“No,” my brother murmured deliriously, “it was just really warm in there… It must be the entity doing this, right?”
“I think so,” I replied. “Nevertide is split up the middle, like a huge landslide or something…and the sky, well, that’s just weird.”
Benedict looked at me in confusion, but before he could ask what I meant, one of the kids cried out.
“The tower! The tower’s going to fall!”
I looked up. The north tower directly above us had started to sway, lurching like a drunk back and forth as more splits and tears and crashes emanated from within the castle.
“Everyone back!” I cried out, knowing already that we were too late…The first rock fell just a foot away from where Benedict’s head lay. The kids screamed out. In the next moment, a familiar hand slammed into mine.
“Throw your energy out—now!” Tejus yelled down at me. He must have followed me as soon as I’d left his arms, and I was immensely grateful in that moment that Tejus refused to abandon me under any circumstances, no matter if it threatened his own life.
“What do I do?” I cried back.
“A barrier!”
“I don’t know how to do that!”
“Let your instinct take over, Hazel. Just trust me.”
He clasped my hand tightly, and, trying to see into his head without syphoning his energy, I followed his lead, attempting to throw my energy outward so that it encircled all of us from the falling rocks. Tejus was still weak, I could tell, but somehow he still managed to start building the shimmering, bluish barrier.
“Don’t hold back.” Tejus yanked at my hand. “I’m syphoning off your friends—I’ll be fine.”
The entire process took only a few seconds; I poured the rage and fury, the power and the desperation I felt into a single channel outward. In my mind, it created the same thick rope of ‘energy’ that I used to bond with Tejus, but this time it was directed onto the ground—and where the energy came into contact with the ground, it spilled out, covering the ground and then rising up into a large bubble, merging with the wisps that Tejus had already started to create.
“You’re doing it,” Tejus whispered as the bubble encased us.
Just in time. The rocks of the tower screamed, stone grinding against stone as the aged mortar crumbled away to dust. It collapsed, covering the barrier that we’d created, shutting out every ounce of light, and making the earth shudder on impact.
The moment rocks hit the barrier, I howled in pain. It was as if each stone had landed on my head—but inside my brain, ricocheting around my skull, knocking every nerve, muscle and bone in my body. The edges of my vision started to turn gray.
“Tejus…” I murmured, unable to get any more words out as the world felt like it was fluttering away to nothingness.
“It’s all right, I’ve got it—I can hold it.”
I heard his reassuring murmur like it was traveling down a long, long tunnel.
“Everyone’s safe,” he continued.
Everyone’s safe.
We’re all okay.
I let go of his hand, yearning for rest and hardly able to keep my eyes open for another second.
Benedict’s startled expression was the last thing I saw; he was looking up at me from the ground, his eyes wide and disbelieving as I smiled and then fell, gratefully, into unconsciousness.
Ash
As the bird continued on toward Hellswan castle, I looked down at the complete devastation below me. A large crack split Nevertide in two, like a gaping, smirking mouth across the landscape. Smaller cracks hair-lined off it, the roots of trees exposed by landslides, as if the forests and fields were sloping down into the center of the world. Villages lay in ruins, barns burning, and most homes looked as if they’d collapsed entirely, falling over as if they were made out of paper, not stone.
A cloud of smoke rushed up to meet us, momentarily blinding me in a thick fog, and when it passed, I got my first look at Hellswan castle. Or what was left of it.
Ruby!
She was my one and only thought as I looked down at the annihilation of my home. The main fortress of the castle was just about still intact, but every other inch of it lay sprawling outward, nothing more than rubble, with the black dots of ministers swarming around the wreckage like confused ants.
Queen Trina groaned next to me. She was still out of it, her eyes closed and her body limp in the talons of the vulture.
This is your fault.
A large part of me wanted to drop her down to the land below—to watch her somersault through the air until she landed like a rag doll on the rocks or was swallowed up by fire. It would serve her right: this was her doing, every dead sentry, every crack and split in Nevertide on her hands—evidence of her betrayal of her own people. If Queen Trina lived and Ruby didn’t, I would never forgive myself – or her.