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I had barely gasped the word when a rush of air exploded from the turret, the ricochet of whatever power I had created pushing against both of us and sending us back.
“Air.”
My head was spinning, the world shifting as I stared at what I had done, and what had erupted from me.
Magic. But not just any magic.
All of it.
Every kind of magic had rushed from my hand and exploded over the arena.
That shouldn’t be possible.
Not without a Catalyst.
Not at all.
Turning toward the Boy, the world shook ominously, my vision fading. I had meant to ask him what had happened, if he had seen the same thing, but I couldn’t make the words come. Everything was spinning too fast, the world had lost all shape.
All of that energy and heat and power had been drained from me, taking whatever energy I had left with it.
“Ar–” I tried to say his name, whatever name it was, as all of the spinning turned to black and the world disappeared.
Chapter 23
Caspyn
Itraveled up the coast for days, watching as ferry after ferry pulled away from rickety and broken piers. I knew I needed to go to the queen, I had every intention of leaving and never coming back. But one step away from the familiar pier and I knew I needed to try, I needed to find a way back to the Qits, to explain to Jayse.
So, I followed the water as I made my way back to Turin, racing toward my fate even as I tried to find a way back to her. Back to the woman that I had lost, right when I had realized what she was to me.
Each pullers I passed heaved and grunted, the Qits already floating out to sea. I stood at each one, at the Qits, and the broken and empty piers that looked as though they had been abandoned for centuries and not simply hours.
The Qits had always been one large family, and word traveled quickly thanks to the colored lights that they used as communication in the dark hours of the night. Although, most of the transferred information probably came from the Wave Walkers. The Wave Walkers were the best source of communication between Qits, and with the boats they worked and traveled on, word could spread from Qit to Qit as fast as the waves they were named for.
Salt clung to my skin from days of walking beside the spray, my cloak sagged and stained from blood and silt as I stood on the sandy beach, watching yet another ferry drift into the waves. The ferryman stared as though he knew exactly who I was, and what I had done.
I locked my gaze with his, the groan that rumbled from my belly sounding so much like a growl that I could have sworn he heard with how he flinched.
In all my walking I had found little to eat besides the small fishes I caught in the wake, the slippery things trapped between my deft fingers before I cooked them with the flame of my magic. I had survived on less, yet somehow the gnawing pain in my stomach was loud and painful enough it was hard to think through the hunger.
Although, that was probably caused by how much I had been using my magic. The new magic, vio, was that of the soil and rock. It lived in the rocks and the dirt that was below my feet, all of those bits of Okivo rattling as though my magic was calling to it. The fissure I had made before had been the first manifestation of that power, that wild untamed eruption fueled by hate and fear. I wasn’t sure I could do that again, not that I tried. I stuck with moving pebbles over the ground and compacting sand into a path. Even the small things that I had done could make this magic even more powerful than that boiling flame that lived below my skin.
Fire burned, but soil and rock had a different way of destroying.
The power of fíra and now of vio. But what of time? That was not the magic of a Sypher as I had assumed, that was the Vynari magic as that King had called it. I had hunted for answers of that power for years, and now I knew someone who knew. Not just of time, but of this Syphers power. If I survived my destination to end the Queen, I would hunt him down: Vaelar. I would end him, but not before I got answers.
For now, I let the power of vio that Theadore had given me throb through my veins as I stood on the strip of beach. The water lapped against the toes of my stained and scuffed boots, the salty surf drenching the edge of my cloak as it shuddered and flowed in the cold wind that roared off the ocean at this time of night. The wind that was so much a part of my home. Or what was my home.
Rage and hatred continued to boil through me as it had for days, the tendrils of that heavy power wrapping around my skin as my fingers fluttered at my side. The sand below my feet danced and twisted alongside the movement as this new magic pulled at it, directed it into a spiral that moved faster as I spun my fingers.
Faster, faster.
Tiny specks of sand circled into a cyclone that grew smaller and smaller until it was nothing more than a pillar of a needle, a sharp mass that followed my fingers as I raised it, pointing that spinning tip at the now distant ferry, the ferryman nothing but a speck.
With a flick of my fingers, I sent the cyclone of sand toward him as though it was a knife with a point sharp enough to pierce him straight through.
Perhaps it would have if it hadn’t been swept away by the wind halfway through its journey, all those fine spinning particles of sand scattering into the breeze as though they were nothing but dust.
