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This time she didn’t argue. She just began shouting orders.
I turned and ran for the hall. People were now streaming out the doors, a fast-moving wave that parted around me without impeding my speed.Mywild magic, gently creating a pathway.
The buzzing of the wellspring’s power was strengthening, the earth’s rumble growing louder, and the sense of doom deepening.
I tried to reach out, tried to connect to the power that burned all around me, but the old wellspring wasn’t listening. She wasn’t even acknowledging my presence.
I ran through the hall’s entrance, then paused, my gaze scanning the tiered seating areas that ringed the currently covered firepit in the center.
Aiden, his mother, and several others I didn’t know were standing on the far side of the room arguing.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted. “The whole place is about to come down. You need to get out of here, now!”
“I should have known you were behind this,” Karleen growled. “What is this? A little demonstration of just how powerful you are? How much of an asset you could be?”
“Mother, don’t be fucking ridic—”
He stopped, his gaze snapping upward as a huge wooden support beam cracked. The sound echoed, as sharp as any gunshot. Then the earth began to undulate, the ground cracking, opening.
The earth was ready to reclaim.
Fuck, fuck,fuck.
“Get them out, Aiden. Get them outnow.”
I didn’t wait to see if they left. I couldn’t afford to. As chunks of wood and stone began to rain around us, I did the only thing I could think of. I dropped to my knees and, with every ounce of power I had, punched my right fist through the ground and connected, physically and psychically, to the pulsing heart of fury intent on destruction.
Power exploded through me, a wave of white-hot heat that crawled through every inch of me, stretching the very fibers of my being as it had stretched the fibers of the building. I felt insubstantial and ghostly, at one with the power and yet not. Its scent—earth and fire, wood and stone, rot and life—filled my nostrils even as she whispered of places no human soul could or should ever see.
Places she would take me if I didn’t pull back and control the force of the energy.
As that realization surged, my inner wild magic rose, forming a protective barrier even as it deepened the connection.
We hear, I screamed into the fury.We will come. I promise we will come to you. Do not destroy this place.
For an instant, nothing happened.
Then the earth stopped shaking, the building stopped shimmering, and only dust fell from the roof. The glowing threads of wild magic crawled from the structure into the earth, healing the wounds it had caused as it left.
I pulled up my hand—scraped and bloody thanks to the force of my punch into the dry ground—then dropped my head and sucked in great gulps of air. My whole body shook, and I stank of sweat and fear, though the latter wasn’t entirely due to what had happened, but rather the promise I now had to fulfill.
But if my child could survive the energy that had crawled across every fiber of my being, surely she could survive whatever complete immersion in the wellspring entailed.
I guess I’d know one way or another in the next few hours.
The air stirred as someone approached. I didn’t have to look up to know it was Aiden. His scent filled my nostrils, making me feel safe. Making me feel like I was home.
He dropped beside me, wrapped his arms around me, and held me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
“Well,” Karleen said, her voice sharp in the silence. “While that was a lovely demonstration of your skills, all you’ve really done is prove that it’s too fucking dangerous to have you living amongst us.”
Aiden’s anger rose so sharply I could practically taste it. I touched his arm lightly and then lifted my head and looked past him. Karleen and two other people—a man and a woman—stood near the firepit platform. The remnants of destruction were scattered around them, and the woman bore a bloody scratch down her arm that obviously wasn’t as bad as it looked, given she hadn’t bothered to shift shape and heal it.
“That wasn’t a demonstration of my power, Karleen. It was a demonstration of the wellspring’s.”
She snorted. “The wellspring may well be a source of the earth’s energy, but it is one only witches have the capacity to use and direct.”
“I didnotinstruct the wild magic to destroy anything—”
