Page 74 of Heart of Fire
Risked it forher.
“I love you,” she whispered, running a hand over his flank. “Keep him out of mymind.”
And then she steppedforward.
The earth began to tremble beneath her as Freyja reached for it. She held her hands out as shale began to skitter across the slopes. Magnus hissed as the ground beneath him began to move. Freyja could feel the currents of it rising to her call. She knew this land. She knew the feel of it, the weight of it, the immense power of it. Rurik might have claimed these lands as lord and master, but she was mistress ofit.
“Shift,”she whispered, tearing the earth apart with but athought.
Magnus danced uneasily as a furrow ploughed its way through the rock beneath them, toward his feet. A thrust of his wings sent him into the sky, but there was no refugethere.
The sky belonged to her too, and the wind that whipped her hair behind her answered her call. For the first time in her life, Freyja lost herself to the power swimming through her veins. No more hiding, or trying to quash her own powers. She flung a hand toward the airbornedreki,and a whip of wind sent him scrambling for the ground again, landing on the haphazard slope. Magnus’s claws scrabbled frantically, but there was no escape into the air, nor any shelter on the ground. As if he realized it, he turned and those vicious green eyes locked on her. He stopped fighting against the slide of shale beneath him, and rode it down into the ravine where she protected herdreki.
Thunder grumbled in the distance. Clouds swam against each other, brewing darkly as she called the winds to her and split the sky with lightning. Its electric lash ran through her veins and when Freyja opened her eyes, she knew theygleamed.
“You foolish girl,”thedrekihissed as it alighted on flat ground.“You think you can turn my own skies againstme?”
“They’re not your skies,”she told him in a hollow voice. “And they’re not the only thing Icontrol.”
Freyja flung a fist into the air, and the ground erupted around thedrekiin a whirlwind of shale and rock that cut and slashed at him. He screamed in fury, lashing out with his claws, but there was no way to fight a thousand shards ofrock.
She caught a glimpse of narrow green eyes and then he lashed out, sending an enormous shard of shale directly towardher.
Freyja jerked her hands up. The shard stopped in midair, then dropped to the ground. So did all of the razor-sharp pieces surrounding Magnus. She lost control of the whirlwind and it petered out, letting her skirts falls against her stockingedcalves.
Freyja gasped, her knees trembling. Wielding so much current was taking its toll on her. She’d never mastered so many different elements at once. Only the storm, and she’d been angry then, the night she went after herram.
“A child,”Magnus chuckled, in a murderous voice that echoed in her mind thanks to the protective shield Rurik encased her in.“Who does not know what she playswith.”
“Play with this,” Freyja spat, and a strike of lightning speared through the skies towardhim.
“Freyja, no!”Rurik screamed, and something seemed to encase her. A protective dome of...nothingness.
The lightning hit the ground where Magnus had stood an instant beforehand. The blackdrekivanished as light obliterated her vision, and the world clapped around her in a sudden fierce explosion of heat. She realized her mistake almost instantly. She might wield the lightning, but she was not entirely impervious to it. Small fragments of rock cut against the dome around her and as she blinked, still half-blinded, she realized Rurik had probably saved herlife.
Between one blink and the other, an enormous shadow reared above her. Magnus. She’d missed him. Magnus began to strike toward her, his razor-sharp claws gleaming in the light above her, and his wings flared as though he were some demon from hell. Freyja suffered a moment where she saw her own death striking toward her with absoluteinevitability.
“Fire!” someonebellowed.
Haakon.Freyja glanced up from beneath the arm she’d thrown above her head, and saw iron flash in the shaft of sunlight that suddenly split the clouds. Then the enormous bolt from the ballista sunk into the enrageddreki’schest, right where his black heartlay.
Magnus screamed, and the sound cut through her like a knife. Freyja slammed her hands over her ears, her blood seeming to vibrate within her veins as the earth had done at her call. She went to her knees and was grateful when Magnus hit the earth in front of her. His wings flapped like a downed bat’s, and he clawed at the rocks, his tongue protruding from his gaping maw. Freyja slowly took her hands from her ears as Rurik stumbled into her, wrapping his right wing around her in a move too slow to prevent the previous strike. He made a mournful sound in his chest, one that sounded akin to a whale’s bellow, and Freyja pressed her hand against hisneck.
“I’m fine,” she whispered. “Fine.”
Stepping out from under his protective touch, she saw the light go out of Magnus’s eyes. A green glow began to emanate from deep within his chest, and then it hovered in the air above his fallen form, an enormous wraith of electric green that flapped faint wings at them before it began to fly into the sky abovethem.
She’d seen those lights before, when the night skies darkened, and the flicker of green and pink began to dance across the Arctic. But she’d never before understood what they were. Freyja watched in wonder as Magnus’s actinic form vanished over thehorizon.
A mournful sound echoed behind her, and then a second joined it, as bothdrekilifted their heads andwailed.
Andri appeared in a flap of wings, alighting with a limp beside her. Freyja barely had time to step back before Rurik’s growl filled the air, and he somehow hauled himself up onto his feet, and hissed at the smallerdreki.
Those violet eyes blinked at her, then Andri bowed his head before his cousin. Rurik snapped at his cheek, almost in chastisement.“Freyja is mine.If you touch her I will killyou.”
“You’re barely in any condition to swat a fly,” she snapped back, hurrying back to his side and pressing her hands against the hollow of his chest. “You stupiddreki.”
“You foolishmouse.”
