If I wasn’t so stressed, this would have had me laughing. The way they teased each other … it reminded me of Asher. My heart ached, and the low-key panic I was fighting to keep contained kept trying to burst free and destroy my mind. And the school.
Louis cleared his throat. “Come on. We need to get Maddi to Asher if you’d like to still have an Academy to teach at.”
Just knowing that I was going to him helped rein in my power. I moved toward the door, not waiting for anyone. The healer was long gone, and she’d left the door open, so I stepped out and waited for the other three to lead me to Asher’s room.
I felt him nearby somewhere. I had a sense that I could get to him if I wanted to, but it would be easier just to follow the ones who knew. Louis led me through the herbalism wing, and then we entered a section of the forest I hadn’t seen before. It was in the deepest, darkest part, and an eerie feeling settled over me.
“Why is he all the way out here?” I asked, side-eyeing them. I didn’t know Jessa and Braxton at all, so my trust in them was minimal, but Louis … I trusted Louis.
“When he first arrived here, he was spilling power everywhere,” Louis said softly. “It was beyond what any of the healing rooms could hold, so we ended up having to take him into the deepest part of the forest.”
“Is he still spilling power?” I asked, not sure I was ready for the answer.
Louis hesitated, and that only had my anxiety skyrocketing. “Let’s just say that he’s still doing something, and it’s not safe to have him around other students.”
The pit of dread that had been in my stomach since I awoke bloomed into a full-blown cavern. Before I could lose it again, though, I smelled something familiar.
“Water…” I said softly, trailing off.
Louis shot me an impressed smile. “Only an Atlantean.”
Jessa and Braxton were watching me closely but didn’t comment. We pushed through another few trees. I gasped as the tank came into sight. It was set up in the middle of a round clearing—one magically created—with a circular barrier of trees right around it.
“The trees are from Faerie,” Jessa explained. “They’re the best at blocking energy.”
Outside of seeing the khaki leaves and dark brown trunks, I didn’t really notice them; my eyes were locked on Asher.
“In my opinion, they went a little too fairytale in setting this up,” Jessa said with a snort, “since this reminds me of that human story about the chick who had to get kissed to wake up.”
Snow White.Yeah, I could see that … if you added in a huge tank of water, one godlike Atlantean, and visible ripples of energy zipping around the tank.
“Have you checked he’s breathing fine in there?” I asked, not really worried about that because … Atlantean … but I had enough human in me to still wonder.
“Breathing fine,” said Braxton. “The water is pretty much the only thing that stopped him from exploding.”
My gasp was loud. “Exploding?” Louis took my hand and I stared at him like he held the only hope left in my life. “What do you mean, exploding?”
Pain flashed across Louis’s face before he masked it. “Whatever you were hit with, it traps the energy inside your own. Inside your cells. We barely managed to heal you, to siphon off the spell, but so far, nothing I’ve done has helped Asher. It was too large a bolt that he was hit with, and right now I’m trying to buy as much time as I can to figure out how to save him.”
“How are you trying to heal him? What are you doing?”
Louis’s eyes were locked on the tank. “I’m trying to figure out how to get close to him. The power is building. Keeping me out.”
He was worried. I was dying inside, because this should have been me. Asher had pushed me out of the way.
Needing to do something, I released Louis’s hand and started to walk toward the tank. Maybe I could get close. When I was about two feet away, I felt the energy; it was like being hit with a flamethrower. The heat was intense. My skin felt raw and sandpapered.
“Holy shit,” I gasped. “That’s from Asher?”
The three of them nodded solemnly, and I realized that if they didn’t have a shot of reaching him—the most powerful beings in the world—how the heck could I?
Still, it was Asher, and I needed to try. He needed me right now.
Or, more accurately, I needed him.
13
Idrew water around me to fight the heat. It was instinctual; water was always my first line of defense. It worked to some degree, but the power and heat were still too much. I wasn’t sure I could pull more water without taking from that around Asher. And I would never risk him.
