“Kill me? I haven’t done anything wrong! I don’t know what you are talking about,” I screamed at him in desperation as he continued to move forward.
I knew, in my heart, it was too late. I had failed Ryland. I had told him I would run, and here I was, trapped and about to die anyway.
“Could it be?” Cail’s voice was soft, but I could hear the amusement behind it. “Do you really not know?” He took a step forward, letting the light that filtered in through the window illuminate his face. Cail—the bodyguard from the Rugby game, the one who had accompanied Edmund, the boy who had constantly looked in my direction, the one who had seemed to sense I was there.
His lips twitched as he watched me place the connection. I shrank away from him, lost in the pitch-black hatred of his eyes.
“Recognize me, do you?” he said. “Yes, I could feel someone nearby at the Rugby game. I never would have guessed it was you, though.”
“Didn’t you say you saw Ilyan nearby? Perhaps she doesn’t know anything.”
“Yes, and now, he has waited too long to come and collect his precious ‘Chosen Child’, so I get to kill her.” Cail raised his hand to me in what could have been perceived as a gesture of help, but I didn’t wait to find out.
I jumped to the side as the door behind me exploded in a shower of splinters. I scrambled across the slick linoleum in an effort to find a hiding place and scooted behind the counters to slam against my mother’s limp form. I stayed still until the refrigerator slid across the floor. I scuttled under the kitchen table just as the fridge launched into the counters, causing them to explode in a shower of sparks, pinning my mother’s legs underneath it. She didn’t even react.
I screamed and spluttered as my breath came in short spurts. I could feel a panic attack coming on as my chest seized. Nothing made sense. Things were exploding around me, my mom lay unconscious on the floor, and two men were trying to kill me.
“The last of the ‘Chosen Children’, helpless and alone,” the first man laughed from the other room.
I whimpered as I watched their feet enter my tiny kitchen, the first man still laughing. The table lifted itself away from me and slammed into the wall where the refrigerator had been only a moment ago. I wailed in terror and backed up to feel my feet come in contact with the wall. I was trapped. I stood, back dragging against the window frame behind me. If I was going to die, I would die standing, not cowering in fear.
“I’m sorry, Ryland; I failed. I didn’t make it to Ilyan,” I whispered to myself.
As I spoke, I felt a small tug in the pocket of my jeans. I looked down to see the small, purple bead wiggle its way free, and fly up to hover in the air between me and my would-be assassins. Suddenly, a bright light filled the room. The flash blinded me, and when I moved my hand from over my face, the bead lay harmlessly on the ground.
“No!” the men yelled together.
“Ilyan,” the first man spat angrily. “Kill her now; he will be here any second.”
Cail raised his hand, and I sank against the window, cringing away from him.
I love you, Ryland. I bid him farewell, expecting the blow to come at any moment. Before anything could happen, a comforting warmth began to spread over my body. It felt so close to the warmth I felt when Ryland touched me that I focused on it, happy for the last connection between us. Tears streamed down my face as I watched the man flex his fingers, a bright light forming in the palm of his hand.
Just as the light in his hand became the size of a softball, a burning heat seared into me from the necklace that hung around my neck. I called out in pain as it burned me, but before I could even reach for it, a flame of blazing, white light shot out of it, intercepting the one that the man had just shot at me. They collided in the middle of the kitchen in an explosion that shook the entire apartment complex. The men were thrown back into the kitchen wall just as I was thrown backward out the window.
The glass window shattered around me, the sharp edges cutting into my skin as I plunged through it. I felt the air swoop by me as I was thrown into the cool, night air outside, knowing that below me laid three stories of nothing before the hard asphalt of the alley.
Time slowed down as I fell, tears flying away from my face and into the air above me. I could have counted each star, each cloud. I could have given them names and danced among them. I watched them as my mind caught up to what was happening.