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This time we were all flattened to the ground and the rolling didn’t stop, a chill, foul wind screaming over us, coming from the direction of the Reaper army. I curled myself around a still-unconscious Anaria while the air warped and bent around us, my ears bursting, bones groaning beneath the onslaught.
“The magic.” Raz crawled closer, pulling at his collar like the iron was burning him. “The spilled blood, the dirt of the realm, the Oracle’s bullshite plan…This is the wild magic reappearing.” The ground rumbled like a leviathan was beneath us, rising closer to the surface.
His gaze met mine. “If we’re here when something that ancient rises, we are dead.”
I didn’t bother getting to my feet. I just held Anaria tighter then caught Raz’s wrist. The next second, I dragged the three of us through space and time, that foul wind nipping at my heels with cruel, unforgiving teeth, as if it would not let us go.
With a luck I had not earned, we landed far enough away not to be swallowed by the maelstrom, but close enough to watch in awe as Caladrius remade itself.
Because that was the only way to explain the sight before us. The world spun up in a black, howling tempest of bodies and blood-stained earth, all the way to the clouds, then plummeted down, crashing back to earth with enough force the world itself trembled.
The ground rocked beneath us, and a great cloud of dust pushed by a wall of darkness washed past, smelling of rot and blood and death, but filled with something else as well—the rich odor of green growing things, of rich, boggy soil, and the sweetness of ripe fruit, so cloyingly heavy my head spun.
I remained curled around an unconscious Anaria, close enough to drag Raziel away if anything lunged from that whirling cloud, both of us frozen in awe and fear.
I almost wished Anaria was awake to see this, but it was enough she was curled up and safe.
The next chill wind was charged with ozone and the reek of wild magic, the smell touching some long forgotten memory inside me. Perhaps some memory hidden deep in my ancient bloodline, stretching back to the inception of this world, that recognized this rebirth.
The making of a new world.
Gods help us all.
Raziel’s nose flared, his eyes narrowing as the magic unleashed itself, spreading out and out and out from where Anaria had killed the infected soldiers, then both Raz and I threw ourselves over her as the choking wave passed over us a harpy’s keening whine, stealing my breath as it sped to the east.
Would that darkness reach Blackcastle and the Keep?
Or would the ward stop such a powerful wave?
Somehow, I doubted Fae magic would stand up to anything so ancient, and my mouth went dry as the dust settled around us, the mighty wave hurtling towards Solarys. For a hundred years, we’d questioned everything about the Oracle’s motives.
Why she used us as her pawns, what she would do once the kings were gone. Why she’d waited a thousand years for her revenge.
But we’d never once asked ourselves what would happen when the wild magic returned to these lands, or what that meant for the rest of the world. Anaria stirred in my arms as Raziel climbed to his feet, hair blowing back in the warm, humid wind that came from where that swell of power had originated.
Where the Reaper army had died, an eerie green light glowed, like the sun had landed in the center of the wasteland.
“Are you seeing this?” Warning slithered through me, my instincts telling me torun, run, run.
“Holy gods.” All I could do was gape as thick, swaying grasses sprang out of the bare earth nearest to that light, trees erupting from the ground, branches reaching for the sun. “We have to get out of here.”
What that magic would do to our flesh-and-blood bodies if we were caught up in that storm of creation…I didn’t want to know.
Didn’t want to know what we might become.
Not after seeing the Oracle.
“What is happening…Oh my gods.” Anaria struggled upright in my arms then went limp, gaping at the expanding swell of greenish light, swirls of some strange magic mixed in. The barren land gave birth to forests and streams, birds bursting from the tops of trees in a rustle of wings.
“This is what the Oracle wanted,” Anaria breathed, pressing her hand to her belly. “The rebirth of the magic.”
Rebirth.
But to what end?
For a world inhabited only by those she considered worthy? In her eyes, the Fae were not worthy. So where was our place in that world? I’d been a warrior for too long, and I had no desire to trade a dark king for a dark queen.
“If that wave swallows us up…” Raz’s brows rose as he came to the same realization as me. “What happens if we get consumed by wild magic?”
