Page 134 of A Sword of Ice
Because Mana had never been there.
But… maybe that wasn’t quiteright.
Mana was in all things, both living and intangible. It was the magic in a star streaking across the sky, in the elements, in a mother’s love, in a Fae’s wrath.
Maybe what Julius had said before was true, and Mana had been inside Iona all along.
In a funny little thing called hope.
Iona’s eyes opened and she straightened, renewed vigor pumping through her blood and pushing away the panic in a forceful shove.
“Shula…” Her voice came out as a broken shout. Blood dripped down her chin as she spoke, but it didn’t drown out the fury of the magic inside her soul.
The fire Fae’s panicked gaze cut to Iona, and she must have seen something in her eyes because she staggered towards her, the embers of her depths burning with her emotions.
“What do we do?” she asked. Her lips were cracked and bleeding, her eyes a wildfire.
“We’re the only ones who can protect the castle.”
If they’d been able to melt iron and harden themselves against it, then why should ashwood be any different?
Their hands met in the middle, fingers interlacing. A surge of magic siphoned against their fingertips and their eyes held. There was fear in her friend’s eyes, but there was fear in Iona’s too. And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad when they were together.
Shula’s fingers tightened. “Lead the way.”
Iona began leading her outside. Broken bits of brick crumbled as they stepped past the entryway of the stronghold now in pieces, their hands tightly clasped, their magic humming together. Their feet pushed against the snow as they stepped out into the fray. Into the chaos of metal armor clanking, of screaming winds blowing ash and snow against their skin.
It took Iona back to when sand billowed just the same way the ash did.
She’d been petrified then.
So petrified that she’d allowed herself to be ushered into hiding with the women and children. Where she’d sat in a corner, her fingers clasped tightly between the spaces of her sister’s.
Things were different now. She was no longer the same frightened female she’d been a hundred years ago. And in her hand, she no longer held her sister’s, but a friend’s.
Then, she’d given strength to Malika, even as she trembled herself and tears burned behind her eyelids. Now, she stood tall in the face of a situation she was intimately familiar with, one branded deeply inside of her.
The ashwood in the wind burned against her skin. The two Fae shivered against it but started forward anyway.
“Where are you going?”
Iona heard the voice shouting at her like it was a distant memory, one that fogged around the edges and she couldn’t quite grasp. It was like reaching with phantom fingertips or hearing garbled voices from beneath the water.
It was something far away, too far to comprehend when all that was within her grasp and focus was the marching feet that rumbled across the pillowy earth.
Catapults lined the front of them like pawns in a chess game, releasing boulders straight in their direction.
Iona reacted on instinct. Her hands raised and ice rose from the ground and collided against the boulder, stopping its trajectory. Ice and rock shattered into pieces, but where one was released, another emerged, and soon, the castle was covered in the percussive sounds of whistling winds, ice colliding against rock, the reverberations of metal armor, and the pounding of Iona’s heart. Blood dripped against her lips as it slid down her nose.
It tasted sharp like magic and fear that weren’t solely Iona’s.
The roaring of fire soon followed. A line of orange and green flames streaked across the ground, cutting a line through snow and earth. It separated them, the edges of the flames licking the humans and their weapons until they were engulfed and the fire reached to the sky. Their magic touched, a collision of raw, unmitigated power that exploded across the darkness to let the humans know one thing.
That they weren’t weak.
That they had hope.
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