“I fucking tried!” I snap, frustration bringing my hand up to drive through my hair. “I am trying.”
I can’t think straight. My pulse is pounding at my temples, the ground is shaking beneath my feet, something is roaring in my ears. My magic wails inside of me, bleeding into my irises, making me see lines that are not there. I’m pouring rot out now, too much, too fast, making it melt down into the ground, weakening the earth, spoiling its surface.
I hear shouts, or maybe that’s the wind or the power bucking in my bones.
“Rip, your power...”
My entire body is shaking, every inch of my skin being prodded and stretched, wanting to lash out, and my rot starts to flood the ground, reaching, hissing, wanting to spread and explode…
BAM!
I go flying back at the force of a fist to my face, falling back into the snow for the second time in the course of a minute, once again stunned.
“Get your shit together,” my brother fumes over me, kneeling even as he lifts me back up from where he sucker punched me. My furious eyes latch onto his face. “You’re leaking rot all over the Divine-damned place. Suck it up right now. You don’t have the luxury of losing control.”
I blink, Ryatt’s snapped words somehow grounding me to the present. A glance down shows that the snow at our feet is browned and sickly, veins like poisonous threads come to spread their toxins. It stretches out in a perfect circle, spoiling the ground and sucking up the moisture from the snow, collapsing it in rubbled ruin.
I take a breath and fist my hands, managing to pull it back before my power can spread any further, managing to pull it back in and in and in...
“You got it?” Ryatt demands.
“I got it,” I snarl at him.
“Good.” He lets me go, and I equal parts want to slam my own fist into his face and thank him for snapping me out of the power pull.
Turning away, I find all of my Wrath and Digby huddling around Auren. Judd casts me a wary look. “She’s breathing, that’s a good sign,” he says, as if that will settle me.
“But she’s not waking up.”
“Did you get all of it?” Lu asks, hands dancing around Auren’s sleeves, not quite touching her, just in case.
“Something is wrong. I couldn’t get the last piece out.”
Lu’s eyes go wide, and I hear someone else suck in a breath.
“Maybe I waited too long.”
“What does that mean?” Digby asks.
I shake my head at my own loss.
“Well, we need a plan,” Lu says, standing up and dusting herself off before she casts a look at the sky. “This storm is coming, and coming in fast. What do you wanna do?”
Taking a moment, I roll back my shoulders, subduing the tyrannical pull of magic as I flex and clench my fingers, forcing the roots to cease their incessant coiling. As soon as I get a handle on them, I push my way past everyone and then carefully gather Auren into my arms, tucking her against my chest, hating how lifeless she still feels.
I start to walk away, but Digby hobbles in front of me, expression murderous. “I told you to fix her.”
“She just needs to rest,” I reply, but even I can hear the uncertainty in my tone. “I need to get her out of the elements.”
Mutinous hate is there on his face, but before he can say anything else, I turn to Osrik. “You all fly back to the army. I want our soldiers moved out of Ranhold tonight. I don’t trust Queen Kaila. Get them back to Fourth as quickly as they can march.” My mouth sets into a grim line. “We’ll need them.”
Osrik nods, but Judd asks, “What about you?”
I cast a glower at the sky. “I’m going to fly like hell ahead of this storm and get Auren somewhere safe.”
“You can’t go alone,” Lu argues. “And you can’t fly all the way to Fourth with her unconscious. It’s too far. What if she wakes up and gilds you to death?”
Argo tucks in his bark-colored wings and kneels as I approach him, his talons sunk into the deep snow. “I’m not going to Fourth,” I call over my shoulder.
“Where are you taking her, then?” Digby demands.
But it’s Ryatt who answers as I grab hold of the saddle strap and hoist myself and Auren onto Argo’s back. I lock eyes with my brother’s angry gaze just as he answers for me.
“He’s taking her to Deadwell.”
CHAPTER 3
SLADE
Age 8
“Slade!”
My shouted name is louder than the birds’ song, startling a few into taking flight.
I turn to look at the estate through the branches of the tree, and when I bend one back, one of the buds under my hand puffs out a cloud of blue. Ahead, the black stone building is stained with lines of white from all the times it’s rained, the top of it flat except for the square chimneys standing up like stacks of blocks.
My eyes drop down to the sloped grass where she’s walking up the hill toward me. I huff out a sigh and let go of the branch, more carefully this time so that I don’t get hit in the face with another puff from the tree buds. They smell good at least, but they’re awfully messy.
I turn back to the pin bird sitting on my finger. She’s just a nestling, tufts of down covering her spindly body, but her eyes are open and she coos low in her throat. “It’s alright. You’ll grow your real feathers soon,” I tell her. In a few weeks, she’ll have a plume of them at her tail for her to show off, each one as thin as a pin, the ends as sharp as them too. “Then you’ll be able to fly off with the rest of them.”
My name is shouted again, so I gently place the bird back in its nest before I swing my leg over the branch and start to climb my way down.
When my bare feet land in the grass, I look up at my mother standing over me with her hands on her hips. Her black hair is in a long, loose plait, and she’s wearing the same red-colored clothing as me, except she’s in a dress. “And what do you think you were doing up in that tree?”
I shrug. “Nothing.”
“Mm-hmm,” she says as she wipes off some of the blue powder that landed on my shoulder. “I suppose you weren’t climbing up there and playing with the birds again.”
My face is in a frown when I turn it back up to her. “I wasn’t playing. That’s baby stuff. I was monitoring.”
My mother’s lips twitch. “Of course,” she says, green eyes flicking down. “And your shoes?”
Another shrug. “It’s harder to climb with them. I didn’t put them on because I didn’t want to fall.”
She shakes her head, but all sternness has left her expression as she kneels down in front of me. “Well, I certainly can’t have you falling. And how are the birds this morning?”
“They’re good,” I assure her, feeling excited again now that I can tell she’s not angry. “There’s a little nestling, but I think its mom left already, so I’m gonna help teach it to fly.”
The shape of my mother’s green eyes crinkles as she smiles. “If anyone can do it, you can. You’ve always had a way with them.”
Her hand lifts and she combs her fingers over my hair, but I jerk my head away and press down on it. “I combed it earlier.”
She laughs and then fixes my upturned collar. “Come on. It’s time to eat.”
When she reaches for my hand, I tug it away. “I can’t hold hands anymore. I’m eight,” I tell her.
“Oh, right. Of course,” she says, though the side of her mouth has lifted up into a smirk. “I guess I just miss holding my son’s hand.”
I don’t want her to feel bad. It’s not that I don’t want to hold her hand, it’s just little kid stuff. “You could hold Ryatt’s,” I tell her. “He’s only three, so that’s alright.”
She gently pats my cheek. “That’s a very good idea.”
Together, we walk away from the copse of trees, passing by the birdbaths and the line of point-shaped shrubs. I look at the estate at the bottom of the slope, but I don’t want to go inside. I’d much rather stay out here with the grass and the birds.
There’s nothing wrong with the house, really. We’ve got forty-three rooms, a load of fancy things, and a bunch of servants too. None of the other families in the city have a house as big as ours with as many horses as we do.