“Selina sends her love, by the way. Did you know she has no power now? You didn’t just absorb it, youstoleit. Drained it from her. We thought, maybe, it would return. But she’s of no use now. She was a powerful Elemental, and you’ve taken that from her. From the Usher.”
“Where is he?”
“You need to be more specific. There are a few people with us today.”
“The Usher. He’s using you. Using all of you, and he’ll betray everything you ever thought you were working for.”
“The only person who’s betrayed me is my own flesh and blood. My own sister,” he hisses.
“You are delusional if you think that. You hurt us. You hurt me. And you nearly killed Ten. You murdered Crimson.”
“Because she stabbed me in the chest, hoping I’d die,” Fenix shouts back, his words blaring in the snow, reverberating around us. As quick as a blink, he clenches his fist, and Ever freezes, and he pulls her towards him, the tips of her boots dragging through the snow. He raises his arm, as if he holds her in his fist, and all we can do is look on.
“I am not the same girl now, Fenix,” she croaks.
“Ever, be careful. Please, for the love of Aslendrix and all the stars, be careful.”
“Don’t try anything, Ten. Please. I need to know where the Usher is.”
“Why aren’t we helping her?” Lyle joins us with the girls, but I don’t miss Kalan flanking them, stopping them from getting any closer.
“We have to trust her.” It’s the only way we don’t risk all getting killed. I’ve learned my lesson and will never underestimate her, even if doing so threatens to break me in the process.
“Trust her, she’s?—”
“We trust her, Lyle. You can’t help her against him,” Kalan echoes my thoughts.
“Don’t, Kalan. Don’t tell me how to protect her.”
“Not here,” he grits the words out, and he seems to grow another foot with his anger on show.
I understand how Lyle feels because it’s eating me inside, standing doing nothing. But we wait. We all wait.
“Where is he?” Ever tries again.
“He’s… around.”
“Ever, do something, or we will!”
But there’s no movement from either of them. No response.
In the next blink, Ever’s free, and she’s on the opposite side of the stone to Fenix, but the Usher is there, too, heading right for it.
“What just happened?” Calix shouts. “How did she do that?”
It’s happened before. In Nehandun. If Fenix can freeze us, stop our bodies from moving, is it a stretch that together, they can freeze time?
“Don’t do this, Fenix!” she shouts.
“You tried to kill me, Sister. If you can’t see what we’re fighting for, then perhaps you deserve to share the fate of everyone else.”
He turns to all of us, and I know what’s coming.
Even if I had all my power, fighting him off would be fucking hard, but whatever scraps of power still remain, I pull on toblock him as best as I can. But it isn’t enough. The ropes of his power thread around me, freezing me in place. I try to move and see if it’s just me he’s targeted, but I can’t even do that.
Something is different this time. Before, back in Nehandun, his magic wrapped, coiled, and dug into me, incapacitating every muscle and fibre of my body. Now, there’s something else working against that power and control. Every strand or flow of magic has a partner, a twin, working against it.
I move my eyes and see that on the opposite side of the stone, Ever has her arms outstretched, and every inch of her focus is on me—on us. It’s her that I feel.She’sfighting Fenix’s control over us.
