Affinity welled up in Glenn. The air around the archer contracted, throwing him violently aside. Then she turned to Michael Sturges. The rage burning in her poured into the space between them until the air shimmered, desperate to burn, and then an arrow of fire flared into existence. It raced toward Sturges, splitting around his body and encircling him in a blazing cage.
“Glenn, no!” Aamon took her wrist and pulled her toward him.
She struggled, but he held tight. “We have to get your mother help.”
His words barely made sense to her. All Glenn could feel was anger and the world rushing into her. It was intoxicating, overwhelming.
If she didn’t allow it a release, it would destroy her. The flames between her and Sturges flared nearly white-hot. Sturges dropped to his knees, overcome, his skin blistering. One push and he would be consumed. Aamon grabbed Glenn’s coat in both hands and pulled until Glenn’s face was only inches from his, blocking out everything else.
“This is not who you are.”
Glenn looked past him to where Sturges gasped helplessly,
surrounded in flames. Hatred pounded inside her like a fist on a door, begging to be released.
“I swear to you,” Aamon said. “If you kill him, you will never be Glenn Morgan again. There are things you can never take back.”
“Glenn! We have to go. Now!”
Kevin was kneeling in the wagon’s seat over her mother. Her skin was ghastly pale and there was a growing pool of blood underneath her. Every time she breathed, she shuddered and bit her lip to keep from screaming. Glenn’s head buzzed, torn in two directions at once. She ached to release the flames and destroy Sturges — for her mother, for Kevin, for everything.
Her mother’s blue eyes were fading. Her skin, which had seemed smooth and taut, was growing gray. Glenn could smell the blood all around her, could feel its heat.
Aamon took Glenn’s arm in one hand and held her tightly.
“Glenn. She’s dying.”
Sturges dropped to his knees when the flames disappeared,
tearing at his clothes for relief.
Glenn pushed away all the voices that surrounded her. She
gathered her mother and Kevin and Aamon up within her Affinity and leapt into the air, leaving Sturges and the border behind.
PART FOUR
27
Glenn crumpled into the grass outside of Opal’s house. The forest and the river were thick with life and they pulled at her from every direction. Her mother’s body tumbled out of her arms.
“Watch her, Kevin. Keep her here,” Aamon instructed as he lifted Glenn’s mother and ran toward the house.
Glenn hadn’t known where else to go, but now that she was here, it seemed like madness. She clamped her eyes shut, trying to block out a pack of wolves that prowled in the trees and the molten heart of the earth that turned below. It was too much. Dizzy, Glenn fell against Kevin.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, his lips hovering over her ear.
His arms were around her, his chest bracing her back. His concern for her was like a physical force, battering at her. Glenn pushed herself away from him and onto her hands and knees in the grass. She bit her lip and the snap of it knocked her back into herself for a moment, but the world was everywhere and it was strong. She was slipping away.
I am Glenn Morgan, she thought, pounding her fist into the grass.
I am Glenn Morgan.
The more she repeated the words, the more meaningless they
sounded. Wind howled across the river and through the trees. The forest shook and a window shattered behind her. Kevin was at her side, saying something, but it was the buzzing of a fly to Glenn, drowned out by all the other noises. Lightning slashed through the clouds, and the sky rumbled. There was only one blank spot around her, only one place devoid of Affinity. Glenn threw Kevin’s arms aside and got to her feet, wheeling back toward the house. Who were they to tell her where she should be and what she should do? Who were they to tell her anything?
“Glenn!”
Without turning, she caused the fabric of the air to flex, knocking Kevin to the ground with a grunt. The house’s front door crashed open.
The inside seemed so tiny and delicate to Glenn, like a doll’s house.
The walls shook and the plates and jars of herbs rattled on the table as she moved to the little room where her mother lay sprawled on a bed, surrounded by a halo of blood. Glenn stood in the doorway, watching as Aamon tried to staunch the wound.
Her mother was small and thin, nothing like the creature that had hovered in front of the wagon with Kevin in her grasp. Her hands seemed smaller than Glenn remembered. Instead of smooth alabaster, they were the color of ash and marred with wrinkles. Her lustrous black hair was streaked with white. Her arms were as frail as matchsticks.
“What happened to her?” Glenn asked. It was a struggle to push each word out. Her voice sounded strange, deep and distorted.
“This is what she is now, without her Affinity.”
Aamon tossed away the bloody rag he was using and grabbed a fresh one from a dresser nearby. He pressed it into her and the blood swam into it, filling it in moments. She thrashed weakly, still unconscious. Glenn thought of Cort, she thought of the boy in Haymarket.
“You should let her die.”
Aamon’s gaze pierced the room between them. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “Opal is in the back, mixing herbs for her. You should go help her. Let me — ”
Glenn raised her hand and Aamon shot into the air. She held him there, her eyes locked on the snowy field at his throat, something distant stirring inside her.
“She’s here because of you.”
Aamon tried to speak, but Glenn lifted her other hand to his throat and silenced him.
“Bringing her back here destroyed this world and mine too,”
Glenn said. “That’s why you pray for forgiveness.”
The voices of Affinity surged into her. The forest, the air, a flight of birds. Glenn seized with pain and slammed Aamon against the wall behind him. There was a crash and his eyes went dim as he slid down the wall and collapsed into a pile on the floor.
The room was quiet then except for the moaning of wind outside and the snap of guttering candles. Glenn stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her mother as the blood drained out of her.
The bracelet sat on one wrist, a flat gray shackle, locking her mother inside its invisible borders. Glenn let her fingers brush against the metal. If she took it off, would she be able to connect with her mother like she did with the forest and the river? Could Glenn make her see what her leaving had done to her and her father?
Better yet, could she make her feel it?
Glenn took the band of metal and began to pull.
“Glenn!”
There was a rush of movement behind her. Glenn turned and
reached for the floor, shattering the timbers and sending Opal down to her knees. But then there was a stabbing pain in her arm. Glenn shoved it away, yet the room slipped out from under her feet. Something sick and jagged was spreading through her veins. Poison. The walls spun and Glenn found herself on the ground, her cheek pressed to the cracked wood floor. She tried to summon the wind or the heat of the earth, but her head was swimming. Darkness was gathering at the edges and pressing in.
Glenn moaned. With her last scrap of consciousness, she lifted her head off the floor and saw Kevin Kapoor standing over her, in his hand a golden dagger with poison gleaming at its tip.
The next time Glenn opened her eyes, the world tasted flat and bitter in her mouth, like a penny on her tongue. Her stomach churned and the walls wouldn’t stay in one place.
Glenn’s hands were splayed out on cold stone. It was dark. Her head stung. Impressions of the world outside flickered past — a storm, a flock of birds, the planet’s drifting plates — but all of it was farther away than it had been before. Muted, as if she was deep within the earth or wrapped in a cocoon. Where was she? How did she get here?