“No,” I snarl out. I’m done being willfully blind. I’m not going to turn away from any of it ever again. I won’t leave them. “I stand with my people.”
Pruinn drops his hands and lifts a shoulder. “Have it your way, Majesty.”
The fae controlling the wood attacks. He sends the planks flying toward us. The cluster moves quickly, causing a spurt of wind to brush my cheek as it passes me by.
My eyes latch onto Dari’s for a split second, her bony fingers gripping her daughter, her face pale with fear. Then the boards make impact.
Dari and everyone else gets thrown back and I watch with suffocating panic as she and the others hit the ground hard, the wood breaking and splintering from the force.
Neira screams as she and her mother crash onto the ground, and the sound pierces through my heart, making my adrenaline spike.
The wood pulls back again, ready to repeat the action before anyone can recover, but magic shoots from my hands, ice bursting forward with a force that rattles my chest. I watch it arc through the sky, and then it hits and envelops the planks. As soon as my ice freezes them through, the wood falls to the ground and shatters like glass.
The magical fae isn’t deterred. He reaches up in the air again, his magic pulling more large boards from the dilapidated building to my right. He strips the wall until he yanks out a thick beam, making the weakened structure start to topple.
“Watch out!” I scream as I leap back, just as the building falls, half spilling out onto the road.
It nearly crashes over us.
The fae smirks from the other side of the crumble, and without reprieve, he angles the floating wood in our direction. Their ends are splintered and wickedly sharp, and he sends them flying toward us like a volley of spears.
Pure instinct has me tossing up my hands, my magic unleashing in a curved wall before me. I flinch back, eyes squeezing shut, just as the wood crashes against my ice.
My eyes spring open again, my pulse racing, seeing the fissures spread through my wall…but it holds.
I fling my hand out again, making ice attach to the roof of the building beside me, forming a spire as high as I can manage in a desperate bid for Dommik to notice—to come help.
Please help.
But the lightning fae steps forward.
His magic seems to be fully charged and ready now. Built up and crackling with power.
With a gritted-out cry, I force more magic from my depleting body, creating another wall that freezes up from the ground and then arcs backward to create a dome over the heads of my people.
They huddle beneath it, while some of the men have picked up pieces of metal and stone that fell from the crumbled building and are using the debris to try to block the wooden fae’s continued assault.
I start to direct more ice to enclose all the way around them, but the lightning fae suddenly sends a purple bolt stabbing down from the smoke-filled clouds.
It cracks directly into the ice wall in front of me, shattering it in a blinding flash that sends me stumbling back.
Shards explode out, and I duck my head in my arms before the frozen shrapnel can slice across my exposed face. When the onslaught ends, I whip my head up again to lock gazes with thelightning fae, and he’s already building up another charge of lightning, already making electricity singe the air.
He’s going to decimate the icy barrier over my people too.
“Get into the house!” I cry with panicked command, because I know my ice won’t be enough protection.
But the wooden fae doesn’t give them the chance to run.
Before anyone can so much as reach for the door, he snaps the wooden walls directly beside us, ripping them off in thin air and making the entire structure weaken and crumble too.
My people scramble, trying to get out of the way as they panic, running as they try to escape while leaving behind my protective arc.
Before they can get more than a few running steps away, the lightning fae strikes the other end of the street right in front of them, cutting them off. Bolt after bolt, the lavender strikes crash down, splitting the road, charring the cobblestones.
“Leave them alone!” I scream before sending thin shards of ice hurtling toward the enemy. Before it can hit him, a wooden board slams into me, cracking against my chest on impact.
I land hard on my back, blinking up at the sky. The hit stuns me, breath knocked loose from my lungs and scattered around my ribs where I can’t reach it.
