She held something up so I could see it. It took me a moment to register what it was. My whole body tensed. She had the iron dust. "What are you going to do with that? It could kill you."
"I'll be immune to iron dust once I have all this magic." She handed the vial to one of the twins, Mercy, maybe.
I turned my attention to her. "Why would you help her? You're the one who told me how bad the Fae were."
Reaching out my hand, I moved closer to them. "Just give me the vial."
"And give up our chance to have a taste of Fae power?" Mercy shook her head. "We've always been weaker. You wouldn't understand. You have the extra power of the Fae. You don't know what it's like to be like this. So close to perfection."
"It's not like that," I said. "You can't seriously believe that Terra's going to let you have that kind of power. She's got to be using you."
"Honestly, I think it's the other way around. We've been helping her for decades. It's finally time for us to cash in on our investment."
Dinner at Terra's. The memory hit me like a blow to the face. The old woman sitting next to me, the paper thin skin. She looked so much older then, it couldn't be possible. "Pearl?"
The other twin smiled at me. "I wondered if you remembered meeting me. Of course, I looked much older then. You can already see the power we've gained from working with Terra."
"You've got one chance," Terra said. "You go back into the building and walk away, and you can go back to your old life. You and your brother will be safe."
"Go, Ara." I turned at the sound of my name. Brenon's words came out pained, as if every word required more effort than he could expel. "Leave."
"No." I stared at him, at all of the Fae and creatures that had become my friends. "I'm not letting her do this to you. She's not going to win."
When I turned back to Terra, her whole body was glowing, the same blue color as the restraints holding the Circus together.
"It's too late," Pearl said. "It's begun."
Without thinking, I charged Terra, slamming into her like a linebacker. As soon as my skin touched her, heat surged through me. I stepped back, looking down at my bare hands. They were red and covered in blisters.
"You have no power here," Terra said.
Unwilling to give up so easily, I recalled the lightning, and like I had done to get rid of the wolves, I called to it. When I looked down at my red and blistered hands, nothing happened.
"You can't use elemental magic here," Pearl said. "It's too late."
Mercy popped the cork off of the iron dust vial and held it in the air. She began to mumble words I couldn't make out. Some kind of spell. Terra stepped in front of Mercy, blocking her from me and a blue bubble formed around the three of them. I had a feeling that if I charged it, I'd end up with more pain.
There had to be another way. I looked back over at the Circus. "What can I do?"
None of them responded. They all stared ahead with blank, lifeless eyes. Whatever Terra was doing was killing them.
Chapter 30
Feeling helpless, I looked from Terra to the Circus and back again. There had to be something I could do. I ran my hand through my hair and tried to think of something. I hated feeling out of control. Why hadn't Aunt Kay taught me how to use magic when I was a child? If I had been practicing my whole life, maybe there would be something I could do to fix this. Some spell that could save them. If Brenon wasn't cursed maybe he could use his magic to take down Terra.
For a moment, time seemed to stand still. The journals in Aunt Kay's house flashed through my memory. The Curse. I could break the curse. The only reason Brenon hadn't wanted to break it was because he worried Terra would be too strong and she would take their magic. But she was doing it anyway, even without them being free of the curse.
I didn't know what the Fae realm was, or how to access it, but I wondered if it was what I tapped into when I had the strange sensations flood through me when I used magic. Could I call on that? Manipulate it? If that was Fae magic, what was the magic I could use from this earth? The rose. I'd made a rose, using the Sayge ideas and pulling from my own. It felt different than when I called to lightning.
Glancing over at Terra and the twins, I realized that they had no interest in me. They didn't see me as a threat. Now was my chance.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes. Reaching inside, I felt for the sensation that filled me when I used lightning. The lightning wasn't coming, but I could feel a pull deep in the pit of my stomach that tugged at me. It was the same sensation that traveled with the lightning. Holding that feeling in place, I remembered the rose. Holding my palms out in front of me, I kept my focus on the lightning tugging as I worked to create a rose from the earth. I concentrated on the softness of it, the clean scent, the raw beauty.
Opening my eyes, I looked down at my hands. I was holding a flower, but it was unlike anything I'd ever seen. The petals seemed to be made entirely of light. The stem was green and fresh, as if just cut from the earth.
Acting on instinct, I ran toward the Circus, holding the flower as tightly as I could. I crashed into the blue light that held them all in place and threw the flower toward the center of the group before falling back onto the roof.
A blazing white light shot through the air, causing a moment of blindness. When the light subsided, it took a few seconds to blink away the spots. I looked up to see the members of the Rose Circus, free of the blue light that had bound them. At first, I didn't recognize them. There was no fur, no horns, no tails, no yellow wings. The people that stood on the roof were radiant, glowing with all the colors of the rainbow.
I stared at them for a moment as they looked at their hands and each other. Then, the whole group charged Terra and the twins.
Knowing I needed to get out of the way, I tried to stand but didn't have the strength. Whatever magic I had done, had taken all of my energy. Rolling over to my stomach, I crawled on my hands and knees toward the building, near the broken window to watch the Rose Circus at work.
Brenon stood taller than anyone else, his face smooth and free of the markings it had borne, but his movements were the same. Just as graceful, and just as powerful as ever. He leaped into the air, arms extended, palms open. As he reached the blue bubble that was surrounding Terra and the Sayges, a white light shot from his hands, shattering the bubble.
In a flash, a woman with long brown braids moved at a speed I could hardly follow. She was next to Terra in a heartbeat, then stepped back, out of their immediate reach. With a few graceful steps, she was next to me, cradling something in her hands.
I looked down and saw that she had the iron dust vial. The cork was still gone, but it didn't look like she'd lost any of it while she'd retrieved it. The woman knelt down next to me. A pair of yellow eyes blinked at me. Even with the curse broken, they retained the slitted pupil of a cat.