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Iris didn’t wait until nightfall that day. She couldn’t. She hadn’t recovered all her energy from the previous night’s magical exercise, but she couldn’t lie there, replaying that horrible scene with Char in her head while she waited. She had to find the crystal. Somehow, that would end this torment—for her, for Char, for the world crying and groaning in agony from everything going wrong.
Somehow.
The tears were still wet on her cheeks when she took hold of the amulet and launched herself into the sky. She directed herself east, refusing to allow herself even a glance to the west. The landscape below her flew by as the whispers trailed behind her, struggling to keep up with her hectic pace.
She couldn’t wait for them. There was no time to waste.
Flashes of light lit up the sky ahead of her. She stopped, feeling hints of the telltale snapping and crackling in the distance. A battle. And Micah was using the magic he’d stolen from her and countless others to maim and kill.
She needed to find the crystal. She couldn’t stop for this.
But she couldn’t ignore it, either.
She redirected herself toward the battle, and there they were, five dragons she didn’t recognize wheeling in the sky below her, unable to descend because of an unreal onslaught of magic.
At first glance, it seemed there had to be at least five mages down on the ground. Shields surrounding the archers, bursts of magic deflecting the dragons’ fire, barrages of answering magical flames, multicolored lights coating arrows and empowering them to travel higher and faster than any normal arrows could—it was hard for Iris to keep up with it all.
But there was only one mage: Micah.
This was a losing battle for the dragons.
Most of the magic was blue. A good chunk of the barriers were white. Rare splashes of other colors sparked and glittered amidst the chaos.
But then a streak of white left Micah’s hand, traveling at impossible speed straight for a dragon.
White. Iris’ magic.
She dove in front of the dragon without a second thought.
No!
Just one word, and the white exploded into nothingness a few feet from its intended target.
The dragon didn't know what had happened. It swerved up to avoid the explosion, but she couldn't hear its telepathic communication, nor that of any other dragons. They didn't know she was there.
But when she looked down at the ground, she met Micah's venomous glare.
He knew.
Her heart quailed within her, but she couldn’t back down now. She’d already intervened; it was too late for her to run. And if she didn’t weaken him somehow, she was in for a world of pain.
She took a deep breath and held her hand out, palm up.
Come back.
White streaked from the barriers toward her hand, touching her skin and wrapping her arm in a spiraling sleeve as the magic traveled up to her chest. The first tongue of white reached the amulet and vanished, sucked back into the crystal, and the rest followed at ever-increasing speeds. Magic sparked and scattered across the battlefield, attacks withering mid-flight, barriers shrinking down to nothing as the white rushed back to Iris and the amulet, faster and faster, the force hitting her like water bursting from a dam.
She couldn’t breathe.
She needed to slow it down, regulate the flow, but she didn’t know how.
A powerful gust of wind knocked her in one direction, and then another hit her and threw her the other way. She was struggling to restrain the magic flooding her senses, a singing chorus of whispers and shouts and screams in her ears, a blinding white in her eyes, an exhilarating mixture of fire and ice she felt and tasted with every fiber of her being. It was beautiful and terrifying. She was losing herself to it.
Until a red cord struck her right hand with a sickening force.
It wound up her arm and dove into the amulet, snaking around her heart, yanking her out of the magical storm and back to reality, where Micah was livid and the dragons had seen their opportunity. Their wing strokes were the source of the wind tossing her about, but they had nothing to do with the constriction in her chest. The cord tightened further, and she cried out, dragged closer to blue eyes more dangerous than she’d ever seen them.
Then another force grabbed her shoulders and jerked her back hard enough to snap the red.
The whispers had finally caught up to her.
Her head was spinning. The world was a blur of colors and sounds, magic roaring in her ears, sky and clouds whizzing past her, the ground an illusion that didn't really exist—and then she was back on her bed, gasping for air, drenched in sweat, fairies already dabbing at her forehead with a cool, damp cloth.
“Oh, no…” She sat upright, brushing the fairies away. “You have to go. Now!”
They didn’t even bother to give her the signal for ‘no.’ They just surrounded her again, continuing to attend to her as if she hadn’t spoken at all.
She swatted them away and climbed out of bed, tripping over her own feet in her haste to reach the window. “I just interfered with Micah’s magic on the battlefield. He’s angry—very angry—and when he comes back…”
She didn’t want to think about what would happen when he came back. Instead, she focused all her attention on the rusty latch, fumbling with it until it gave way with a final grunt of effort on her part. She threw the window wide open and gestured for the fairies to leave.
“You have to go. He can’t kill me yet. Go!”
A cluster of soft golden lights hovered before her, uncertain.
The cold wind whipped her clothes and her chestnut brown hair about, drying the sweat on her skin and making her shiver. She stared at the fairies, pleading with them in silent desperation.
One darted in to touch her lips, and then it zipped out the window. A second repeated the action, and then a third, the rest following one by one until they were all gone.
She took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled the window closed, her shoulders slumping with relief. They were safe. She wasn’t, but as much as she dreaded Micah’s return, she was too exhausted to do anything more than collapse on the sofa. If she couldn’t recover in time…
She gripped the amulet in her right hand. It was all she could do.
It wouldn’t be enough.
She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. The wall sconces had burned down to nothing and the sun had given way to the pitch black of a cloudy night when the sound of a slamming door woke her. She opened her eyes, caught in that moment of confusion between sleeping and waking, and a pair of hands grabbed her by the collar of her dress and yanked her to her feet.
“You will regret that, Iris.”
Her hand had fallen away from the amulet in her sleep. She reached for it in a panic, but he got to it first, picking up the snapped tail of the red thread of magic and pulling it tight around her heart again. She cried out in pain.
“I’m taking it all back, and then some. You’re about to find out how much I’ve been sparing you.”
He dragged her to the door by the amulet. The chain cut into her neck, but it wouldn’t break. It couldn’t. The amulet had chosen her, and it wouldn’t leave her, not unless she were dead.
And he wouldn’t let her die yet.
She stumbled and fell as he dragged her up the stairs, bruising her shins and scraping her knees, struggling to regain her footing as the cords thickened and tightened around her chest. She felt warm blood trickling down the back of her neck, but he wouldn’t slow his pace for her. Spots were forming on the edges of her vision.
He threw the door to his study open and tossed her to the floor. She couldn’t catch herself before she hit the ground hard, sprawling on the stone, gasping for breath. He walked past her, uncaring. The cords didn’t loosen, even without him holding the amulet. She lifted a shaky hand, reaching for it, but then his fingers were in her hair, yanking her head back, and he was forcing the potion down her throat as she choked and spluttered, and she couldn’t think about the amulet when she was fighting too hard just to breathe.
Glass smashed against the ground next to her. It crunched under his boots as he seized the amulet again, dragging her through the shards to the stone table, where he picked her up and slammed her onto the unforgiving surface. She was coughing, her lungs burning, blood streaming down her skin as tears streamed from her eyes. He twisted and jerked her into position, leaving her right hand free but pulling the rest of the straps tighter than ever before, cutting off circulation in her limbs and pressing down on her neck so her breath came in only short, painful bursts.
She was in agony, and she knew it was about to get much worse.
He seized her right wrist in a bruising grip. She felt a sharp pain as he slashed her palm open with a piece of broken glass, and then he wrapped her hand around the scalding hot amulet and held it in place with his own.
It began.
The darkness was blacker than black, the flames hotter than the sun. She was screaming, bursting into flames, too far gone to have any hope of reaching the whispers. Knives bit into her flesh, cutting her open, cutting her apart, but there was no relief. It went on and on, the pain never ending and increasing with every passing second, and somehow she was still alive. She was being torn apart from the inside out, screaming until she couldn’t scream anymore, and still consciousness wouldn’t let her go. She felt everything, heard everything.
When her screams died off into pathetic whimpers, when her writhing body fell still, only then did he release the amulet.
“You did this to yourself.”
The constriction around her chest was gone. He undid the straps, removing the pressure on her neck, and air flooded into her burning lungs. Darkness was reaching for her again, a different darkness, one that promised she wouldn’t feel anything anymore.
He wouldn't let her go to it.
She felt him lifting her into his arms. She heard his poisoned words, sliding into her ears and into her mind as she slipped in and out of consciousness.
His words held a power she couldn’t fight.
“Don't think you've saved your precious fairies. I can track them the same way I track you. They’ll be right back here tomorrow, and I’m going to kill them all in front of you, one by one. And then I’m going to rape you. When you’re in that wonderful state where you can’t move and everything hurts. You’re mine, Iris. Your magic, your body, your very soul are all mine.”
It was hopeless. She had failed. The fairies would die. He would continue his reign of terror unchecked, and she could do nothing to stop him.
“I hope you don’t still believe in God, because if you do, I have news for you. I am your god. I hold the power of life and death over you, and I’m keeping you alive for a long, long time. You’ll wish I would just let you die, but I won’t. And I’ll keep finding new ways to make you suffer. This is what you get for crossing me, Iris.”
He lay her on her bed and sat down beside her, as he always did. She felt his fingers brushing her sticky hair back from her sweaty face.
“Go to sleep, Iris. In the morning, I’ll make you wish you were never born."
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