I stall. In awe. In shock. In absolute admiration for the power he possesses. Why did Myles never show me this? What else could he do with such ability? He opens his eyes and looks at me, and catches me staring at him. What he has, what he is, is beyond anything I could’ve imagined.
There’s a loud cry and in my periphery I see the Bron guards on the two closest airships respond. As if they’ve only now understood who they’ve truly been aiding and are lashing back.
Myles’s mirage ripples again and then starts to recede and fade. Slipping back from every object it’s touching to collect in the visible space around his body.
I turn back to Draewulf just as the wraith closest to me blinks. The thing peers at me with glossy black eyes inside a skeletal face. It lurches its decaying body toward me. I hurl an ice blade and slice its arm clean off, but it keeps coming.
There’s something odd about it. I peer closer as it rambles forward. It’s not just a wraith with a skeletal face—it’s the visage of one of Rasha’s Cashlin guards. The one who’d been lying dead beside her maid back in Bron.
Rasha lets out a cry.
“Look to Draewulf!” the large guard yells.
I nod, but before I turn, I send a shard of ice through the wraithguard’s head, knocking it to the deck.
When I do glance at Draewulf, he’s sliding a giant wolf claw down the back of King Mael’s neck. I thrust both hands toward the beast, but the black ice spears I create go through his already-ghosting body. He’s dissolving into a wisp again, becoming a spirit and slipping into the king’s body through the bleeding, sliced-open skin.
I draw in a gust of wind and lightning to lash against the king and Draewulf’s ethereal form.
Only, something’s wrong.
My head jerks back, and my mouth opens wide as my gaze is forced toward the sky, which is dark and glistening like spider eyes. The spider within me slashes out against the melody, the harmony of earth and sky surging through my veins. My muscles are screaming, tearing apart, wrenching me toward the ground, as if the very blood in my body is at war. And the spidery fluid is attacking the Elemental song.
Oh please no.
The sky overhead erupts in a mass of darkening clouds and lightning that is chaotic and hostile. It begins exploding from the sky and shredding apart the air and earth around us. Taking down chunks of cliff and the airships as it expands.
The vortex in me responds, swirling in dark fog coils, tugging destruction toward us, as if it could drain all life and energy into itself because it cannot consume enough. It’s taking, but not with magic and melody like before at the Keep. This is different. This drawing of life is deadly. A darkness grabbing hold from within and simultaneously trying to feed and own my soul as it steals from everything.
Suddenly I am a gaping abyss pulling from this world. A heartpulse of power outside of me that was never meant to be a part of me.
And it’s exhilarating on a level I never knew possible.
This is what Draewulf is after.
My lightning lashes at the cliffs and Castle. Two more airships go down and two others are sucked up along with a hail of rocks into a spiral of wind and cloud. They’re dropped half a terrameter away onto a group of homes and wraiths.
The lightning slices down again and this time it’s joined by ice, flattening more of the Dark Army and crumbling towers and archways.
I look to Rasha. To show her I’m doing it. I’m saving the world again.
Except all I see is her face etched in horror.
CHAPTER 40
I FROWN AND LOOK DOWN FOR ONE, TWO, THREE seconds. It’s as if a veil peels back and the destruction in front of me narrows into focus.
And for one horrifying moment I can see their faces.
The men running from the hurricane. The wraiths being torn apart. The women screaming as they cover their children to protect their flailing bodies.
It’s the cry of those mothers . . .
So familiar to my own mother’s wail as she and my father were burned alive in our home.
What is happening? I pull my hand back but the lightning doesn’t stop. I look down at the people, their faces staring up at me, blaming me as the fire and black ice slash down around them.
“Nym,” Rasha yells. “You have to make it stop!”
I pull my other fist back and open both hands, pressing them against my stomach, willing this vortex to die down and the storm to subside. It doesn’t. I press harder against my rib cage, as if digging into my own bones will evict it from my body.
A wisp of black cloud shoots down in a funnel and rips through one of the Castle’s rock spires. Stone and debris go flying, taking out wraiths, Terrenes, and Bron soldiers alike.
Please, I beg it. Oh hulls—
“Nym!” Rasha screams.
“I don’t know how!” I yell, my voice shaking with hate for the fact that I can’t control it.