I should have known. How did I not know?
Terror grips me, and I freeze just long enough for Mother to strike hard. Her hand whips out and cracks across my face, jerking my head to the side. A stinging burn explodes across my cheek, and I hiss in a sharp breath.
Griffin lunges for her, but his hands swipe through a cloud of dark-brown dust and green magic. Mother disappeared.Disintegrated.
Everything swirls back together in the blink of an eye, re-forming in the shape of a huge bird. Not a bird—a Harpy. It has Mother’s head and torso. The rest is all talons and feathers. She bats powerful wings and rises toward the vaulted ceiling, out of our reach in two flaps.
I gape up at her, my face on fire from the brutal slap.
Metamorphosis!I didn’t know she could do that. I didn’t knowanyonecould do that.
Why can’tIdo that?
“A Harpy. That’s fitting.” Griffin gets firmly in front of me.
Mother’s snide words come back to me.Endless possibilities. Shortsighted. No vision.
Maybe Icando that. What’s holding me back?
She sneers down at us from above, and suddenly I know. Morality holds me back, something that Mother lacks entirely. Ironically, it’s what makes me both the weaker and the stronger of us two.
I raise my hand to my still-blazing cheek. “The potion would have set my magic free from my body?” Utterly true. My magic would have floated off into the ether, because I’d have been dead! “You were going to poison me,” I say, appalled.
“The most expeditious option, given the circumstances.” Her Harpy voice is sharper, more grating, like a bird of prey’s strident call. “Victory to the swift.”
Another of her childhood lessons. It rings in my ears. Strikes like a blade.
“Poison is for cowards,” I spit back. She might remember saying that a few times, too.
Her emerald eyes narrow on me as she squawks a shrill command. I look warily around, wondering what atrocity will happen next. The answer is a flock of enormous crows shattering the south window with a thundering crash. The front ones drop dead, leaving their blood on the broken glass. The followers flood into the room in a raucous, cawing, black-winged turmoil. They’re unnaturally big—Ice Plains crows. Piercing eyes, razor-sharp beaks, feathers a dense blue-black. There are at least a dozen of them, circling, diving, taking up all the air and space. They shriek and scratch and bat their wings, driving Griffin and me back.
A bird the size of a dog dives at Griffin, knocking him back a step as he raises his arms to protect his head. I spin out of Griffin’s way, jump in front of him, and then grab the bird’s tail feathers, yanking hard just as Griffin bats the creature away. I end up with two long feathers in each hand and Griffin with a gash near his ear. A trickle of blood creeps down his jawline.
Oh Gods.We’re both unarmed, and my magic is totally unreliable. And now Mother knows it—right from my own mouth. I’m stupid, so bloody stupid, and I brought Griffin here, straight into her trap.
I flip the feathers in my hands and grip them down low, ready to use the stiff ends as weapons if I can.
“How did you know?” I demand, tilting my head back to watch Mother hover near the ceiling, her big wings brushing the beams. “We told almost no one where we were going.”
Peals of harsh laughter burst from the crows. Mother laughs, too, and the room fills with the sound of flapping wings, cawing, and hate. “I have spies everywhere. On the ground. In the air.Insideof you.”
My eyes widen in shock.Little Bean.
A vortex opens up in my middle, hollowing me out. Dark and violent, it churns with fear and wrath, and my heart sinks straight into it, imploding along with my lungs and breath.
I thought I knew rage and terror before? That was nothing. This is hot and horrible and consuming. Blood roars in my ears. My chest burns and squeezes tight while magic blasts through my veins. The sudden surge of power bounces inside me like a painful echo, not finding its way out. The ricochet shakes me hard, and I lurch, not knowing if I’m about to collapse violently inward or shatter outward into a million broken pieces.
Steadying myself on the edge of the table, I stare at Mother. I’ve killed people and sometimes felt satisfaction at the result. But I’ve never wanted tomurderbefore, to kill savagely, paint myself in blood, and scream while I do it.
Mother cocks her head just like a bird would, as if assessing the best way to pounce on a worm. “Children. So innocent. No defense against the invasion of the mind. And yours… So new, and yet already so aware. So ripe for molding.”
The black hole inside me expands. Little Bean, not even really showing but already thinking.Knowing.
No wonder her energy felt so disrupted while we were making our plans to come to Frostfire. She was scared. Confused. Maybe in pain. She was being used as a conduit for information!
An agonized shout builds in my throat, but no sound comes out. I swore this woman wouldn’t touch my baby. Even if I didn’t voice it as a magical vow, I swore it to myself. To Griffin. To Little Bean. And I failed. I’ve already failed.
Mother looks so disgustingly proud of herself. She one-upped me at the expense of my unborn daughter, and now she gets to share her victory with us and grind my face into my own heartbreak and failure.
