Magic, wind, white-emerald hair.
Nicole immediately went on the offensive as her vision righted, only to find—
The Druid girl pinning her, the cold sting of something at her throat. A knife.
‘I’ll help her get away,’ the Druid said.
Nicole felt the press of a ward around them, the shimmer of the Druid’s magic as she made sure they weren’t heard.
‘You can struggle to make it look real but you won’t win. I’m two thousand years older. Is Kyan in the Wake or with you?’
‘They brought us both in,’ Nicole panted.
The Druid cursed, deliberating. ‘If you get out, I’ll take you to your mother.’
All the heat, all the momentum drained from Nicole’s body.
Stars danced in her vision, turned it blurry.
Her question, when she asked it, was distant, thready. ‘What?’
She knew. Knew from the look in the girl’s eyes and the steady way she’d said it, that she wasn’t lying.
‘How?’
‘Get out and I can find you. I can show you.’
‘No, you tell me right now!’ Nicole grabbed a fistful of the Druid’s brown jacket. ‘How dare you try to do this to me? If this was true you’d have told me last time!’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘I have no guarantee I can wake her!’
Wake her.
Was itpossible? That her mother had been in some kind of sleep, forsixteen years?
Nicole started shaking her head.
‘I don’t believe you.’
But she did. Some tender, trembling, childlike part of her wanted to believe it was true. That her mother – the semi-divine figurehead, the benchmark to which Nicole always measured herself, the omniscient immortal parent who’d guided her with her books and knowledge even through death – could still bealive. That she could look into her face, her open eyes, hear her voice—
Something cracked in her chest from the pressure of this mission; the fear for her family’s safety. And now this true, deep, secret hope was being dangled in front of her as a sob latched in her throat.
It wascruel.
A dark flood of rage overtook her.
‘Get out of here,’ Nicole said, shoving her backwards. ‘Get out!’
Regret flashed through the Druid’s eyes, her lips tightening, but she backed up and ran.
Nicole stared, ears muffled, the world around her like some alien landscape.
She tried to get her mind to focus, but everything she knew was changing so constantly, so quickly, that she didn’t know what to do. Panic cinched her throat.
