I jerked out of the vision, panic flaring in my flesh as I took off running.
The air was thick with smoke as I climbed higher through the tunnels and I realised a section of The Burrows was burning. I blocked the tunnels where the flames licked the walls, keeping them from spreading into this final section that offered a chance at freedom. But as I used my vision to see how many more survivors were left, I knew this was it. No one else was going to make it down here and suddenly I couldn’t breathe at all because I hadn’t seen either of my sisters, I hadn’t seen Orion.
I could not lose them.
I turned, my hands shaking as I followed the guidance of the stars, knowing my actions would save Tory but unable to see why.
I shattered the entrance to the tunnel, bringing it all down and sealing it with an ice and earth wall so thick it stole away the last of my magic. But it was done. The tunnels were closed and all who’d made it through were safe. At least for now.
A deep and surprised laugh filled the air and cold water seemed to spill down my spine as I turned, finding Lionel Acrux there clad in a red cloak.
“The dead queen’s bastard son,” he said through a smirk. “And it looks like he’s all out of magic.”
My stomach clenched and the stars offered me a vision of my fate, a fate which would save Tory from death. And I shook my head at them and their devious ways, because I was the sacrificial lamb.
“I’m in need of a new Seer,” he announced as he strode towards me, taking a pouch of stardust from his pocket.
I swung a punch at his face and he cursed as he stumbled back, blood spilling from his mouth. He raised a hand, stealing away the oxygen in my lungs and pressing a weight down on me with air magic that had me buckling to my knees before him.
He spat a wad of blood in my face, sneering at me as he bound me to him by ropes of air. “You will regret that, oh mighty fucking Seer.”
He threw the stardust over me and I was torn away into its embrace with Lionel, my heart hammering as I called upon the whispering stars around me for a glimpse of the future. But they had nothing to offer but a vision of a future so desolate it crushed me.
So I turned my attention to those I loved who were left to fight this war, drawing on the power of the stars around me and forcing them to offer me a prophecy, an answer to this terrible destiny, a way for them to win. And as they answered my call, I sent the prophecy into the ether, gifting it to the one girl who I knew still stood back at that battle and who may find a way to unravel the stars’ guidance. Then I prayed on everything I held dear, that she and her sister would one day find a way to cast a light through the dark and guide their people to victory.
I soared above the battlefield with my flesh on fire and fury coursing through my veins as I took in the death that surrounded me, the last of the rebel survivors long gone and the Nymphs all fighting to break through into the tunnels.
I looked around for any sign of Lavinia or Lionel and frowned as I failed to spot them. In fact, the Dragons and Fae who had been fighting alongside them had gone too, not a single soul in sight surrounding me aside from the Nymphs who shrieked and howled for my blood. They reached up towards me from the ground with their probes as if their desire for my magic alone might be enough to pull me from the sky and into their embrace where my death would await me.
Fear speared through my flesh as I hunted for any sign of the people I loved, wondering if it was a fool’s hope to believe that they might have made it back into the tunnels while failing to spot them anywhere out here.
The end of the battle had been chaos. I’d barely been able to keep track of the people right beside me, let alone anyone further out, and now I was left in the grip of terror as I hunted for any sign of my family and friends.
What had happened with Darcy and Orion? Had he gotten her away from the fight? Had he managed to return her to herself again?
My chest ached with concern for my other half and my pulse raced as I scoured the battlefield from above, my gaze moving over the dead and the bloodstained, trampled ground in search of any clue to her whereabouts, but there was nothing.
Where were Gabriel, Geraldine, Sofia, Tyler and Xavier? This frantic pounding in my chest was getting harder and harder to bear as my heart thundered in anticipation of an attack I couldn’t see coming, like it already knew something I didn’t and I was just struggling to catch up to it.
I hunted the land and sky for the sight of two warring Dragons, for a flash of golden scales or a powerful roar. A frenzied kind of panic was building within me as I beat my wings hard and swept across the battlefield, searching for Darius as my heart began to tremble in my chest, the lines of a fissure I refused to let burst open forming all around it.