Page 40 of The Mechanics of Broomstick Racing

She saw it hurt him to let her go, to risk herself when he could not, so Zephyr didn’t give him a choice. She rose into the storm.

The wind almost drowned out Neil’s strangled plea. “Zephyr, come back to me.”

Chapter 21

Rain. Thunder. Lightning. Wind. The combination made the attempted rescue so damned cold. Zephyr’s hands, unprotected, were stiff on her broom handle. As she hovered in the air, far above the Hollow, she searched for any sign of Levina or of Dale. She chanced letting go of her broom and rubbed her hands together, working out her joints.

She had already thrown up twice. If anyone had been directly below her, she’d apologize later with a cake. And then find a way to apologize for her terrible baking skills.

Whenever she blinked, canyon walls flashed in her periphery for a split-second. Impossible as it was, she felt every one of her scars like they were red hot.

This is all mine, she thought. This storm, this wind I’m fighting against at every turn. This ice-cold damned rain. The dark. It’s mine, and still, I’ll rise.

She opened her eyes, squinting and searching. There! A lightning strike revealed a small flash of red zipping back and forth just above a cluster of trees. Zephyr dove, rain stinging her face, until she brought her broom to an abrupt stop. Dale crashed against her chest, and she tucked him inside her jacket. “You’ve done well,” she whispered to the exhausted bird. “Rest now. And hang on.”

Zephyr flew in circles above the trees until she finally spotted Levina. Her heart leapt into her throat. Levina flew in erratic sprints, heading straight for a tree before she was able to gain some control and avoid crashing into it.

It was bringing back flashes of the canyon, and Zephyr smacked her forehead, as if that could keep her trauma away. “Levina!” she screamed. She followed Levina as best she could, but because she was also trying to stay safe, she was falling behind.

“Zephyr!” Levina cried back. The rest of her shouting was swallowed by the wind and thunder.

Could she convince Levina to jump? Could she even catch her? Zephyr’s left wrist had never been the same, even after surgery and extensive physical therapy.

It was hard to see, to hang on with frozen hands, and, she realized, as she watched Levina rise up one of the peaks of the White Mountains, it was getting hard to breathe.

Nothing Zephyr screamed into the storm stopped Levina. Her old broom, the unwilling traitor, suddenly stopped, nearly bucking Levina off, and turned toward a cliff face in the mountains. Zephyr used that pause to lie against her broom, becoming as aerodynamic as possible despite her trembling core, and fucking flew.

She realized it wouldn’t matter. Her speed, her determination, her courage. None of it would be enough to save Levina. She was easily hundreds of feet in the air and closing in on a sheer wall of stone. Levina didn’t even know her broom was cursed. She would be blaming the wrong turns, the stops, the drops, all on her own magic. She wouldn’t let go until it was too late.

Zephyr didn’t think. She dismounted the broom mid-air and launched it like a spear, sending along with it the greatest gust of wind she could magic. The broom flew like a bullet without her, and Zephyr watched it as she hung there, using her magic to keep her in the air.

“Catch it, Levina. You have to catch it!”

She used to hate Jaxon’s broom. It was so shiny. But in this dark storm, it was enough to catch Levina’s attention. The girl caught the broom one-handed and she was gone, torn off the cursed broom and now dangling from Jaxon’s still-flying broom but heading away from the cliff. The cursed broom smashed against the mountainside, an explosion of splinters and sparking, red magic.

Inhale. Exhale. Zephyr had taught Levina how to remount a broom in midair. She would be safe. She was safe. Zephyr was not.

The storm had not ceded, and a sudden gust of wind caught her off balance. Her spell sputtered out, and she fell.

THIS FALL WASN’T SO BAD, but then again, Zephyr hadn’t hit the ground yet. At least there weren’t any canyon shelves to bounce off of. Her body appreciated that. She would, however, likely be impaled by a tree.

She quickly opened her jacket, releasing Dale so he could fly himself to safety. He buzzed above her, panicking. Her arms flailed, sending out gusts of air in an attempt to right herself. But she was spinning and spinning and—

Something hit her stomach so hard she nearly puked. And, inexplicably, the ground beneath her was rushing past in a blur of greens and browns, instead of coming at her. “What the hells—”

“You are so heavy,” Levina complained.

She came back for me, Zephyr realized, and she laughed, cutting it off quickly as she realized she sounded hysterical. Zephyr hung from Jaxon’s broom handle, folded in half around it. Levina dared to grin at her as she struggled to keep them steady. Clutching her stomach and the broom, Zephyr moaned, “Oh, gods. I thought I was impaled.”

“Impaled?” Levina scoffed. “You have so little faith in your student.”

“That’s because my teaching methods are questionable, at best.”

“And your broom sucks. Why was it trying to kill me?”

“That’s a long story. To keep it short and PG-13, it’s because men.”

“Ah.” Levina started their shaky descent. “Hang on. We’re going down.”