Page 31 of Sweets and Sycamores
Ekko chittered and pulled at her sweater, nudging her cheek urgently until she opened her eyes.
Oh no.
Dominic was running out of time. Each day that crept by increased Dom’s fear that another calamity could hit their vulnerable town. A full year had passed since the tornado, and he wasn’t any closer to discovering how to fix the broken spell. Magic was picky like that, and he could not just weave a new spell between the land and the sycamores. No. He had to find a way to repair what was broken to restore the balance, and he was out of patience.
He had to search everywhere but felt like it would take a lifetime. Each day, he scanned another portion of the land, every nook and cranny of every tree, and still didn’t find the rupture in the magic. All pieces he had tested had been intact. The sycamores were humming every time he touched them, the earth was singing every time he sent his magic through it in search of the sickness.
Nothing cried. Nothing withered. Nothing was rotten.
And he was damn frustrated. He never imagined one of the hardest missions of his life would be in his hometown.
After yet another failed attempt to find the rupture in the magic, Dom was heading home on a longer path than usual. Ever since the Witch had stolen his favorite spot—the one place where he could access the most remote parts of the land from a distance—he had to venture farther and farther away to send his magic all the way to the edges, where the last sycamores bordered the area.
The night was chilly when he had left the forest, and now a strong wind blew through the streets, rustling dry leaves and branches, sweeping his hair over his eyes. Dom used a bit of magic to keep the air at bay, a privilege he always enjoyed inthe colder months when he was not stationed in a warm town. He hated the endless heat and couldn’t imagine living with a constant coat of sweat on his skin. The thought made him shudder, and he stepped up his pace, as if the imaginary sweat was chasing him.
A flicker caught his attention. Through the naturally dark forest, he noticed a throbbing red glimmer lighting the thick tree trunks.
Fire?
Dom mapped the area quickly in his head and concluded that it might be around the secluded spot he used to go to every night before?—
Alecsandra.
Dom ran.
He cut through the forest on a shortcut he hoped to remember well from his childhood. Dom sprinted through the darkness, through sharp branches and dry leaves fighting to grip him. But as the red flare grew and grew in his line of vision, he put his full strength in his strides, molding the wind with his magic to push him from behind. The cold air scratched his throat with every breath, and his muscles protested, but he didn’t slow down.
Had this forest always been so fucking big?
Dom felt like he’d been running forever when he entered the clearing that he knew like the back of his hand and halted in front of angry flames taller than him. They licked furiously at the ground, forming a perfect circle on the edge of the river.
But he heard nothing else than the horrific crackle of the scorching fire.
“Hello?” he yelled, coming as close as possible to the heat. Through the dancing inferno, he made out a figure curled into herself on the ground. “Alecsandra!”
Nothing.
Why wasn’t she screaming for help?
His chest caved in under an invisible weight. She couldn’t be… No. Unconscious, maybe, but nothing more. Dom refused to admit it to himself, but he felt responsible for her. What if anything happened to the Witch while in his care?
Ekko flew up from within the circle of flames, diving to him and chittering with desperation in his black eyes, claws pulling at his jacket.
“I know, I know,” Dom said. “Alecsandra!” he yelled again, louder, hands cupped around his mouth.
The shadow behind the flames moved. If she said anything, Dom didn’t hear her past the flames’ hisses. He readied his magic to put out the bloody fire when one of the flames broke from the blaze, grew taller and longer than the others, then plunged toward the middle of the burning circle.
She screamed then, a sound so raw and dire that it cracked something in Dom’s heart.
“No!” he screamed with her and threw his arms out, shoving all his power to put out the godsforsaken flames.
Am I dead?
No, wait.
Allie felt the horrified thud of her heart in her chest, and she snapped her eyes open to the quiet, dark clearing, the gurgle of the flowing river and the faint whooshing of the leaves the only sounds around her. She coughed heavily, her lungs rejecting all the smoke she’d inhaled.
The absolute fear for her life that had sunk its sharp talons into her faded just a fraction, and Allie tried to let it go with every breath and cough.
