth. It made a morbid period to the end of the statement that had been written in dripping streaks of fresh blood:
Hello, brother.
34
“She has him,” Olivin rasped between ragged breaths, head hung, shoulders quivering. “She. Has. Him.” He withdrew his hand and pointed it, bloody knuckles and splintered flesh and all, at each of them. “Let him go.Let him go, you told me. And this”—he thrust a finger toward the wall—“this is what happens.”
“Olivin—”
“If he had stayed, she wouldn’t have him. She was probably waiting here for—” He stopped short and the danger they were in dawned on all of them.
“Go,” Eira whispered.
They all scrambled toward the windows. Alyss threw out a hand and the wall around them crumbled, shutters clattering to the street below.
Eira shifted her steps, falling back to Ducot. He had moved with the rest of them. Even if he couldn’t read the writing on the wall, he heard the panic in their voices, Alyss’s magic, their sprint.
Her hand closed around his. “When I say, jump.”
Ducot’s mouth was pressed into a hard line but he nodded anyway, putting his trust into her. They closed the distance to the wall and, “Jump!”
Olivin landed on a disk of glowing light. Cullen floated down, feet pumping through the air. Alyss raced on stairs formed from rubble. Each appeared under her toes and crumbled away as her magic and feet moved from one to the next.
After Eira’s stomach shot into her throat from the initial weightlessness, she landed on a pillar of ice, Ducot wobbly. She shifted her magic and the ice became a chute, Eira guiding his fall onto the makeshift ramp. He slid on his back and she rode behind him, staying on her heels.
They were all about halfway down the second story when a zing of magic rippled the air.
Eira spun. Part of her magic continued to focus on easing Ducot to the ground. She skidded to a stop on what was now a pillar of ice where she stood and shifted all the rest of her focus. A thick wall of ice rose against the house.
Simultaneously, it exploded.
The sudden, magical force of the explosion only compared to one other that Eira had felt—the end of the flash bead mines. Eira held up both her hands, rising to the balls of her feet as she leaned forward. As though she were trying to smother the fire with her own body rather than magic.
Ice cracked like thunder. Popped like her jaw as she gritted her teeth. Her breastbone burned around the rune etched into it.
But her ice held. It blocked the shrapnel and rubble and contained the worst of the explosion. As the last of the shockwaves rippled through the ground, she eased her magic and descended to meet the rest of them.
“That was easily half a dozen flash beads you just blocked,” Ducot murmured with awe. Out of everyone, Eira trusted he’d have the keenest senses when it came to the magic.
“I’ve been working on my magic.” Eira tried to brush off the feat. She hadn’t done it for praise. They had all seen the destruction just one flash bead could wreak before. “We have to move.”
“This way.” Olivin took the lead.
Eira fell into step and the others followed as they quickly dashed down the streets.
