Authors: Amy Braun
With no hesitation, he flipped the dagger in his grip, pointed it at his chest, and stabbed himself through the heart. It all happened to fast for me to stop. Mortis dropped to his knees and bellowed in agony.
Hadrian took a step to run for him when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I spun around and saw the Stormkind staggering through the wall of hail and ice. The thunder-Stormkind held its hands open to the sky, calling down shafts of lightning that smashed against the drenched soil. A streak of lightning snaked over the earth and aimed toward us. Hadrian and I stepped back from one another. The bolt leaped from the ground and flared to life between us. I could feel the searing heat and the piercing shocks that stung my skin. I screamed and stumbled away, not sure if I’d been struck by the bolt or not. I couldn’t see Hadrian, not even when the light died.
I swayed drunkenly, blinking against the sudden darkness. A gleam of skeletal light and a cyclone of snow rushed toward me. The tornado-Stormkind, with its swirling grey skin, sent a twister directly at me. Hadrian skidded in front of me, swinging his hand up. The ground beneath us froze over just before a tower of ice jutted upward and captured the tornado. It didn’t stop the Stormkind, but Hadrian was shifting his attention.
He twisted at the waist, punching his fist forward. A ball of ice shot from his fist, slamming into the ice-Stormkind charging our right. The Stormkind held up its clear, icy hand. It punched the sphere of ice, shattering it in one strike. It swiveled its wrist, capturing the shards of ice as they fell. Then it launched them back at us.
This time I stepped forward, sweeping my arm and sending a powerful wind to brush the shards away. As I turned, a bolt of lightning shot past me like a burning arrow. A piece of it grazed my arm, pain bursting in a white-hot explosion over my bicep. I screamed and backed into Hadrian. His hand found mine and he squeezed tightly. I felt him shift, and looked up to see the rain freezing around him. I glanced back and watched him sweep the tempest-blade around him like a lasso. The pieces of hail followed him.
In one wide, twisting move, Hadrian whipped the shards of hail at the Stormkind. As each piece shot through the air, they connected to other shards of hail until spears as long as my arms formed. The spears struck the ground in front of the Stormkind and exploded into clusters of deadly spikes that pierced the beings through their arms and legs. I didn’t know if that would be enough to stop them, but I took a second to breathe.
Hadrian looked at me. His free hand cupped my face, his eyes riveting me to the ground.
“What happened?”
I glanced at my seared arm. The burn was blistering red and pulsed in sharp stings, but it would heal. Hadrian frowned when he looked at the wound, his concerned blue eyes rising to mine. He was about to speak when something captured his attention behind me. Hadrian’s eyes widened just before a violent swirl of wind snapped around me and ripped me from his grasp.
I screamed as I flew through the air. Clumps of dirt and dust snared my wrists and ankles, then yanked me back onto the earth. I screamed again when I struck it, pain exploding up my back and through my head. One more smash like that, and I would break at least one of my bones. If I were lucky.
Groaning against the pain swelling in my head, I cracked my eyes open and stared at the swaying image of Mortis looming over me. Unlike Declan, he had kept most of his human form. Only his eyes were different. Gone were the creepy black irises, replaced by unfiltered, shocking white.
Mortis smirked. “This appears to have been a success,” he remarked. His voice still retained its familiar depth, but there was a strange echo to it now. A haunting, hollow noise that sent shivers through the pain in my body.
“
Mortis!
” screamed Hadrian. I lolled my head to look at him, watched him run as fast as he could, forgetting about the Stormkind sliding off the icy spikes that had punctured their bodies. Saw that while he’d called Mortis’s name, his eyes were only for me.
The Mistral-turned Stormkind, or whatever he was now, shifted the angle of his head. He turned his hand upward, his fingers becoming vicious claws. Thin whips of lightning shuddered down from the black clouds, and struck the cold ground around Hadrian. Caging him in a circle of blinding light.
I rolled onto my side, aching from the pain cutting through my back, my heart breaking with every desperate pulse.
Following the turn of Mortis’s wrist, the lightning split off again, flipping up and coiling around Hadrian’s limbs. They tightened and pushed him onto the ground. His screams of pain ripped the rest of my heart to pieces.
Knowing I had to save him, that I had to save
all
of us, I crawled across the ground to Mortis’s feet and pulled cool strength from the tether. My hands frosted over, a dagger of ice filling my palm. I gripped it tightly and stabbed it into Mortis’s ankle. He barked in pain and lost his hold on the lightning. I stabbed again, aiming higher on his leg. The ice-dagger punched through the skin at the bottom of his knee–
Mortis’s heavy boot slammed into my shoulder. Searing pain burst across my chest and upper arm. I had no idea if it was because he’d kicked my burned arm, or because my shoulder was now dislocated, but it felt like my entire left arm was now useless.
Good thing I was right-handed.
Mortis roared and reached for my neck. I shoved my right hand up and threw a gust of wind at him like a punch. It struck his chest and knocked him away from me.
I rolled onto my side, my eyes finding Hadrian across from me. The lightning had disappeared from his body, but I could see the agony etched into his face. Behind him, I saw the Stormkind rush for him.
The choice was in front of me. Help Hadrian and let Mortis destroy us while we fought together, or put every ounce of strength into stopping Mortis alone.
To use these so-called gifts, and find out exactly what I was capable of. No matter what the cost would be.
Faces flashed like lightning through my mind. Mom and Dad’s loving smiles. James’s big, excited eyes. Piper’s laugh. Zephys’s smirk and Vitae’s sad eyes.
Hadrian’s slow smile and polite nod. The glimmer in his sapphire eyes when he looked at me.
It wasn’t much of a choice at all.
Hadrian, get up. Keep the Stormkind away from me.
He moved slowly– too slowly– pushing onto his hands and knees. I cringed at the sight of his charred wrists and bruised face.
What are you doing, Ava?
My heart twisted. He would never agree to my plan if he knew the whole truth about it.
Buying time so we don’t have to take on so many enemies.
I hesitated, then added,
Let me protect you for once.
That should have been his first sign something was wrong. Maybe deep down, he knew there was. But he couldn’t do anything about it, because the Stormkind were closing in and surrounding him. Hadrian gathered his strength, fought his pain, and came up swinging.
It was time for me to do the same thing.
I slapped my hands against the sleety, slimy ground and grabbed the energy in the air in front of me. I pushed down, letting power ripple underneath me. The ground bucked under my feet, throwing up a wave of mud high enough to knock anyone off balance. Rolling to my feet, I watched Mortis push himself
from the muck. His white eyes burned like the deepest fires of Hell, bright promises of a slow, torturous death.
I refused to endure the first two parts. I didn’t let myself think about the third.
Sweeping and twisting my hands in the air, I felt a surge of power rising in my chest. I gathered a tornado of thick mire and pushed it at Mortis. Frost covered his palms as a huge rush of freezing, snowy air curled out of the oily clouds. The snow from the blizzard surrounded the tornado, dropping the temperature and causing it to slow. The flakes of snow became shards of ice, and soon my muddy twister was a crystal block of dirt.
Light snapped through the sky, my only warning that Mortis was calling down lightning. I jumped to the side as my thin, muddy twister exploded into chunky clumps of dirt. The bolt of lightning ripped through the space where it had been, a spear striking the ground I’d been standing on. I grabbed the rain pouring from the clouds and combined it with the water soaking the earth. It became a monstrous wave cresting and splitting behind me.
It poured across the space between us, crashing into Mortis. The water smothered him, completely taking him from my view.
Now that I had trapped him, I started to feel the throb in my head. I was soaked to the skin, but a thicker liquid was sliding over my upper lip. It tasted sharp, hot, and metallic.
I knew what it meant for me, but I couldn’t stop. Not yet. Not until I knew we were safe from Mortis.
My stomach turned at the thought of drowning a man, no matter how much misery he’d put me and my loved ones through. I started to draw back. Could I live with myself after I did this? Would I see blood on my hands, even though his wouldn’t be spilled?
The wave lifted, and not because I commanded it to. It was pushed up by another force, one stronger than mine.
In a single massive push, the wave leaped through the air and descended back onto me. I grabbed the water at my feet and dragged it over me, freezing the liquid until I was shielded. The cocoon was barely formed in time when the wave smashed into me. I screamed at the thunderous crash and continual roar of the water battering my safety. The murky ice groaned and cracked, half of it snapping under the pressure.
Water spewed into the broken ice structure, and I scrambled to fix it. My hands were shaking and blood coated my tongue. My brain swelled against my skull and pressed into my eyes.
An explosion of light dashed through the water, striking the ruins of my ice shield. Shards of ice shattered around me, the water punching at me.
Water that was electrified.
The charged water stabbed into my skin, lighting every nerve as it scorched me. Fire streamed through my blood like it was made of gasoline. It swelled in my lungs and seeped into my heart valves, punching my heart until I couldn’t breathe. My brain felt squeezed, as if trying to retreat into itself.
I’d never wished for death until that moment. I wanted the blackness to consume me again, just to take me away from the agony. I couldn’t bear it.
I don’t know how much time passed until it was over. The searing hooks of pain that had dug into me had been torn out, leaving a pounding stab in their wake. The ice-shield and electric wave had split around me, soaking deep into the earth. I collapsed with them.
I could hear Hadrian in the distance, but his voice was too far away for me to make out what he was saying.
Or maybe he wasn’t too far, and I just couldn’t bear to hear the pain in his voice.
Mortis loomed above me, melting out of the shadows and blocking the moon behind him. The only light I could see came from his lifeless, bleached eyes.
“
So much potential,” he told me with a slow shake of his head. “So much wasted.”
Mortis bent at the waist, stopping when his face was inches away from mine.
“
Let me show you what you what you were meant to become.”
Mortis stood up and held out his hands. Then the world exploded.
Dirt launched into the air. Rainwater poured in buckets and pooled onto the ground. Lightning skidded across the sky. Ice hardened along the edges of the crater and crept up the sides. Felled trees lifted and spun around twisters dropping from the sky. Hurricane winds swelled and pushed more trees further inland.
I could feel every speck of energy fuelling the storms, the unfathomable power of it all. The destruction so immense and widespread that it demanded respect and attention.
The power to end hundreds, if not thousands of lives.
Power
I
was supposed to have.
I shut my eyes. At least I didn’t have to scramble for a plan. The answer was in front of me. I just had to face it, and hope it would be over quickly.
I closed every distraction out. I didn’t think about Zephys and if he contained the other Stormkind. I locked away Piper as she guarded Vitae. I hid Hadrian behind my heart though the winds carried his voice. I kept my family in the back of my mind, where I wouldn’t miss them so badly.
I took a deep breath, felt the very earth shiver with energy and let it consume me from head to toe. It all became part of me– the ice under my skin, the mud squishing between my fingers, wind sweeping my hair over my face, the rain dancing on my skin…
I remembered the one day I left the restaurant and walked in the rain, how calm it had made me. How I was able to take a step back from the broken world and smile at the simplicity of it all.
Then I opened my eyes, and took it all for myself.
The hurricane winds rolling toward innocent lives suddenly lurched and tumbled backward, returning to me. Tornadoes spun too fast, obliterating and losing shape until they disappeared. Flying clumps of mud splattered onto the ground. Ice cracked and melted, slipping down the walls of the crater. The rain no longer slammed into the earth, light and tapping.