Chapter
46

Britta

PHELIA DISMOUNTS AND DRAGS FINN DOWN beside her. His left eye is swollen to the point it doesn’t open, so he turns the right side of his face to me before seeking out his brother. The hope in his one good eye smarts through me, rubs vinegar into my wounds.

No one moves, the impossibility of the situation hitting each one of us in a different way. Smoke drifts from the cottage’s rooftop. I glance at Cohen. Horror shadows his eyes, turning his expression agonized.

Finn wears the manacles I once wore. Had I any arrows left, I’d shoot Phelia and Jamis without a second thought.

I point my sword in their direction and cry out, “Let him go. Or I swear to you now I will run you through with this very blade before the day is over.” Rage carries my voice all the way across the field.

“Britta, fall back.” Aodren’s steps falter beside me. The caution in his tone is an attempt at silencing me. But I will not stand down. Not this time. I meant every word I said, and Phelia knows it.

Jamis leaps from his horse, unsheathes his sword, and stalks to Finn’s side. “Send us the king, or I will kill him.”

His truthful heat crawls through me; it’s a poison curdling in my blood. My arms stiffen to hold the sword higher. I should’ve never left Finn behind. He was my responsibility. Knowing I’ve let down Cohen and Finn is the worst kind of pain.

Aodren’s knuckles brush against mine. “This is my choice.”

His choice?

He walks away, headed straight for Lord Jamis. “Let the boy go,” Aodren yells. “I will take his place.”

Truth. The suddenness of his choice steals my chance to react. I don’t have time to comprehend what he’s giving up by walking straight into their hands. Part of me begs not to let him go. I don’t want to lose Aodren this way. And neither can Malam afford to lose him. Yet I cannot watch Finn die.

Aodren glances back at me, unspoken words and emotions painting his eyes a brilliant green. “Be brave.”

Lord Jamis shoves Finn toward the field. Finn starts a brisk, jerky walk toward the barn.

My eyes burn with unshed tears. Never before have I felt less courageous than I do now.

My throat locks over the words I want to say. I realize why Cohen always chose my safety first. It’s too painful to watch fate play its cold games with the life of someone you care for. I did not realize how much I care for this man until now. Good, kind, intelligent, compassionate—Aodren’s one of the truest friends I have ever had.

“Britta. Look.”

Lirra points across the field, where a handful of crows flap out of the trees. Snow showers the ground near the birds’ movement. I cannot see anyone. But something about Finn’s body language catches the corner of my eye. His stride is all wrong. The closer he gets to Aodren, the choppier his movements become.

A peek of silver glints between Finn’s fingers. What’s he carrying? I glance across the field, trying to make sense of the scene.

Still as the snow around her, Phelia watches Finn.

“Stop!” I break into a sprint for Aodren.

Aodren twists around just as Finn thrusts a blade into his shoulder. A pained grunt comes out, and Aodren shoves the younger boy back. The two struggle, the king’s one good arm fending off Finn’s attack. Cohen shouts. Finn lunges for Aodren’s throat.

Right before I reach them, Finn collapses, a puppet whose strings have been cut.

The suddenness of his fall has me skidding to a stop, focus whipping to Phelia. She’s not alone. Four girls, bound wrist to wrist, form a semicircle behind Phelia. Off to the side of the girls, two more guards hold swords ready.

“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.

She must see my indecision because she swings her blade up, pointing it at my nose. “Stop her . . . I can manage. Get Phelia.”

Without wasting a moment, I rush at Phelia. I’m expecting her to blast me with wind or an earth shake, but she allows me to come close. I swing my sword, wanting to end this with one blow. Faster than humanly possible, she releases the girls, dodges my weapon, and seizes my arms. It all happens so quickly, a heartbeat and I am caught in her grip, unable to move, sword on the ground.

I thrash, desperate to get away. Only, I’m no match for Phelia’s power.

At the smell of smoke, I crane my neck around to find fire eating across the fallen trees, trees that I only now realize have penned in all the people I care about. They’re going to burn to death or suffocate from all the smoke.

I realize how fragile they are. How easily Phelia could end their lives. How weak and foolish I was to think I could beat her. It’s too much to take in.

I close my eyes, wanting the fight, the suffering, the violation of the young girls and my friends . . . all of it, to fade away. I’m stuck in Phelia’s impossibly strong grip. Every time I try to jerk free, she tightens her hold. There’s nothing I can do to help anyone, not even myself.

I hang my head, hopeless. Will they kill all of us?

The tug that I struggled with until this last week tightens a fraction. It’s a nudge between my ribs, coming straight from Aodren. The sensation rattles my senses. I’ve grown so used to Aodren’s connection that I’ve stopped noticing it. But feeling it now, in this dark moment, brings a sudden clarity.

I just have to be close enough to the Spiriter to unravel her energy. Enat told me as much in the woods. When Aodren was under Phelia’s mind control, all I needed to do was find her at the castle, touch her to access her energy and his, then unwind it.

But the scene at the castle with Aodren didn’t go as planned because Phelia was already gone.

I stop resisting and twist my hands, wrapping them around Phelia’s wrists. My palms cover the runes. My invisible touch brushes against the wild storm of energy inside her. But unlike the scene in the woods, her frenzied energy is complicated with other zips and zings. If they were colors, Phelia’s would be black. The others would be strands of yellow, green, blue, and orange. I imagine a hand created from my own energy, attempting to separate the colors, plucking them off and throwing them into the wind. But Phelia fights me. Her black is resistant and full of tentacles that whip around, catching the escaping colors.

I focus on the black, drawing it through my palms. Raw power surges up my arm, hot and sweet as summer molasses. I am alive. Energy sings in my veins. Strength multiplies in my arms.

Suddenly, I’m not the one caught in another’s grip. I’m the aggressor. Hands wrapped around Phelia’s wrists, I force her down to her knees as easily as moving a small child. Her eyes, two round moons, wide and old, shift from my face to the hand that’s wrapped around her wrist, drawing energy like I might empty a waterskin.

But along with the energy comes a surge of murky thoughts and emotions. At first they’re terrorized whispers. A child’s cry in the dark. And then they grow clearer, painting perfect pictures of nightmares and dark desires.

Her screech coils through my ears.

The darkness is divine. Delicious. I want it. I drink it in, my goal no longer to subdue Phelia, but to take everything she has. Everything.

No, a voice cries from the back of my head. You’re not like you’re mother. You can stop this. I resist tugging the thread of black power, despite how my body cries for more.

Pain explodes in my back and burns, burns, burns through my belly. The suddenness of it rattles my thoughts and causes me to release Phelia. I look down to where my hands have gone to my stomach. Only, my fingers stop, hovering in front of the crimson-soaked blade protruding above my navel. A blade.

A cry of anguish rends the air. It’s not mine. I’ve no air to even gasp for the pain and numbing. Phelia’s gaze meets mine one last time. Shock, sadness, and sorrow.

I try to talk, but nothing comes except a gurgle. A metallic tang coats my tongue.

And then I’m falling,

falling,

falling.