I drop my gaze on the man now standing directly below me in front of the stage.
“How about you show us a bit more skin and maybe I’ll throw in an extra draght?” he hollers, brandishing a hand at the throng as if to earn their agreement.
A whimper beside him, followed by a squeak, and it’s only then he seems to notice the little girl whose neck he’s nearly cracked. She’s sniffling and straining upward so she doesn’t get hung by the collar.
I freeze.
He sneers at her. But she doesn’t notice. Her gaze is glued on me. He looks back and forth between the two of us. Curiosity, then anger flickers across his face. I pretend to ignore it. Until he lifts the girl’s reins and gives them a tug.
She winces and I grimace.
A sick grin twists his mouth. Slowly, deliberately, he raises her reins another inch so her toes are barely touching the ground. He watches for my reaction.
The girl’s eyes go wild. She begins to writhe and spin, trying to hold her head high enough to keep breathing.
My fingers curl into fists.
Stay out of it, Nym. Close your eyes.
An awkward hush falls. The man’s perverse pleasure is tangible as again he lifts the reins. But this time he doesn’t stop until her feet are off the ground and the little girl’s expression has exploded into full-blown terror. She is kicking, flailing, gasping. Choking at the end of her noose.
And he’s enjoying every second of it.
I shut my eyes and feel the throbbing of my own neck. One . . . two . . . three heart pulses, and abruptly there’s a pause in the air. As if the wind itself is holding her breath.
And then the sound of a choked spasm, so fragile in its hopelessness, signaling what I already knew.
He’s going to let her die.
But I can’t.
Thick clouds descend on the marketplace in a swirling rush and darken the sun. They sharpen the friction in the atmosphere, engaging with my infuriated blood, my skin. Sickened, I open my eyes in time to see faces draw upward. Their expressions slowly alter from humor to horror.
I’m so sorry, I want to say. But all you fancy people in your pretty shawls? You should know better.
Shouts pick up. “What’s going on? Is she doing that?”
The cold sets in. My body shivers, followed by heat rippling along my skin’s pale surface.
The little girl’s owner lowers the reins and stares at me. As does the noblewoman in back with the gold-rimmed eyes. Is it in fear? Fascination? I don’t know which and I don’t care.
The sky rumbles and the wind quickens, wild so my hair is everywhere and the stand is creaking and a howl picks up through the market stalls. The shop vendors scramble to place their baskets and wares under cover and tamp down their tent stakes. The crowd scatters, diving for safety. Everyone but the half-choked little girl, her owner, and the noblewoman. Why aren’t they running? Go, my eyes beg the child. Not that it would help the wretched man with her.
I tense.
Here it comes.
The familiar crackle rips along my veins, and then the pain pierces through as my muscles stiffen and coil inside me like the air above. Igniting. My body, both master and slave to the elements. And I don’t know how to breathe, how to stop it, how to be anything but this thing fracturing the sky.
The first lightning strike lands in the middle of a meadow. Far enough away to avoid people but close enough to terrify.
People scream and stop running. Some look around. Some hunch over, as if making themselves smaller will save them. “It won’t,” I yell at them. They’re about to die because of a curse I am powerless to control.
A raindrop splashes on my forehead. Then another. Then they’re dripping everywhere. Pouring off their faces and dulling their cries, and in the middle of it all, the noblewoman is still watching, a growing look of hilarity on her face. She must be insane—standing in the storm looking like that.
Leave! I try to scream at her, but abruptly my voice is gone.
In front of me, the man has given up staring and is running now too—trying to escape with the redheaded girl. She’s struggling so desperately that the reins slip free and she falls backward.
I sense it before I see it. The storm overhead snaps its fury.
My body jolts.
His violent death will be the only one that won’t haunt my nightmares tonight.
A deafening crack and blinding flash. The marketplace goes white. Burning grass and flesh fill my nostrils as a repulsive thrill winds through my static-filled veins.
His body bursts into pure energy.
The crazy noblewoman laughs as the man crumbles to dust.
CHAPTER 3
It’s snowing. Bits of ash and frost are biting at my fingers. I hold them out in front of me and watch, terrified, as the night’s destruction swirls around my winter home in a smoky blizzard of hail and lightning. A dirty red trail leads all the way from the chateau to my little bloody feet, which are melting holes in the luminescent snow. The tracks look like a spattered path of scarlet bread crumbs.