“Wyn? Are you sure you are okay?” I could tell by the tone of her voice it was going to be harder to get out of it this time.
“Yeah, just antsy. Let’s fight. We have become far too serious and adult in the last few minutes. I need to work off some steam.” Stretching my hand toward her, I smiled, knowing she was going to see right through me no matter what I did.
Mommy?
This time, I was able to restrain the flinch, but not the agitation, not the powerful surge of fire and flame that swelled within me. The wave of power washed over my body as Joclyn took my hand, her skin pressing against mine with a gentle touch my body interpreted as an attack.
Fire flooded to the spot, pressing against her hand in an angry shock that rippled through with a visible flood of red and orange.
Her voice rang out in pain and shock as she pulled away, staring at her hand with a look that could easily spell fear. The same reaction had happened in Rioseco all those months ago as we had run from Edmund, and I had set the forest on fire.
Before, I had laughed it off, saying our magic must be enemies or something. That was getting harder and harder to believe. I knew there was something else there, just as she did.
Staring at her, my hand clutched to my chest as hers was to hers, I saw what I had missed before. It wasn’t just a shock. It hadn’t been just my magic reacting to hers.
She had seen something.
Something that scared her.
No.
She was scared of me.
“Wyn?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “What did you take out of Ryland?”
I froze, everything in me tightening and shaking as the alarms inside of me went off.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I knew the shake in my voice was a dead giveaway, but I didn’t care. Right then, it was all I could do to keep me from attacking, from running away.
“Wyn?” she asked again, and for the first time, I could tell how scared she was. “What did you do?”
I could scarcely look at her. All I could think was that she wanted to take away my daughter, and that she wanted to hurt her, too.
I wouldn’t let that happen.
Not this time.
“Wyn?”
I barely heard her. I couldn’t focus past my panic. I couldn’t focus past the break in reality. All I could feel was the fury and terror blending in an angry wall of emotion that was making it hard to think, hard to see straight.
I could think of one thing.
I only knew to do one thing.
Attack.
Power surged through me, speeding right to my best friend as she reached out for me in what I was sure she thought was an act of support, just as her hand wrapped around my wrist and our magic reacted the same as it had before, but this time, it surged and erupted. What was worse, this time, because I had already been ready to fight, it exploded.
It exploded in a wave of blue ice and flame, the eruption like cannon fire, the world around us shaking from the impact. The wall of power burned through the air as it sped over the cathedral, barreling down the tight space on its way to intersect with the barrier Ilyan used to protect the old space.
I braced for the sound of the collision, braced for the explosion of sound and the shake of the space as the barrier absorbed the power.
But the barrier didn’t stop it.
Instead, the attack continued to move through the protective bubble with a powerful pop. I watched the shimmer of the translucent barrier fade around us, watched the attack slam into the ancient stonework of the gothic chapel with yet another explosion. Everything around us shook so violently I expected the whole building was going to come down on top of us.
“Oh, Ilyan is going to kill me.” And I had thought a few loose tiles would be bad.
I was dead.
Disembowelment was in order.
It was the solitary fear I had until I looked down at Joclyn, to where she hung from my arm, her eyes of the deepest black, her body convulsing violently.
“Joclyn!” I yelled, fear rampaging through me at what I was seeing. “Joclyn?”
I had seen her have sights before. I had watched her eyes fade into the sight of future. I had watched her slide off tables, writhing in agony and crying over what she had seen behind the black of her eyes. But there was something different here. This was terrifying.
Hands fluttering around her, I tried to find a way to help, tried to find a way to get her to snap out of it, something. She was jerking around so much, so fast that I couldn’t even get a good grip on her.
“Joclyn!” I yelled again, but she kept writhing.
Her black eyes stared toward the sky, her face haunted and broken as if she was looking into her very own death.
“Give me,” she said. Her voice was deep and hollow as I had heard from Draks before, the sound terrifying when I came from her. “Give it to me,” she moaned again, her eyes darting to my pocket, her hand like claws as she moved to reach for it.