His features tight, Griffin doesn’t respond to what was clearly meant as an insult. I’m not as polite.
“Give me back my pearls, witch.”
She glowers at me. “Those aren’t yours.” She pushes the cup toward me again. “This is.”
Conflicted still and hating it, I look at the brew once more. I need that lightning.
“What’s in it?” I ask. I don’t want to miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The hermit of Frostfire is famous for making potent concoctions that work.
“Things that will free your magic from your body.”
Again, no lie. But the crone is definitely spinning her words, and I want to know why.
I stare at the cup. This won’t be the first potion I’ve drunk. What if I’m being absurdly paranoid? I used to think obsessive suspicion was a good thing—a survival tool—but now I’m not so sure. Trusting people has brought me more happiness than my constant wariness and paranoia ever did.
And I need the full force of my magic. To defend my people. To defend myself. To unite Thalyria. The witch’s brew could be invaluable. What’s one nauseating drink compared to the lives I could save? To what we could gain if I can finally trust my magic to work? Enemies would tremble before the mighty thunderbolt, the weapon of Zeus himself. Surrender without bloodshed and war.
The potion bubbles and reeks under my nose, and all I can think about is how Galen Tarva threatened my mother with his unparalleled Elemental Magic. He made her dance to his tune for years, and nobody but them even knew about it. I could do that. I could show her my power and make her kneel before me. I could offer Mother her life in exchange for Fisa, and she’d take the deal because she wouldn’t have a choice.
My fingers tingle, warming to the idea. I reach out and slowly close my hand around the earthenware cup. It’s hot.
Griffin tenses by my side, and I turn to look at him. He shakes his head. He doesn’t want me to do this.
My grip loosens. He’s right. I don’t need the potion. I never have.
A certainty I’ve rarely felt wells up from somewhere deep inside me, spreading like a fast-moving tide. It fills me up, buoys me. I already have the most potent concoction around—Griffin and me together.
“I’ll unlock my magic on my own. Griffin is all I need.” I swipe the cup to the floor, and it shatters, its thick contents bubbling between the hermit’s feet and mine.
The hermit glares at me through a curtain of foul-smelling smoke. The way her head moves, the turn of her chin, her eyes…
I stumble back, my gasp barely making it into my lungs. The confidence I was just floating on crashes like a ship into solid rock.
“We need to leave.” I’m suddenly terrified but not entirely willing to accept why.
Griffin sweeps his chair back, but I stay rooted to the spot.
“You always make things so difficult.” Cruel, cold voice. Green eyes, so similar to mine. “You never did know what was best.”
Dread erupts in me and rams savagely outward through my chest. My heart beats so hard I can’t breathe.
I reel back into Griffin as the hag straightens, growing in a swirl of magic-hued green. The transition is turbulent. Horrifying. In mere seconds, the woman sheds the appearance of the hunchbacked hermit witch of Frostfire and turns into my worst nightmare. Mother.
CHAPTER 12
I should have known. How did I not know?
Terror grips me, and I freeze just long enough for Mother to strike hard. Her hand whips out and cracks across my face, jerking my head to the side. A stinging burn explodes across my cheek, and I hiss in a sharp breath.
Griffin lunges for her, but his hands swipe through a cloud of dark-brown dust and green magic. Mother disappeared. Disintegrated.
Everything swirls back together in the blink of an eye, re-forming in the shape of a huge bird. Not a bird—a Harpy. It has Mother’s head and torso. The rest is all talons and feathers. She bats powerful wings and rises toward the vaulted ceiling, out of our reach in two flaps.
I gape up at her, my face on fire from the brutal slap.
Metamorphosis! I didn’t know she could do that. I didn’t know anyone could do that.
Why can’t I do that?
“A Harpy. That’s fitting.” Griffin gets firmly in front of me.
Mother’s snide words come back to me. Endless possibilities. Shortsighted. No vision.
Maybe I can do that. What’s holding me back?
She sneers down at us from above, and suddenly I know. Morality holds me back, something that Mother lacks entirely. Ironically, it’s what makes me both the weaker and the stronger of us two.
I raise my hand to my still-blazing cheek. “The potion would have set my magic free from my body?” Utterly true. My magic would have floated off into the ether, because I’d have been dead! “You were going to poison me,” I say, appalled.
“The most expeditious option, given the circumstances.” Her Harpy voice is sharper, more grating, like a bird of prey’s strident call. “Victory to the swift.”
Another of her childhood lessons. It rings in my ears. Strikes like a blade.
“Poison is for cowards,” I spit back. She might remember saying that a few times, too.
Her emerald eyes narrow on me as she squawks a shrill command. I look warily around, wondering what atrocity will happen next. The answer is a flock of enormous crows shattering the south window with a thundering crash. The front ones drop dead, leaving their blood on the broken glass. The followers flood into the room in a raucous, cawing, black-winged turmoil. They’re unnaturally big—Ice Plains crows. Piercing eyes, razor-sharp beaks, feathers a dense blue-black. There are at least a dozen of them, circling, diving, taking up all the air and space. They shriek and scratch and bat their wings, driving Griffin and me back.
A bird the size of a dog dives at Griffin, knocking him back a step as he raises his arms to protect his head. I spin out of Griffin’s way, jump in front of him, and then grab the bird’s tail feathers, yanking hard just as Griffin bats the creature away. I end up with two long feathers in each hand and Griffin with a gash near his ear. A trickle of blood creeps down his jawline.
Oh Gods. We’re both unarmed, and my magic is totally unreliable. And now Mother knows it—right from my own mouth. I’m stupid, so bloody stupid, and I brought Griffin here, straight into her trap.
I flip the feathers in my hands and grip them down low, ready to use the stiff ends as weapons if I can.
“How did you know?” I demand, tilting my head back to watch Mother hover near the ceiling, her big wings brushing the beams. “We told almost no one where we were going.”
Peals of harsh laughter burst from the crows. Mother laughs, too, and the room fills with the sound of flapping wings, cawing, and hate. “I have spies everywhere. On the ground. In the air. Inside of you.”
My eyes widen in shock. Little Bean.