I can’t help the cry that falls from my lips. Of joy. Relief. Nor the smile that tugs across my face. I stand, wobbling a second before finding my feet and balance. When I do, I look up.
Draewulf is narrowing his gaze at me. His grin of victory falters and something tells me he can sense it. His eyes widen and he staggers back, but not before I see it: alarm.
I firm my hands into fists.
Black clouds roll in on the horizon like waves before a cyclone. My clouds.
They fill the sky the same way the song is filling my bones even as, from somewhere nearby, I hear Lady Isobel again. I can’t move as Draewulf turns to her because everything in me is simultaneously breathing with the elements. I don’t even have to twitch my hand to snap a shred of lightning across the heavens. It’s so loud it nearly bursts my eardrums as even the airship we’re standing on jolts beneath the fury.
“Use it on him!” Myles yells from somewhere. “Aim for his heart!” But when I flick my gaze over, the lord protectorate is inching away from me. I try to lift my arm but my body feels stuck in place while the blood mixes and reacts in my veins.
One.
Two.
Three more seconds and the rain begins to fall.
I close my eyes because it is glorious.
“Nym,” Rasha murmurs nearby. I glance over and she points to the sky.
My smile grows again as I nod. “It’s back. All of it.” I flick my gaze over the landscape and a roll of clouds condenses closer in and unfolds in a black chasm, waiting to consume whomever I inflict it on.
“Nym.” Rasha’s voice is odd, cautioning. “With both of those powers in you and Eogan not here to help soothe—”
“With both powers in me I can end this.” I open my mouth and absorb the air from a thousand sets of lungs. The sound of their cries only feeds the energy in me. Draewulf has his teeth bared toward the red-haired, freckle-faced man whom I presume is the Tullan king. He looks weak and small as he squirms against Lady Isobel’s clutches.
Move, I command my body and force my hand up. I twist it to pull four ice picks from the air and hurl them at Draewulf. He swipes three aside but the fourth slams into his shoulder and lands him flat on his back, impaling him to the deck.
Lady Isobel tosses the Tullan king down and lunges for me. I shove a hand toward her and immediately feel her energy flow with mine. Her face hardens as she throws her arm up to press her palm against my heart, but I dig in stronger.
She utters a cry and tries to yank away, but it’s locked on now. My vortex is attached to her power and drawing, taking it in the same way she’s taken the lives of others. For a second I swear I can feel their lives, their voices and heartbeats pulsing through her energy. She leans over.
Then there’s a glint and a flash as she slides a blade from her boot and shoves it up at me.
I’m too slow. I can’t duck away in time, and the blade rips into my arm. I brace for the pain when the vortex reacts in my chest. It lashes out and rises up through my veins, and with a single twitch of my hand, Lady Isobel’s body goes flying against the dining room wall. Her head lolls and she slumps over.
I look down at my fist.
A loud hiss is the only warning I have to move before a bolcrane claw slices down inches from my side. I jerk backward and two wraiths jump forward, followed by more clamoring over the railing straight for me.
Litches.
The next second, Rasha’s beside me, sword in hand, as is the large Bron soldier.
“You were right back at the banquet,” he mutters. “About mercy being a more honorable strength.” His gaze flashes up to where the airship’s boy captains’ quarters are. Then he’s focused back on gutting the wraith lunging for him.
And how I didn’t see it before I don’t know, because the resemblance is suddenly uncanny. Kel. Kel is his son. I’d bet my life on it.
The next moment the entire world blurs. A mirage like an invisible wave rolls through the very atmosphere around us. It slides past my body and over the ship and air and hits the whole area. Rippling through the other airships just as fast as it tears across the cliffs and Castle.
My vision wavers and suddenly half the wraiths I see, on the nearest airships and on the ground, are changed to look exactly like Draewulf.
I flip around to see Myles standing there, his hands crunched into fists at his sides, his eyes clamped shut. His powers were released too, and he’s magnified them enough to confuse the Dark Army and communicate the truth about Draewulf to the Bron airship captains and soldiers.
The wraiths pause midlurch.
The fighting slows.