“Cerian?” Mother lifts her brows, and he huffs.
“She didn’t want me in there.”
“Did she say that?”
A vine rips at him through the air, and he can’t escape it. Reflexively, he snaps his eyes closed and crosses his arms in front of his body, and nearby trees answer the call of his magic, forming a barricade of leaves and branches between them.
When he opens his eyes, Mother is gazing at him over his wall. “If you are capable of this, why do you run?” She doesn’t give him a chance to respond before continuing. “And why did you really run this morning? Because she didn’t want you there? Or because you were afraid she didn’t?”
His heart is pounding now.
“Or perhaps the most terrifying thing of all,” she says. “You wanted to stay, and that frightened you.”
His jaw twitches. “I’m not scared.”
“Of so many things, no. Your woods. The trees. The forest. The night sky you love so much. But of being rejected? Of being judged unworthy?”
His heavy breathing flares his nostrils, and he growls under his breath. “I’m not scared.” And as if to prove it, he slashes at his tree-grown barricade, and it crumbles before him. Mother doesn’t even flinch as he calls the plants to answer to his magic this time. One after another, he shoots vines and roots at her, and she answers in kind, their magical plants meeting between them like clashing swords.
She wraps a vine around him, spinning him onto his back, and as he scrambles to his feet, he sends roots to grow up her legs. Her magic fights against his for control, but he holds nothing back, letting it flow from him like a gushing river. To his shock, it edges her magic out, the roots growing higher along her body, binding her in place.
“Impressive,” she says darkly as branches appear in his peripheral, lashing around his arms.
Cerian lets out a guttural cry and pulls at the branches with his magic, bending the trees to his will, when a blast of air rips at him, sending him spinning backward. The wind rushes from his lungs as he lands hard on his back.
“Lorial! I did not ask you to interfere,” Mother cries, and Cerian coughs as he tries to catch his breath.
Father stands in the doorway, and he looks less than pleased. “You are not strong enough to spar yet, Nestraya!” Then he turns burning eyes toward Cerian. “And you—”
“Me? She started it!”
“He needed to work through—”
“I’m not scared! And I’m not holding back!”
Mother crosses her arms triumphantly as the roots holding her in place crumble. “Not anymore. That wasimpressive. I wanted to see what you were going to do until your father interfered.” She glares at Father again.
Cerian groans and drops his head back to the ground. What was he going to do? Tear Windhaven apart? This is why he holds back. His power is terrifying.
Laughter drifts his way, and he looks up again to see Father’s shoulders shaking. “We need to feed you both before you murder each other.”
Then Cerian does a double-take. Standing behind Father...is Arisanna. Whistling wind. How long has she been watching?
He didn’t invite her here.
And where did she get that dress? She stands there staring at him like some sort of otherworldly vision of beauty and perfection with her hair streaming down her back, gleaming red in the sunlight shining through the skylights overhead.
She can’t send him away and then show up looking like that.
It’s cruel.
As she looks at him, her expression changes, the shock transforming into some sort of grim determination. What in the Wildthorne Woods is she thinking now?
And there’s Tharios, grinning from the doorway. He was watching, too?
Closing his eyes, Cerian groans again. This day has been a disaster.
When the light behind his eyelids darkens, he looks up in surprise at Arisanna’s face as she hovers over him.
