“You leave her alone,” he said.
“Who’s going to stop me?”the demon asked, amused.“You?”
His voice hit me like a physical blow.I dropped to the ground, palms scraping over dirt and leaves.The longing roared back, drowning me in promises of belonging and understanding and an end to carrying everything alone.My muscles trembled with the urge to crawl to him.To let him take it all away.His mind spilled into mine—images of myself curled up safe and understood, never lonely again, never grieving, never afraid.
“Yes,” I breathed.The word hissed out of me before I could bite it back.
I found myself moving over sticks and stones, knees digging into the earth, hand slicing open on something sharp.I barely felt it.
He’ll make it all stop, I thought wildly.He’ll make it all stop.
“He won’t,” Tani said aloud, stepping in front of me again.
My vision blurred.Through the wash of tears I saw Tani loose another arrow.It drove into a woman’s chest.She crumpled.
The demon’s glow intensified.
“Be gone, fairy,” he said.
He flicked his hand.
Tani flew backward like she’d been hit by a truck, crashing into the trees with a sickening thud.
My heart stuttered.I tried to scramble toward the fairy, but the demon’s voice slid through my veins like poison honey and turned me around again.
I crawled toward him, hands bloody, breath coming in harsh gasps.Images flooded my mind—him holding me while I cried, him telling me it would all be okay, him promising I’d never be alone again.It was a lie, and I knew it was a lie but some part of me wanted to believe it, anyway.
“Stay where you are.”
Owen’s voice snapped like a thunderclap.
The spell wobbled.I collapsed where I was, cheek pressed into damp leaves and dirt.Shame mixed with relief, burning behind my eyes.I let out a strangled sob.
Wind whipped through the clearing, rattling the leaves overhead.The trees shuddered, branches bending low.The air changed—metallic and charged, like the moment before a tornado dropped out of a green sky.The temperature plummeted.
A raindrop splashed on my cheek.
“I said stay where you are.”
I had never heard Owen sound like that.Dark.Commanding.Absolute.I turned my head enough to see his back—rigid, broad shoulders braced, fists clenched at his sides.
Lightning crackled across the sky, followed by a booming crack of thunder that shook the ground.The wind howled, ripping leaves from branches.The clouds above rolled in a churning, slate-gray mass, swallowing the sun.
Owen thrust his hands forward.
The gust that hit the demon was like a physical wall.The man in black went flying backward across the clearing, slammed into the hickory tree, and crumpled to the base of it, pinned there by wind that shrieked like a living thing.He was out cold.
The moment he hit the trunk, the roar stopped.The clouds broke apart as if ripped down the middle.Sunlight poured into the clearing.The wind died to a whisper.The suffocating pressure lifted.
Summer snapped back into place.
Owen spun and dropped to his knees beside me, hands closing around my shoulders.
“Piper.Are you all right?”
His voice—his normal, worried voice—flipped the switch inside me.The ugly, invasive longing evaporated like mist.I sucked in a lungful of hot, humid air and nodded.
“I am now,” I managed.“What happened?Did you… use your magic?”
