“Orli,” Lirra cries out. A girl with ebony braids starts to thrash against the restraints.
Aodren holds his shoulder, applying pressure to the wound. “I don’t know what happened. Finn was attacking me, and then he just fell . . . Is he alive?”
Urgency bleats hurry, hurry, hurry through my veins. I check Finn’s pulse—sluggish.
Cohen appears at my side. “Let me get Finn out of here.”
I nod, wishing there was more I could say right now. At the very least, wishing he knew how sorry I was.
Seeva and her remaining Guild women meet Cohen at the edge of the field and gather around Finn.
“Britta, you could end this now.” Phelia’s voice rings like claws scraping down a window. She has a way of ripping my attention from everything else happening. Phelia grasps the two girls at the ends, completing a circle. They buck and squirm, a futile effort against the leather straps securing them to one another and the guards posted at their sides.
“I will never join you!” I shout at her.
In challenge, Phelia raises the arms of the two girls connected to her. “Is that so?”
I’m frozen in place, unable to turn away from Phelia, anticipating what her next move will be. How do you muddy water, Britta? By adding more and more dirt.
Phelia’s head twitches to the side. She stares me down as she lowers the girls’ arms. Her chest rises and falls in great gaping breaths. Her eyes roll back, whites gleaming against the black swirls that crawl around her neck.
“No!” Lirra cries out. She points at her friend who’s no longer fighting the restraints. “Phelia’s using a rune to draw out their powers.”
At the same time Cohen yells, “Britta!”
I spin around to find that Cohen has lowered Finn to the ground and is now kneeling beside Seeva. The Channeler lays on the snow, hand flattened over her chest. Her fingers dig into her shirt.
“The heat,” Seeva cries. Sweat coats her face. Her lips twitch. The snow nearest her face melts.
“What’s happening?” Terror creeping through my question, I look from Seeva to Phelia.
A shift in Cohen’s expression shows his understanding. “Phelia’s burning Seeva from the inside out.”
I blink, unsure how he came to the conclusion and at the same time horrified.
Torima crouches beside Seeva and places her hands on the Channeler. “I’ll do what I can to cool her with liquids from the inside out,” she says, “but can I get some wind, ladies?” She looks from Lirra to Katallia.
Both women agree. Lirra lifts her hands, and wind swirls around Seeva. The woman’s moans quiet.
“Keep it up,” Katallia tells her niece. “I’ll send a message to Phelia.” She then extends her hands toward the opposite end of the field. A wintry gust bursts past me, straight for Phelia.
Phelia stumbles to the side, her cloak flapping in the Channeler’s wind. But she doesn’t release the girl’s hands. The distraction allows Leif and Omar to sneak away from our group, in an effort to close in on Jamis and Phelia.
Seeva coughs and coughs until she can sit up. She grabs handfuls of snow, sucking the powder into her mouth.
A strange groan moves through the trees. It’s an unfamiliar sound that makes everyone pause. Seeva holds the snow in her palm, where it melts into a small handful of water.
Torima leaps to her feet and points at the trees nearby. “Run,” she shouts. “Run!”
The women rush toward the center of the field just in time. The first tree tips over, landing with a thud that scatters sticks and dirt and dust. Tree after tree falls. Our group frantically moves away from the falling forest, Cohen carrying Finn, Aodren clutching his shoulder and walking beside them, Katallia helping Seeva, while Lirra and I take up the rear.
Leif, who has snaked around the field to Jamis’s side, finds a bow from one of the fallen archers. He pulls an arrow to the string and waits for an opening.
Omar takes cover behind one of the fallen pines, close to Phelia.
“What can I do?” I ask. “Seeva, can I help you regain your strength?”
The woman allows me to help her. Clasping her hand, I try not to gasp at the warmth of her skin as I seek out her energy and push some of mine into hers. To give us time, Katallia and Lirra send gust after gust of wind in Phelia’s direction. When they take a break, Torima gathers the moisture in the air and pelts Phelia with jagged pieces of hail.
Phelia screams into the wind and hail, but somehow manages to keep hold of the girls’ arms. Obsidian veins pulse against her white-as-snow skin, shifting like a nest of snakes in the storm. The girls around her start to drop, one at a time, to their knees until they’re all wilted beside her legs.
Another groan sounds nearby. I release Seeva’s hand so I can look at the woods and see where the tree is going to fall. The tree falls, but it’s too far away to do damage to our group.
Seeva pushes to her feet, anger brightening her energy as she snaps fire into her palms. Seeva throws her balls of fire in the air, and in a move that makes me think these women have practiced Channeler combat many times before, Katallia adds a gust of wind that sends the fire straight at Phelia.
The distraction is what Leif needs to shoot off an arrow at Phelia.
Phelia’s cloak flaps out, and moments before Seeva’s fire and Leif’s arrow hit, air blows out from Phelia’s circle, redirecting the fireballs at our ragtag bunch and sending the arrow straight at Omar. It happens in an instant. The tip slams right into Omar’s chest.
While Lirra blows the fireballs into two fallen trees, the rest of us stand in a shocked trance.
Only Leif moves. Surprise slackens his mouth and makes his arm hang from the weight of the bow. “Omar?”
Oh mercy.
The captain sputters for breath and tips forward, slamming into the frozen earth. Caught in a nightmarish pendulum between Phelia and my friends, I whip around just as Leif reaches Omar. Dread turns me wooden as I watch my sweet friend fall to his knees and wail. “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” he cries. The sound of his agony breaks me.
“Kill them all,” Jamis yells at Phelia.
Phelia’s veins throb.
The world groans and shakes underfoot. I sprint for her with my weapons drawn.
The guards move to intercept me. Before I can throw my blade, a dagger flies past my shoulder, hitting a guard below the collarbone. He crumbles to the ground.
I jerk to the side.
“I’ll take the guards.” Lirra’s staccato steps catch me unaware. Her shoulders slump and her breathing is labored. She’s exhausted from using so much energy to control the wind. “Get . . . her.” Her sword is extended, though her sporadic movements spur little faith in her ability to fight right now.