Page 86 of The Silversmith

I looked down, searching for a way out, or at least a way to stop it. My brow furrowed at the unnatural stillness beneath me. Somehow, the small silver disc beneath my feet was still stationary, disturbed by nothing, not a single tremble. I, too, was still, melded with the silver into one piece, one center, and I realized…

I was the axis. I anchored them.

The twelve gods spun, but if I remained, so would they.

Beyond, I heard the cry of the little boy’s mother as she pleaded for his life, and I remembered why I’d come here. Panic snaked its way through my veins. He didn’t have much time. I couldn’t see the tendril reaching out of his chest, but I could feel it.

His lifeline, begging for help. Begging for me.

Words dashed across my vision. I’d spent hours scouring The Book of the Selvaren for answers in that library. Fire, water, ice, night, wind, objects moved with the mind, and… healing. I pressed my hands to my ears, pressure crushing my temples as I strained for the right spoke.

The mother cried again for her son, and I screamed a final desperate plea to the gods that this little boy not die, even if I, the axis of the wheel, had to splinter to save him.

My right hand shot out and reached for green.

The temple disappeared, and a flash of emerald light illuminated the black of my closed eyelids. The scent of jasmine washed over me, then iron-rich blood and flesh as the boy’s wound burned and healed over.

When I opened my eyes, I realized not what I felt, but who.

Viridian, God of Healing and Regeneration.

I gasped and yanked my hands from the boy, frantically crawling back and away. Afraid of the power I didn’t know how to control, afraid of myself, of what I could do to him. Weakly, I stumbled into a warm wall of muscle. Familiar arms caught me.

“It’s okay, you won’t hurt him,” Gavin promised, his mouth close to my ear. Quiet, so only I could hear, as he secured a steel arm around my torso, drawing me into him. “You would never hurt him, Ella.” I felt his chest shudder. Not a cry, but a breathless laugh of relief.

I was afraid to look down at the little boy, but when I did, I saw what Gavin saw. The deep, fatal gash over the boy’s little neck was gone. He laid in a pool of blood, but the flowing had ceased.

Little gray eyes flickered open.

The mother wailed and wept beautiful tears of relief, embracing her son as he turned into her chest for comfort. My heart fissured at the sight and a sudden awareness that I’d never yearned for my own mother that way.

“Thank you!” she cried, her eyes tearful orbs of wild gratitude. “You… our—our Silver Angel, thank you.”

Words escaped me. Wracked by tremors, I merely nodded at the woman and leaned into Gavin, letting him help me to my feet. I wavered as I rose, sudden waves of nausea and dizziness inhibiting my balance. It felt like healing had taken something out of me.

Gavin wrapped his arm around me and all but carried me toward the tavern.

I looked around to see buildings singed by fire and struck with debris, townsfolk scrambling to put out the flames. There appeared to be more casualties of shock and fear than of the destruction itself. Only a few buildings stood close enough to be partially incinerated by the outward blast of fire.

Indeed, the front wall of the tavern had been blown out. With it gone, I could see straight through the dust into the wreckage. Tables and chairs were in pieces, debris strewn across the floor I’d danced on days ago. Shattered glass from Damond’s chandeliers crunched beneath our feet. Dust from the blast floated inside streams of dusky sunlight.

I looked down and saw a streak of blood trailing from the tavern’s threshold into the back room. As if someone had been wounded and dragged.

And then I heard a man screaming in agony.

Bursting through the door, I saw Caz on the floor, flat on his back, Gemma and Finn on each side of him. And his leg… his left leg was severed at the calf, connected only by thin tissue, most of it a bloody, shredded stump of flesh. Blood spurted out in time with his pulse.

I covered my mouth with my hands, swallowing the bile as it rose in my throat.

Finn remained remarkably focused as he fastened his own belt—a makeshift tourniquet—just below his brother’s severed knee. It was a relief when Finn pulled the tourniquet taut and Caz responded with a groan.

“He was just inside the temple, and a boulder—” Gemma swallowed, paling. “A boulder fell on him. We were here, just on the other side of the street.” She gave me a quick glance before sliding a pile of books to elevate his bloody stump. “We found him, we got him out in time before anything else could happen, but—”

“I’ll live,” Caz groaned in pain.

Sorrow and rage bit at my eyes like hellhounds, relieved only slightly by the sight of Damond and Ezra rushing in from other rooms, unscathed. Damond, with a canteen of water to cleanse the wound, and Ezra with a blanket to cover Caz.

My other four friends were fully intact, save for some scrapes and burns from stray cinders and rubble.