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I cried out and tried to turn my attention inward—to focus the way Nylah had taught me to do. The future Fae queen’s power was too strong, though, and the pain was crippling. I couldn’t think straight.
Lucia’s face was just above mine, and her face was twisted into a snarl. Her blue eyes darkened and narrowed, and her blonde hair whipped around wildly from her power. She looked more like a demon than the image of beauty. The edges of my vision blurred, and fear took hold in the pit of my stomach. This was it. She was going to kill me.
This was where I was going to die.
“Stop!” I was vaguely aware of a voice calling from the side. A familiar voice.
My vision darkened completely, and my blood rushed in my ears. My heart hammered against my chest, beating too fast. It was going to burst if Lucia didn’t stop. But she wouldn’t stop, would she?
A second wave of magic came from the side like a wave, and it physically threw Lucia off me. She cried out as she tumbled to the side.
The wave of magic washed over me, calming and soothing like water, and I had the strangest illusion of the ocean, washing waves onto the shore.
My vision slowly returned.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Nylah cried out. “If you so much as lay another hand or a drop of magic on Ellie, I will see to it you’re notfitto be queen.”
Her power pulsed to where I lay in the dust, and it was laced with fury. She was so angry, and I felt the heat on my skin like that of a furnace. She was much more powerful than Lucia. She moved in the Second Realm, and Lucia only in the first—or she would one day, but Lucia wasn’t royal yet.
I watched Nylah storm across the arena to where Lucia pushed herself up from the dirt. She dusted herself off.
“Do you have any idea who I am?” Lucia spat. “This will go straight to the King. How dare you threaten me, your future queen?”
“If I didn’t come here, Goddess knows what you would have done!” Nylah cried.
“And look at what youdid,” Lucia said. Her voice was calm now. “The King will hear about your insubordination. Don’t think that your friendship with him will save you once I’m through telling him how you—”
“I’ll tell him how you tried to kill Ellie,” Nylah said hotly. “If you lose your place as queen, it’s nobody’s fault but your own.”
Lucia clenched her jaw, and her eyes spewed fire, but she didn’t clap back.
“This isn’t the end of it, High Priestess,” she said coolly.
“I imagine it’s not,” Nylah replied.
Lucia walked away, her blonde hair flowing behind her, wafting in the breeze. Aside from the dust on her leather clothes, she looked like she could have stepped from the screen of a holo-magazine.
Nylah rushed to me, where I tried to push myself up. My whole body ached, and my head spun when I tried to move.
“Are you okay?” she asked, falling to her knees at my side.
I fell back, unable to sit. The pain was intense.
“I don’t think I can move,” I admitted. I squeezed my eyes shut, and tears threatened to spill onto my cheeks. If I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t stay. What if Lucia had done too much damage?
“I’ve got you,” Nylah said.
With the help of her magic, she got me up. She draped my arm across her shoulders and wrapped an arm around my waist, using her magic to get me to walk.
She helped me to the cathedral and into a large room I’d never been in. When she laid me on the bed, I spotted pictures on the mantle and realized this was Nylah’s room.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
“Don’t be,” she told me. She stroked my hair, her voice soothing. “You did nothing wrong. If I hadn’t come to check on you, who knows what she would have done.” She shuddered before she closed her eyes. “Just drink it in. Let the magic do its job, okay?”
I was too tired to nod. Nylah closed her eyes and hovered her hands over my body, and I did what she said. I let the magic wash over me, drinking it in. Nylah rebuilt me, undoing the damage that had been done.
She saved me, pulling me back from the edge.
