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“I’ll catch you.”
Together we faced the well. It was not so much a well, as apuddle. But I could not see the bottom when Kage dipped his hands over the ledge and broke the glass of the surface. He held a scoop of water in his palms, leveling them against my lips.
“What you feel, I will feel,” he whispered. “What you see, I will see. You’re not alone in this Adira, but you deserve to take this. You deserve to find you again.”
“I don’t want it to hurt you again,” I admitted softly.
“I am already fading, Wildling. There is nothing more to lose, but perhaps we will have something to gain.”
My hands curled around his wrists, like an anchor on land, I nodded. No words, Kage merely tilted his hands, letting the crisp taste of water flow over my tongue.
I swallowed and . . . nothing.
No heat, no blaze of power, no internal combustion. My face pinched in confusion. “Kage, nothing’s hap?—”
The final thought was broken off by my scream as some force, some invisible fiend, yanked me by the hair, pulling Kage to the other side, and launched me into a cyclone of syrupy black.
CHAPTER 32
Adira
“My father’sgonna kill you, Wilder!” I dragged a finger over my throat, legs dangling from the branch of a willow. “Get gone!”
Below, three gangly boys stepped from the hedgerow. The center boy was the lankiest of them all. Skin and bones, no thicker than a post holding the fences. His hair had gotten wild over the Warming months. All messy waves that curved around his ears.
Dark eyes like roasted nuts lifted to the branch, and I took note of the pigskin pouch he kept tossing between his palms.
“Thought you were brave. Wasn’t that what you were saying in lessons?”
I let out a growl. “You toss that, and I’m going to kick you so hard in the shins, you won’t be able to walk down your pretty little carpets when we get back to Vondell.”
The boy chuckled and glanced at his companions—one with sun toasted skin. Cyland. He was Cyland. His dark hair was shaved on the sides and the top was knotted, but I would recognize that playful venom anywhere.
The other had fiery hair that stood on end. The latter of the trio kept shifting and looking over his shoulder with unease.
I could reason with him.
“Asger,” I shouted. “You know what my pop will do.You know.”
Young Asger, one pale eye and one brown as the forest floor, peered up at me in horror.
“Don’t listen to her,” said the lamppost leader. “She knows she’s lost against us, that’s all.”
“Almost ready.” A voice, soft and clever, came over my shoulder. Tucked behind the long drapes of the willow branches, a girl with a black braid and brown skin held out her palms.
“You sure?” I hissed back.
Gwyn, no older than ten, smiled viciously. “Teach them a lesson, Ravenwood.”
“Back off, Wilder,” I shouted. “Last warning.”
The leader laughed. I knew the sound, somewhere deep in my soul it was a sound I’d always known. Kage. Perhaps a boy of thirteen, face clear of stubble, a few red spots from adolescence on his chin, but the same sly grin he had as a man was there.
“I’m terrified, can’t you see?” Kage tossed the pouch again, only this time he let it fall.
One. I closed my eyes. Two. Hands raised. Three. “Now!”
Gwyn released a few drops of blood from a trout onto the branches. I would take it and make it something wretched. The tree seemed to shift to bones, the leaves made of shards of skulls.
