Elora wanted to cradle her in her arms, but the ring still dangled on the necklace in her grasp. She couldn’t put it on yet. Couldn’t condemn them all, at least not if she didn’t have to.
She folded one arm over herself instead and gawked down at the horror of it all. She didn’t know what to do. How to save them. Never before had she felt more worthless.
Chapter 39
Awakened
KESTREL
Blearily, Kestrel opened her eyes. Through the trees, she thought she could see large, leathery wings just before they flew out of sight. Her head was throbbing. One of her eyes was swollen shut, that entire half of her face alit with fiery pain, but it was nothing compared to the agony in her chest and torso.
Kestrel felt air in places where it didn’t belong.
Carefully and wincing with each inch of progress, Kestrel raised herself up onto her elbows. She peered down at her body. Her chest laid bare, the tunic ripped to shreds, and beneath it all she could see was bloody scraps of flesh and bone.
She was in so much pain. Unbearable and blazing.
But pain, as it turned out, was the primary source of her magic. So was blood. And Kestrel had ample of both.
Without time to explain, Kestrel ignored the worried way Elora was watching her and acted on instinct. On new knowledge. Thanks to the vision, or whatever had happened to her when she was underwater, Kestrel now understood the power inside her so much better. Had seen her mother grow into it, spending a lifetime adapting and learning how to wield it. LikeSigne, she too had once believed that they needed to invoke the Sky-Blessed to access such a power.
But the day of the Cursed Night, Aenwyn had learned otherwise.
Power had always been inside her. Just like it had always been inside Kestrel.
Aenwyn’s healing magic was different than the magic she used to curse all the rulers of Grimtol. For that magic, she had only needed a site of pain, and the more blood she could see, the easier it was to command it. It was why Kestrel had been able to heal that rabbit so easily.
Kestrel stared down at her tattered chest. She focused the light and airy magic inside herself, willed it to her bidding. The charge built in time with the raucous booming of thunder above them.
Just like with the rabbit, her skin began to knit itself back together, burying the bone back where it belonged, and leaving fresh, pink flesh behind.
But then she grew winded. With gasping breaths, Kestrel’s magic stopped before it could heal her fully. She was too exhausted to do anything more, but at least it was better than nothing.
Elora gasped, watching her with awe. “How did you?—”
“I’ll explain later,” Kestrel said, each word dragging with effort. “Can you help me up?”
But Elora flinched away. “I can’t. I have to keep the ring off, otherwise…”
Elora glanced behind them, and for the first time since surfacing from the pond, Kestrel heard the chaos around them.
Screams and retching.
Labored breaths and mournful cries.
Unassisted, Kestrel hobbled to her feet and peered around the meadow. She spotted Leighton first, a trail of thornyvines dragging behind one of his heels. But his face? She had never seen anything more horrific. Waterfalls of crimson trailed down his cheeks. A thick thorn jutted from one of his eyes. Judging from the gaping hole where his other eye had been, she guessed it had met a similar fate until he had plucked the obtrusive bramble out, his eye along with it.
Kestrel could fix this though. With her new magic, she could heal him.
Leighton was staggering. Stumbling. Feeling around with one hand while the other raged wildly, sword choked to the hilt. And all the while he was shouting.
At first, she couldn’t make out what he was saying, only that there was a menace in his tone that she had only caught glimpses of before.
Then the words became clearer. It was her name on his tongue.
“Kestrel!” Another wild swing of his sword. “You’ll pay for this!”
Shaking her head, she stumbled toward him, unaware that she was doing so. “Leighton, I’m so sorry. I can help you. I can?—”
