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“And you would know, wouldn’t you.” I gestured toward the sky with one hand. “Passing judgment from atop your tower in the City.”
Lilin’s face went bright red. “Of all the ridiculous—” Her hands curled into fists. “I don’t—that’s not what we do. You don’t know anything.”
“Know a fair bit more about human nature than you,” I said, stepping away from her and the energy that pulsed between us. I stretched my wings out so she wouldn’t be able to see my expression.
“Do not turn your back on me,” she snapped, just before there was an earth-shattering thunderclap and a blinding flash of light. The earth trembled with the sound of crumbling wood as the house behind us collapsed in a shower of splinters and stone.
Julian shouted, and for a moment I forgot about Lilin. What if we had just injured the only person who could undo this whole mess?
Lilin, apparently, had the same thought. “Julian!” She shoved past me and sprinted around the house we’d just flattened. I took off after her, letting my wings—which did function as transportation Earthside, unlike Lilin’s—carry me past her to Julian.
“I’m fine,” he said as soon as I approached, not slowing his pace. “I’m fine, I was just—do I want to know what that was?”
“Probably not,” I said, landing lightly and falling into step with him. I tried not to think of how there had been people in the house we’d just destroyed an hour before. We really needed to control ourselves.
“She doesn’t think I can do it,” Julian said tightly as we approached the vast spiral of villagers. A ring of stones had been laid in a circle around their motionless bodies.
“It’s not that I don’t think you can do it,” Lilin said, slightly breathless as she caught up.
I raised my eyebrows at her. She scowled and looked away.
“You don’t need my help, do you?” I said, glancing at the piles of stones and plants that Julian had gathered near the villagers. “Again, I mean. I wasn’t that helpful the first time.”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “That is…whatever energy I took from you, I…”
“Right,” I said briskly. “Well, then. You want us to leave?”
“I’m not leaving,” Lilin hissed, setting the air to shimmering once more.
“Watch it,” I hissed back. The shimmering intensified. “We can’t afford to bring down more houses.”
“Please,” Julian said quietly.
My mouth snapped shut. So did Lilin’s. We turned our gazes to Julian, his hands full of herbs, standing in the center of the human spiral he’d built. The rosy morning sun illuminated the sightless eyes of the villagers. I could feel it, suddenly: waves of energy, seeming to radiate from where Julian stood. I glanced at Lilin, seeing the way her eyes widened and her face went pale. Of course she could feel it too—could probably feel it a thousand times more than I could.
“This is a bad idea,” she mumbled. She looked ill. “We should stop him.”
For the first time since I’d brought Julian back to the village, I started to wonder if perhaps she was right. A part of me had believed that it was my influence, my own darkness, that had cast the villagers down. Without me, how was it truly possible that a mere mortal could produce sorcery like this?
Julian chanted, his hands uplifted, and the waves of energy intensified. My stomach twisted with a growing, sickening dread. This was bigger than me, bigger than anything I’d thought humans capable of. Julian’s eyes were closed, concentration lining his weary face as he raised his hands, clumps of herbs clutched in his grip. He let them fall, one by one, into the roaring fire at the center of the gathering, and I felt the earth beneath my feet begin to tremble. I turned to look for the source, and my eyes landed on the ring of stones encircling the spiral of bodies. The stones were all vibrating with energy, dancing along the ground in time to the chanting Latin words that Julian called from his place by the fire.
With this much energy…maybe he could fix this after all. I held my breath as I watched Julian raise his arms once more. His voice rose, the stones trembling as the fire blazed, and then with an almost inhuman shout, he brought his arms slicing downward. A great burst of energy flared outward from where he stood, rippling through the assembled bodies to crash against the ring of stones.
With a great clatter, the stones dropped to the ground. The fire settled, and Julian opened his eyes.
Nothing happened.
His gaze swung to the great spiral of bodies, and even without Lilin’s abilities I could sense the moment his hope crumbled to despair. Or perhaps it was my own emotions I was sensing. I took a stumbling step forward and dropped to my knees next to a middle-aged woman in the outermost ring of bodies. Her sightless eyes gazed up at me from a lined face, her brown hair smoothed back from her brow. No breath lifted her lungs, no light brightened her eyes. The spell had failed.
A breath caught by my side, a stifled gasp. “Abigor, look.”
Lilin lifted one hand, a trembling finger pointing toward the woman’s hair. I watched in mute horror as a lock of the rich brown faded, replaced by a streak of gray that started at the woman’s temple and spread slowly down to the tip. I looked back at the woman’s face. Had her wrinkles deepened? She looked older, more frail…was I imagining it?
A sharp howl of grief and pain split the air, and I jerked my head toward the center of the circle, where Julian had another of the villagers clutched in his arms, head cradled on his lap. I met his anguished gaze. His spell hadn’t just failed; it had made things worse.
“We should have stopped him.” Lilin’s voice was flat, colorless. She climbed to her feet by my side.
Guilt rose in my throat, hot and acrid. I had brushed off her concerns. It was my power that had brought the villagers low in the first place. It was my fault this had been allowed to happen.
