Immediately, his magic swelled, petals unfurling, bramble exploding. All of the air burst out of his lungs, but he didn’t dare gasp for more. A pressure bloomed inside his chest, so tremendous and agonizing that he swore his bones would buckle, that his skin would rupture as the power forced its way out. His vision flooded gold, as if he’d looked directly into the sun.
And now the sun would incinerate him.
Time slowed. His heart drummed at an erratic, breakneck speed, and he realized with a start that the light that had momentarily blinded him was not death, but the radiance shining from Valmordion’s core.
Every detail in the room returned to him magnified a hundredfold. Colors so vibrant the names he’d always called them no longer satisfied. The clamoring onlookers. And faintly, an inexplicably humid breeze, smelling of flowers.
But stronger than all of that, stronger than anything, was Domenic’s panic.
“Y-you’ve done it,” Glynn choked. “Valmordion Choseyou.”
Domenic’s knees quivered under the weight of the wand’s power, and a myriad of images and sensations invaded his mind. Branches reaching skyward. Earth of incarnadine red. Rings like those of a tree, hundreds and thousands and millions of them, records of some unknowable, primordial time. And a heat—an immense, magmatic heat—scorching him from within.
Domenic let out a strangled sob and gripped the wand with two hands, squeezing even as the thorns stabbed into his palms.Already, the power was overwhelming him, and soon it would rip him and everyone around him apart.
Slowly, applause trickled through the chamber. And though it was scattered, even wary, to Domenic, it sounded like a roar.
Hanna leapt from her chair and dashed toward him.
But Domenic didn’t want her near him, didn’t wantanyonenear him. So he surrendered to his instincts, and he ran.
XELLERY
SUMMER
Ellery bolted through the Citadel, her palm weeping blood. Terror and humiliation warred in her as she stumbled up seemingly endless stairs, past magical marvels and stone corridors, past people who gaped but didn’t try to follow. A stitch stabbed in her side. Her breaths grew labored and painful. And unbearable cold stormed within her, as though still purging Valmordion’s fire.
It wasn’t until she burst into the grove that she realized she’d stopped runningfromValmordion and started runningtowardsomething else.
Ellery slowed, panting, and stared at the alban tree. Branches spiraled toward the sunset, and the trunk was alight with the molten glow of Summer’s final moments, as though the season itself bled out across its bone-white bark. Winter was only minutes away.
Crimson splashed onto the dirt. Ellery could barely make out her palm amidst the bloodied blisters and rows of lacerations. The scent of scorched flesh still lingered in her nostrils.
She needed a healer. But as she made to leave the grove, her legs locked. Her shoulders stiffened. In a freezing flood, her magic sluiced through her, submerging her until her surroundings were muffled and distant. Ellery’s mind gave no protest as her body turned back to the tree of its own accord.
The alban groaned and shifted. Its wooden trunk creaked open, revealing an indent in the ancient wood.
Dimly, Ellery recognized its diamond shape.
Her fingers closed over the alban pit from her pocket. Her feet carried her to the tree.
And just as an alban in Nordmere had given that pit to Ellery eleven years ago, Ellery pushed it into the trunk, and gave it back.
As she drew away, silver gleamed across the divot. The pit vanished, and frost spiraled across the bark.
A single branch lowered and brushed her forehead, gentle as a kiss.
Ellery’s blood-soaked hand reached for it. As soon as she grasped it, her magic burst forth, swelling,yearning. It seeped into the alban wood—and collided with power of an unfathomable magnitude. She gasped for breaths that couldn’t come as she was assailed with inexplicable images. Snow so bright it seared her retinas. Iridescent ice crusted across a river. Silver plums blooming, a banquet, a bounty. Winds that gusted across entire forests with the ease of a sigh, a laugh.
Frost crept up Ellery’s arm, and a chill like none other stole through her. Like a veil draping over the world, her vision changed, colors muting but details sharpening, the grove now cast in a cool-toned glow.
The branch cracked off in her hand.
And transformed.
Vines sprouted from the gnarled wood, studded with thorns. They looped and coiled around the shaft, gleaming, while the hilt of the branch molded perfectly to Ellery’s hand. Silver light pulsed inside its core, like a heartbeat. And finally, ice clustered atop the wickedly sharp tip, then froze into a crystalline crust.
Winter arrived in Alderland, and Ellery felt it roaring free, a hold loosened, a dam burst. The rest of the grove withered, Summer leaves mottled with decay as the wind tore them from theirbranches, tugging at Ellery’s hair. Her breath fogged. Snow flurried through the air.
