The blowback was immediate and immense. His own heart screamed out as the hundred lives at the ends of his fingertips squirmed for life. He held on. His heart ached. Tears streamed down his face and he heard them screaming. Screaming, just as his parents had screamed, as his friends had screamed, as Jarrett had screamed. Water filled him, amplified the pain, the agony, the pure ecstasy of it all. His head whipped back and his arms stretched out from his sides as the power flooded through him, lifting him off the ground in a halo of blue. The enemy screamed. He screamed louder. Their pulses throbbed. Burned.
Stopped.
A snap.
The power vanished. And as he fell to the ground like a marionette cut from its strings, he felt the hundred others die with him.
He crumpled, along with his enemy. When darkness overtook him, he heard nothing but silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TOMáS STROKED THE side of Tenn’s face.
“It’s rare,” Tomás said.
“What is?” Tenn asked.
He sat before Tomás on a fur rug while the incubus lounged in a large leather chair, a fire crackling in the hearth behind him.
“To meet one like you. You’re a challenge.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
In the corner of the room, chains clinked together. Tenn looked over. Jarrett was there, chained to the wall like a dog, a thick collar around his neck. His naked body was smeared with blood.
“Let him go,” Tenn said. He looked back, but it was no longer Tomás. It was the necromancer Matthias. He sneered, his dark eyes burning like coal fires.
“Of course. He doesn’t matter. But you? You’re mine forever.”
Tenn glanced at the chains on his own wrists and ankles, felt the large manacle around his neck. Matthias held the other end in his hand. Matthias opened to Fire; the chains glowed red. Tenn smelled his flesh burning before the pain arrived. When it hit, his whole world went white.
*
“You’re still alive,” Dreya said.
Her words cut through the haze of his dream. He couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question.
He tried to move, but every single joint in his body ached. It felt like he’d been filled with acid—his very blood seemed to beat against him. When he opened his eyes, he found that it was morning. At least, he thought it was morning. The sun sat on a cloudy horizon, the world a pinkish wash of white.
“What happened?” Tenn asked. His throat was dry. So dry. He needed to drink.
He couldn’t remember anything, just pain. Then it began to come back to him in a haze. Heading out to the city, the army, the girl...
“Tori,” he said. Despite the pain, he pushed himself up to sitting. The world swayed. “Where is she?”
Dreya looked down, then pointed to her side. He followed her finger and found a blanket-wrapped bundle sitting at the edge of the clearing they were in, nestled against the trunk of a pine. Tenn’s heart sank and tears filled his eyes. How did he have moisture left for tears?
He couldn’t help himself. He started to sob.
“You tried,” Dreya responded. “What you did—”
“Didn’t help,” Tenn said through his tears. He wanted to believe the emotion was from Water, but he couldn’t bring himself to buy it. I failed. I failed. I will always fail.
“You saved our lives,” Dreya said. There was a note in her voice, something he’d not heard before. Awe. “I don’t know how you did it. I’ve never seen so much power. You stopped their hearts—such magic should be impossible.”
“But it was too late,” he croaked. He could barely remember what he’d done after Tori died in his hands. He just knew he was paying for it dearly. And it hadn’t even been enough. If only you’d found that power sooner.
Dreya slapped him.
And it wasn’t gentle.
“Stop being a fool,” she said. “Only an idiot mourns what he could not change. You saved our lives, and you tried to save hers. Let that be enough.”
He didn’t move, but he stared up at her, sniffing back his tears. His heart broke and he couldn’t tell if it was the ache of Water or the realization that it would never, ever be enough. Her eyes were set, and there was an edge to her voice that told him she’d be more than happy to slap him again.
“Where’s Devon?” he asked, rather than letting himself drown in images of what he’d failed to do.
“Searching,” she said. “Looking for survivors.”
“And?”
“None so far,” she said. Again, that note of awe. “How did you channel so much power? You took out the entire army in a single swipe. It should have killed you.”
“I don’t know,” Tenn said. Like so many things happening in his life right now, he didn’t have a clue.
She shook her head in disbelief and stared at him for a while.
“Here, I thought the world was done with surprises,” she said. Then she looked to the city on the horizon.
Smoke and red light curled up from the burning buildings. He swallowed harshly and shuffled over to a spot of untouched snow. With numb hands, he began scraping it up and putting it to his lips.
“Here,” Dreya said. She moved to his side and took the snow in her own hands, opened to Fire and Water and both melted the snow and turned the ice below it into a bowl. A crystalline bowl filled with water, beautiful as fine china.
“How did you do that?” he asked. He’d never seen such delicate uses of magic, and maybe it was the rawness of Water, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen something so beautiful.
Dreya gave a faint smile.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” she said. She handed him the bowl, water glittering against her pale, willowy fingers. He took it and drank. Dreya settled back and looked to the city.
“He will be back soon,” she said. “When he is, we will leave. But I’m afraid...” She sighed. “We are going to have to leave her body here. We have no way of carrying her.”
Again, the thought of driving crossed his mind, but there was no way, not in all this snow. They could melt it, sure, but even though he’d just alerted everything in a hundred miles of their location, he didn’t want to use any more magic. Not if it meant drawing more eyes to the clan.
“I can’t just leave her out like this,” Tenn said. “Especially if I didn’t get them all.”
“We hoped that you could bury her. A pyre seems too... I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”
He nodded, but he didn’t answer. It wasn’t a job he looked forward to. Especially since Earth would force him to feel everything.
Devon appeared a while later, as promised. A bag was slung over his back Tenn had never seen before. Tenn didn’t have to ask. Although the Howls didn’t need food, their human slave drivers did. The spoils of war were small, but they were spoils nonetheless. They didn’t speak as they sorted through the bag and made a hasty breakfast. There was nothing else to say anymore.
They had tried, and they had failed. Even eating, his stomach turned against him. Matthias hadn’t been in the city, that much was obvious, both from the lack of seeing him in the battle and Devon’s scouting of the corpses. It felt like he’d sprung a trap. It felt like he was still being played. But he couldn’t for the life of him imagine what the game could be.