Page 27 of Keldori By Daybreak

7. Seismology 101

Ciarán was wrong. Obviously.

I couldn’t be the source of the earthquakes. The volcanoes were. We’d established that.

But there was an invisible force pressing against me, tangible the same way my tether to Ciarán was, but simmering with a more volatile magick.

The mountains themselves were calling out to me, drawing me in along a secret gravitational pull, begging me to let them loose.

No.

No, I was imagining things. I had to be.

The others stared at me in the dull glow of our Skal bottles, and I could see them calculating in their heads, lining up my actions with each earthquake. I’d been fighting Ciarán on the bluff outside the hideout when the first one had hit. That had been the first time since freeing Gams that I’d used so much magick.

“No,” I half-laughed. “It’s a coincidence, because the volcanoes are waking up.”

“And they’re waking up because the Saergrim is free,” Ciarán said carefully. “And the Saergrim is free because you released magick so powerful it broke half your ribcage.”

“I’m not the one who triggered the volcanoes!” I snarled. Orla and Fana flinched at my raised voice and both looked up at the cavern ceiling as if it might collapse over us. “Stop it!”

A tiny aftershock shook the cave. Orla grabbed Fana, but what was left of the ceiling remained intact.

“Careful, Blue.” Ciarán raised his hands with his palms towards me, like I was some sort of wild animal that needed calming. The gesture only made me more angry. More panicked.

“It wasn’t me.” I hissed, but that was wrong. I knew it was wrong. Ciarán was right. I was causing the earthquakes.

No. No, I wasn’t. Not directly anyway.

It was the magma running beneath the mountains. It was the pressure building beneath the earth. It was the volcanoes, fed by my magick. The earthquakes were just a symptom.

And what was it that Gams had said, about other factors influencing the volcanoes and when they might erupt?

She can’t have meant me.

I felt like I was turning into a rotsbane again. I didn’t have control. I couldn’t stop any of this.

“Remember to breathe,” Ciarán whispered in my head.

I forced myself to take in a wavering breath, and Ciarán nodded in approval.

“We shouldn’t be surprised, given that your grandmother is one who created the volcanoes with your family’s magick,” he said out loud for Orla and Fana to hear as well. “It’s not something you can help. Don’t worry, just be careful.”

“Don’t worry?” I repeated incredulously.

“The glacier should hold.” He looked up at the ceiling, ignoring me. “We might as well get as far as we can before we have to rest.”

He readjusted the pack on his back, and orange fire swathed his hand as he led the way deeper into the ice cave. I could sense Orla trying to meet my eye, but I didn’t have it in me to look at her, so I focused on my footing over the rounded river rocks and followed Ciarán into the dark.

I loved volcanoes. My dream to become a volcanologist had always been a source of shame considering my geophysicist biological father who wanted nothing to do with my existence. I wasn’t sure if love for geophysics was hereditary, but if it were, I assumed I’d gotten it from him.

The idea that my fascination with volcanoes might have come from Gams wasn’t just ironic, it was a cruel joke because those volcanoes were threatening to kill her, and every magical attempt I made at saving her meant bringing the volcanoes closer to blowing.

I was the one who had woken them up. I was the one who was stoking their power.

Fana bumped next to me as we hiked over loose stones and ice in the gloom of the cavern. Jonquil’s eyes glinted up at me from her arms, and then Fana raised her face to look at me too.

“I can blind people,” she said simply.