Page 83 of Poison Sun

The ground shakes, the air smelling of charred wood.

My heart stops, panic tearing at the edges of my vision.

“Do you have any blood spells that can help us?” I ask Blaze, although I can’t imagine what he could possibly do to stop an entire storm.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I have to write the spells in Latin. I haven’t memorized most of the words.”

“Right.” I glance at his pack. “We need the book.”

“You want to bring it out in this?” He looks around in horror, and for the first time, he seems protective over the book that a few days ago, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

Still, he has a good point. The rain is coming down in droves. If it gets on the ink and smears it, it could ruin the book forever.

Although, if the lightning strikes us, we could be ruined forever, too.

I curse internally.

What are we supposed to do? Because even if we’re able to read the book without ruining it—which I have low faith of happening—the text is so small, and the writing is so dense. It’ll be nearly impossible to find something like that on the fly.

“You know a few spells,” I say to Blaze. “Tell me some. Maybe we can make something work.”

He runs a hand through his wet hair, racking his brain for something—anything—that could be of use. “Somnus,” he says. “It means sleep. Fumus creates steam. Recludam means unlock?—”

Thunder claps from above, jolting him out of concentration.

“Anything else?” I ask, unable to think of how to use those spells to get out of our current predicament.

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head, frustrated, and kicks the dirt beneath his feet.

I look back out, just in time to see multiple bolts of lightning strike down on the field.

We can’t make a run for it.

I know the chances of being hit by lightning are technically slim… but that’s not magical lightening in a valley that supposedly makes people vanish.

Blaze doesn’t seem like he’s going to pull any more spells out of thin air.

Leave him, the wind says again, stronger in the storm. Fire travel to the end of the valley. One of you dead is better than two of you dead. Let nature take care of it, so you don’t have his blood on your hands. He’s going to betray you eventually, anyway. You’ll be doing the right thing.

I look around, dread returning to my stomach at the worsening storm. The leaves are being blown away. The lightning is getting closer, and a bolt of it strikes the tree next to us, splitting it in two.

But it doesn’t make me want to abandon Blaze.

It makes me want to focus, and it helps me push the wind’s poisonous words from my mind.

There’s only one thing I can do to try getting us out alive.

Use my blood magic to scry for a word he can use to get out of here.

It’s not the ideal way to reveal my secret. But abandoning him is not an option, so what other choice do I have?

“I can help,” I say, and then I lower myself to the ground, pull out my dagger, slice open my palm.

I don’t look at him as I do.

It’s just me, my magic, and my desperation to get us out alive.

Focusing on the ground, I make a fist, squeezing the blood out of my palm and onto the mud. Water is pooling on the ground, but I don’t have much to work with here. Hopefully I’ll see something before my blood washes away.

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