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Ainsley
Hattie. What had she done to me?
The steady pounding inside my head offered the only certainty I was still alive.
Pain seared through my body—it blazed an internal fire that could only be muted when I focused on my heartbeat as it drummed an erratic rhythm in my ears. I knew Killian was wrapped around me—his arms encased my middle like a vise. He screamed my name, but it was muffled. So close, yet somehow distant. Even the terror in his suppressed tone could not snap me out of what was happening.
And what was bloody happening?
My chest constricted even tighter as if the magical orb, which had been cast into my midsection, was now expanding. I hissed and fought against it, wishing to break free and return to normal. Why wouldn’t it stop?
My birth mother had hit me with some sort of dangerous energy—but why?
Breathe.
I shook my head, and as I did, my body convulsed uncontrollably. The distant sound of thunder reverberated in the air around me, and a bolt of lightning struck the grass at my feet.
“Ainsley.” Killian’s shout was near my ear, but not loud enough to break the spell.
As wind whipped around me, I screamed, and rain blanketed the earth in a torrent, instantly soaking me through—the chill of it bone-deep.
“What good is this blasted magic if everyone I care about continues to leave me?” I could not be certain if I had shouted the words that haunted me, or if I’d only thought them. But fury wailed its song of intensity within me as those musings arose to the forefront of my mind.
Breathe.
Something inside of me shouted more forcefully this time, breaking through the walls of anger I attempted to build to defend myself from not only the magical attack, but the deluge of emotions battering me with immense force.
Breathe,the voice repeated now that it had my attention.
Obeying, I surrendered myself to it, given that writhing in pain and terror hadn’t worked. I pulled in an uneven breath, shaky from my involuntary trembling and then exhaled—again, repeating the pattern until my trembling subsided.
And, with it, nearly all the pain.
I shivered, but this time it was not from the strength of power that had been of terrifying magnitude—no, instead, it was from the dampness of my skin. The rain dwindled, and while I could just make out the thunder, it was muffled as Killian’s voice had been.
The orb of magic—that I somehow knew had settled in my gut—welled in size and surged through my being, unhindered by my attempts to control it.
And with the swelling magic, the pain ceased altogether.
“Ainsley, please. Please!”
I flinched, because this time, Killian’s voice broke through the muted barriers of magic and vigorously accosted me.
“There’s no need to scream,” I wheezed.
My body grew limp, the tension eliminated, and had it not been for Killian’s strong hold on me, I would have been face-first in the grassy meadow around us.
“Ainsley.” His voice had grown softer, although still laced with the panic I had noted before.
I brought a hand to his arm—it was all I could do.
Gently, he lowered me into a lying position and twisted so he could grasp my face in his hands.
However, I could not see him, because my entire being shook from the inside, and magic flowed throughout my body yet again. One final time it would seem. An inundation of shifting images, pictures, and voices crashed into one another in my mind. I saw the Hall of Knowledge, towns I had never seen nor heard of—the book with keyholes that had enticed me, and maps. One map remained longer than the others, and like a focusing camera, my vision zoomed forward, until one word appeared on the brown parchment I’d previously discovered in the library’s secret corridor. Highvein. And then, just as suddenly as the flood of imagery had begun, it disappeared.
I concentrated on Killian’s features for the first time as my vision became my own once more. His gaze flitted from my eyes, down my body and back to my face, as though he were utterly lost.
Wincing, I closed my eyes tight and opened them again. “I’m okay.” I managed to rasp out. Clearing my throat, I rose to a sitting position, completely fine, as though I hadn’t felt as if I’d been taken from this earth merely moments before.
