Kala growled, standing on all fours, ready to pounce.

“Shall I handle this?” Kala asked, lifting her glowing eyes to the queen’s.

Dark figures emerged and I realized that outside the carriage was a mob of people with torches, spears, and swords.

Queen Sorcha held up a hand. “No, your immanence. I can handle it.”

“They’re blocking the path,” I said.

“Bloody fools,” Queen Sorcha said. “I swear they never learn.”

“Can’t we go around?” I asked, my pulse quickening as the carriage began to rock from their pushing.

They began chanting so loudly that I had to resist the urge to cover my ears. Such anger and hate. I was used to being hated, but nothing like this. The prison guards never shouted insults and slurs.

“Hand over the witch.”

Witch?

“Give us the witch.”

“She is not welcome in Tythra or anywhere else in the human realm.”

I paled, an icy ripple racing up my spine. They were talking about me.

“We are leaving, actually,” Queen Sorcha assured them.

A large hand reached in and tried to open the locked carriage door. Queen Sorcha pointed her wand at him and sent a shard of red light into his palm, zapping him. The man snatched his hand back with a howl.

Visions of my mother and father being ripped away from me as I screamed and cried returned. If my grandmother hadn’t held me back, I would have clung to my father’s leg and been carried off to the gallows along with them.

“Don’t they know you’re their only chance at being free from those blasted dark sprites?”

Panicked, I looked from her and to the fire that began to rise. We were going to die, and she was acting as if they were simply coming over for a little spat. No, I knew better.

Closing my eyes, I began to call on the power I’d been awaiting all of my life. It had to present itself now.

“No,” she said. “Don’t shift. Not now. You must save your strength.”

My eyes popped open and my jaw hung. “You are reading my mind, aren’t you?”

With a shrug, she frowned at the men outside. She pulled a band off of a rolled scroll and held it up to the window.

“I have a royal decree here from the king. Now, step aside so we can pass. We don’t want any trouble.”

For a moment, there was a tense silence. A few hushed whispers passed between the burly men outside and the cloaked holy men with them.

I couldn’t help but hold my breath as we awaited their reply. With narrowed eyes, I examined the golden embroidery on the black cloaks worn by the clerics outside. Black eyes looked back at me, and I coiled back with realization.

I’d seen those symbols before. The men who had taken my parents away had worn them on their cloaks.

How many times had I had nightmares of the clerics and soldiers coming in the night to rip me from my meager cot in the Crimson Tower and carrying me to my death?

“See?” Queen Sorcha asked through clenched teeth. “It’s all here, in writing.”

The carriage shook as a torch came crashing into the side, sending flames flying.

There was our answer.

She shook her head, more annoyed than afraid, and took a wand from a holster strapped and buckled around her shoulder and waist. She tapped it twice to the wooden door and it lit up a bright red. With a glance at me, she nodded to the mob of shouting humans outside.

“Hold open the curtain, my dear.”

I did as I was told and hurried to hold the maroon curtains open.

Her eyes turned completely white. She lifted her wand and with a mumbled series of words I’d never heard, a bright light shot forth from the tip of the wand. Then, an sphere of air appeared before us, spinning, and gathering energy.

My eyes widened as the sphere grew until it seeped out of the carriage and enveloped the entire thing.

The shouts and curses from outside were muted and Queen Sorcha pointed her wand directly at the mob.

“Well,” she said. “That’ll be enough of that.”

I sat on the edge of my seat and watched in awe as the carriage was lifted into the sky. I held onto the window ledge as we ascended high into the clouds.

“How did you do that?” My jaw hung as I looked down at the dark thatch of forest and how it ended at an expansive meadow littered with white trees encrusted with snow. It was beautiful, like lights in the shadows.

She sat back in her seat and rubbed her temples.

“It’s nothing really, dear. Just a bit of air mixed with magic. Too bad, though. I was saving my energy for at least until we were out of Tythra. Now, I’ll need to rest.”

“Or course,” I said as she lay down across the seat. “Will the carriage continue to fly?”

“Yes. It’ll take us to the frozen sea where the Royal Guard and Prince Ewan will be waiting for us—as negotiated with King Aerion. They’ll make sure we have safe passage through The Veil of the dead.”

“Prince Ewan?”

She nodded, studying my face again. “Yes. The air elemental.”

Stunned, I slumped back in my seat. Just brilliant. No one told me I’d meet another elemental so soon. I breathed in and tried to calm myself.

It seemed I was in for a bit of an adventure.