Page 82 of Realm of Wind and Vines
Light from the white faelight gems in the chandelier above paints silver highlights in my dad’s blond hair when he falls. His eyes are still wide with shock, but the light in them is fading. Fast. Too fast.
Thuds echo into the cavernous ballroom as my parents hit the floor. Lying on their sides, they stare at me from across the polished stone floor while their bodies convulse. Once. Twice.
The wounds across their throats are so deep that the ice blades almost decapitated them. Blood pours out of the brutal cuts, forming pools around them and turning my mom’s long silver hair red at the ends.
Then the last flicker of light in their eyes dies.
I can see the moment it happens. The moment that the final spark of life leaves their eyes. The moment that they change from being people to being bodies on the floor. Even in death, that terrified expression remains on my mom’s features as her unseeing eyes stare at me from across the bloodstained floor.
My throat hurts.
And someone is screaming.
It takes me another second to realize that my throat hurts becauseIam screaming.
Time snaps back into place.
Another scream tears from the very depths of my soul, splitting the air like an explosion.
Ice shoots through the air.
I stumble as I’m shoved backwards while a massive wall of fire roars across the room. Shards of ice slam into the flames, and hissing steam explodes across the room as the two forces hit.
“Selena!” Alistair yells at me while sending another wave of fire across the room. “We need to go!”
“NO!” I scream.
Or continue screaming. I don’t think I’ve stopped screaming since she slit their throats, but it’s difficult to tell because I can barely hear anything over the ringing in my ears.
“No, I need to get them!” I scream, staggering a step forward again. “I need to?—”
Alistair wraps a strong arm around my waist and yanks me back while sending another torrent of fire across the room. Ice slams into it, creating another cloud of hissing steam.
“No!” I scream again, struggling against Alistair’s grip.
With one arm wrapped around my waist and the other shooting fire at Jessina, he backs towards the portal. Panic clangs inside me. I can’t just leave them. I can’t leave them. My parents. I can’t just?—
Twisting to the side, Alistair throws me through the portal while sending a massive wave of fire in the other direction. I fly through it like a limp doll and crash down on the floor of a small study inside Orion’s castle. Alistair leaps through the portal a moment later.
“Close it!” he screams.
Ice shoots towards us from the other side of the portal.
Grey immediately slams the portal back into the ground, shutting it right before a hail of ice shards could get through.
“NO!” I cry. Scrambling to my feet, I run over to where the portal used to be. “Open it!”
“What happened?” Galen yells over the chaos that erupts inside the room.
Or it might just be inside my own head. I can barely see what’s happening around me. All I can see is the fear and shock in my parents’ eyes as Jessina slit their throats.
“She killed them!” I scream. My throat is raw and every word tastes like blood and iron. “She killed them! Take me back! I have to go back!”
“Her parents,” Alistair is saying from somewhere right next to me. “Jessina killed her parents.”
Just hearing those words from someone else shatters everything inside me. As if I could pretend that it wasn’t real, that it wasn’t too late, until someone else acknowledged what happened.
A broken cry rips from my lungs, and I whip around towards Grey. “Open the portal! I need to go back! Take me back! I need to get them! I need to?—”
