Tears start falling. At least I think they’re tears. They’re hot on my cheeks compared to the freezing rain, and they won’t stop as another funnel cloud hurls down, but this time as it does it sends a breeze wafting over me. And for a moment I swear it smells of sun and heat and pine trees. From somewhere . . . a thought flits through me, like the soft flutter of a bird’s wings.
“Maybe that’s the point,” it whispers.
I frown.
“Maybe the issue isn’t trying harder to stop it. Maybe it’s simply about surrendering. Because you are not your abilities.”
I shiver at the familiar scent of Eogan blended with those last words—the same words of Rasha’s from a week ago. Maybe it’s not the power or ability or anything else I might believe that makes me who I am. Maybe it’s surrendering to who I really am.
Remembering who I was made to be.
An image of the Valley of Origin flashes through my head. Of Eogan and me standing on the ledge listening to that melody weave through my soul—calling to the origin of me. To the girl called Nym, born on purpose through a magic that predates any curse or power in my veins. What had Eogan told me there? Perhaps I was born to shield others.
To bring mercy.
I swear there’s a chirp inside my rib cage and something snaps in there, so hard that I hear myself cry out. I tip my head back and let it come.
Suddenly my blood is aligning, like water trickling through my veins that’s quickly turning to a rush, then a roar. As if the Elemental inside is trilling her voice, her song, because I have always been her song. And the harmony is now coming in strong, forcing out the fear and dark and expectation.
I feel it pumping from the bottom of my feet, pushing all the way up to my chest, and suddenly I’m coughing and hacking and struggling to breathe.
This thing is cutting off my air and senses, and the world falls dim as my hearing fades along with my sight.
I lash a hand out to grab the deck floor in front of me as my body pitches and fumbles. From somewhere I sense a vibration in the atmosphere. Someone’s yelling.
“Nym!” I can feel the voice in the weather. It’s forceful. What is he yelling at?
Then I’m gagging because the spider is there. She’s digging in her talons, fighting to stay. Her coarse hairs and claws grip my flesh. “Leave,” I try to tell her, but my blood just boils and shakes and I swear it’s because she’s laughing at me.
Except then I’m screaming as she’s ripped from my lungs and tearing the very flesh from my bones as she’s coming up.
I vomit her all over the metal planks.
My vision clears to see the black mass in front of me, wet and glistening.
I shuffle backward on my knees and the world returns into focus as does the noise of more wraiths climbing over the ship’s railing to engage the Bron guards.
I look over to see Draewulf frozen in place, trying to catch his breath, wearing his new weakened body that is the Tullan king.
“Take him down!” Myles is yelling.
Suddenly the black mass at my feet is moving, rising ten feet off the deck to swirl up like a mist in front of me.
I stand.
“Kill it! Stab it!” Rasha cries, and from the corner of my eye I see she’s grabbed a sword to do just that.
But my muscles are seizing and my lungs gasping for air—trying to fill the hole left in my chest from the vortex. Before I can move, Rasha spins the sword round with an expert strike at the mass. Her blade bounces off. She lunges for it, stabbing this time, but the sword springs back at the mass’s resistance and she’s thrown with it. Her head smacks the railing eight paces away.
I gag and pull in air until my body stops shaking enough to notice Draewulf staring at the swirling mist, his expression full of greed and victory.
“Like hulls.” I yank down a lightning bolt onto the wisp.
Instead of dissolving, the swirling mass absorbs it, becoming bigger.
“Don’t!” Myles yells.
“Fool!” Draewulf says. “You can’t kill it with your ability.”
I grab a blade from the ground at the same moment the large Bron soldier raises his sword.
We thrust at it and the mass curls and squeals and writhes up in the air. We hack at it again, but our sharp edges have no effect other than to knock us both flat on our backs.
I draw down another lightning strike, aiming to hit the mass, but this time I notice that using the Elemental energy takes the breath from me, weakening me. Oh litches . . . My body’s going into shock. Or exhaustion.
The only effect my strike has on the thing is to empower it again until it’s expanding. It’s growing.
My hair is in my face and my clothes are rippling around me as I’m being pulled toward it. A few loose items from the ship’s deck fly up into the maelstrom.
From the side I see the frail-looking Tullan-king-who-is-Draewulf. He steps forward and tilts back his head. His expression is giddy. His black eyes alight as he moves for the mass and opens his gaping maw.
Litches.
He’s going to absorb it.
I flick my hand and send two wobbly ice spears at him. The first misses, but the other catches his arm. He barks and jerks backward.