I know those wings…
Priscilla teeters, almost losing her balance, before she flicks her hair back and saunters toward Osian. “You took long enough.”
She pulls back the female gargoyle’s head to examine her face.
Indira’s eyes are closed. Blood drips from a head wound above her right eye. Cold fear takes over my body.
“That’s her,” Priscilla says, dropping Indira’s head. “She means something to Marbella. Doesn’t she…Supreme Incorruptible?” She sing-songs my title before breaking into a satisfied smile, planting her hands on her hips.
I am both hot and cold at the same time. “What did you do?”
Indira was with Erit at the back of our forces. She left a while ago with Talia, Elise, Llion, and Liliana… The only way to capture Indira would be to fight and defeat all of them. Their faces flash before me as rage and fear build inside me. I want to grab Osian, use my power against him, but he’s holding Indira…
He drags her toward me, stopping only a few paces away. “She isn’t dead.”
“Yet,” Priscilla clarifies. “But she will be soon.” She bends to flip open a flap of armor hanging loosely at Indira’s side, showing me the wound in her side from which she’s slowly losing blood.
They’ve stabbed her in the stomach.
I whisper, “She’s pregnant.”
Priscilla tips her head to the side, her eyes empty of any emotion. “Oh. Pity.”
My anger spirals out of control, rushing out from my chest, out from my broken heart through my arms and up into my head, turning me blind with anger. Grayson isn’t here to absorb my rage this time. I inhale a breath, knowing that I have to let it out, that I can’t contain it, but I have only one coherent thought left:don’t hurt Indira.
I tip my head back and hurl my power into the sky, screaming it out as hard as I can. My scream builds and builds. A storm grows above me, the darkest storm I’ve ever created, lightning crackling and scorching the sky, a wind tunnel forming, picking up dust and debris. Elwyn Elder rushes through it and Baelen storms after him, but Baelen’s focus is not Elwyn anymore. It’s me.
Elwyn suddenly spins and casts a spell back at Baelen, a barrier that stops him in his tracks. Baelen crashes against the invisible surface. He recoils, slams into it again, and tries to burst through. He flies higher only to hit a surface above him, and then another behind and on either side. Somehow, Elwyn has boxed him in.
Someone drops onto the platform beside me and grabs me. My power seeps out from the place where he touches me and my gaze lowers, following the lines of Grayson’s silhouette all the way to the hand he wraps around my bicep, the hand that absorbs my rage, soaking it up and leeching it out of me so the storm dissolves and then… there’s nothing left.
He observes Priscilla and Osian, and finally Indira, assessing the slow drip from her body. “What’s going on?”
Priscilla straightens. “We’re speeding things up. Your way was taking too long.”
“Where’s Pedr?”
“He was distracting Marbella,” Osian replies.
Priscilla adds, “Until he wasn’t.”
Grayson studies Indira for another second. He recognizes her. He danced with her at the arena when Baelen came to rescue me. “She’s dying. She doesn’t have long.”
Priscilla crosses her arms. “Exactly, and I think Marbella knows there’s only one way to save her.”
My world no longer has any foundation. An empty pit has opened up inside me.The deep springs.Only the springs can save Indira now.
Grayson doesn’t miss a beat, speaking to me now. “I’m the only one who can get you to the springs fast enough. But it means you have to let us in. You’re going to have to decide how badly you want your friend to live.”
My voice chokes in my throat. “You want me to take you to the springs willingly.”
“I…” For a minute I think he’s going to say something else, but he ends up repeating: “If you want your friend to live.”
In the distance, Baelen plants his hands on the surface that cages him, the muscles in his arms bulging. Red-hot lightning spears across it, slowly burning through. He’s roaring but I can’t hear him. It will only take him a minute to get out, but Indira doesn’t have long and Grayson is right—he’s the only one who can get her to the springs fast enough. Her face is already deathly pale; her body is so limp. Even Baelen can’t fly that fast.
I sense Grayson cloak himself a second before Priscilla sidles up behind him and wraps her arms around his waist. Osian drags Indira across the rocks, making me wince every time her knees bump the ground. He places his hand on Grayson’s shoulder as Elwyn lands right next to us, taking hold of Grayson’s other arm. Elwyn’s dark eyes gleam at me. They are empty pools. He wants to kill me as soon as he gets the chance.
Grayson is already holding onto me, ready to move.
It’s my choice.
Baelen is almost through the trap. He will come for me.
He will find me.
I grit my teeth. “Take us to the springs.”
