Page 56 of An Empress of Air & Chaos

Just as he ordered another water for himself, Torin’s face moved through the crowd, head and shoulders above everyone else. Relief dispersed over his body, but he kept his face harsh, not showing the reaction to his brother. He pushed weight up into his toes and looked for Emara to be sheltered behind him, but she wasn’t.

“Gideon,”—Torin’s hand went to Gideon’s shoulder—“she’s gone.” Torin’s face was flushed like he had been running for hours. “Emara. I can’t find her.” He ran a hand over his face.

Cally slammed the glass onto the bar, spilling its contents, and stumbled off the stool to her feet. “What do you mean she’s gone? Gone where?”

Gideon knew it was bad news. His father was going to gut the two of them alive.

“What happened, Torin?” he demanded.

Torin worked his way through some bullshit story about Emara freaking out because of the crowd and her disappearing out of the tavern. He then briefly skimmed over that they both, somehow, ended up at a fortune teller, which he thought was odd, and that she had bolted from the stall. As Gideon tried to piece it all together, he knew something was off. It just didn’t make sense. If Torin knew more about Emara and why she would run, he neglected to say.

“And you’re telling me everything?” Gideon glared at Torin.

“Yes, Gideon. I have just run through the full story, for Thorin’s sakes.”

Somehow, he doubted that.

Gideon shook his head and downed the last of his water. There was only one way he was going to find out the truth. And that was to find her.

Emara had run so fast that her lungs had nearly collapsed in on themselves. She had only slowed as the burning in her legs threatened to trip her, her chest heaving up and down in fiery pain.

She had ducked down an alley to lose Torin and ran until she couldn’t hear him calling her name anymore.

She needed a minute. Alone.

In fact, she needed more than a minute to process what she had just seen with the Spirit Witch and she’d known that his stubborn ass wouldn’t have granted her that time. So, she’d fled and ducked into a path that he hadn’t seen her take. She wouldn’t have outrun him otherwise.

She halted, now desperate for her breathing to return to normal. She rested against a brick wall, her head tipping back into the grained texture. The alley was disgusting with waste bags and litter. The smell was repugnant. She heaved as she pushed herself against the wall, steadying her balance and closed her eyes. She ran through the last ten minutes in her mind.

The Spirit Witch. The wave of power. Her grandmother’s uncompromising face. Her own mother’s eyes, her pleas.

Her mother had loved someone she was forbidden to be with. Is that why her grandmother had never mentioned her father?

Emara struggled with the concept of her grandmother despising her father so much that she would forbid her mother to be with him. There had been no signs of who her father was in the vision, only signs of fire, water, and air. Signs of witchcraft.

Magic.

Her chest raised up and down rapidly. Her grandmother was magical. Her grandmother was a witch and so was her mother? Her grandmother had said that she was the supreme. Head of the Witches. The supreme was the most powerful witch in the covens, according to what she had learned from Gideon.

Her head fell against the brick and her skull vibrated in pain.

This couldn’t be true…

Her breathing accelerated instead of slowing. Her mother was destined to be the Empress of Air. A fate that she was unwilling to accept for herself.

Empress of Air. Empress of a witching coven. A witching house! Supreme.

Emara pressed her fingers to her lips and swallowed the nausea that churned in her belly. Theodora and Sereia Clearwater had once belonged to The House of Air. She shook her head in disbelief. It had to be a mistake. A vision that had warped reality somehow. There was nothing in her grandmother’s house to even indicate that she was a witch —let alone the supreme.

She ran a hand through her hair, pushing herself up from against the wall. She slowed her breathing.

In the vision, Theodora had blackmailed Sereia into not revealing that she was, in fact, a fire bearer—which probably meant that she should have belonged to The House of Fire.

A cold sweat broke over Emara’s skin.

Is that what the spirits had wanted her to know? That she came from a line of witches? Powerful witches? Or that her mother and grandmother’s relationship was so fractured it was beyond repair? She was never going to get answers now. Gods, if anything, the vision had confused everything.

No, not confused—ruined. Tarnished!

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