Page 88 of Boy of Chaotic Making

“You may go to your room if you insist on acting like such a wretch,” Prince Friedrich spat. “Your signature is not required.” He picked up the pen.

Pure panic resonated within the young woman. Merritt stepped forward, ready to take control and calm down the situation, but Cora acted first.

“I saidno!”

She flung out her hands, and gusts as strong as those in the carriage house swallowed the room, sending furniture, vases, pictures, busts, and the contract flying.

Merritt dropped to the floor, pulling Hulda with him. Baron von Gayl shouted, “Get down!” and threw himself over Briar just as a fireplace poker flew over their heads. He raised his hand as an urn sailed toward them and, with a kinetic spell, directed it into the wall, where it shattered into dozens of pieces, swept into the gusts like a torrent of knives.

Owein inched out, and the urn resolidified, only to run into the far corner and shatter again. Cora stood in the center of the room, thecenter of the storm itself. She stumbled back as the baron tried to seize her with a kinetic spell, but it dissipated as quickly as it had formed. In the back of Merritt’s brain, somewhere, he recalled the Leiningen family possessed spell-turning, a wardship spell that nullified other magic.

“Stop!” Lady Helen could barely be heard over the rushing air. She put out her hands and tried to use her own wind magic in the opposite direction of the building tornado, but she quickly dropped to the floor, wildly out of breath, as was the cost of elemental air spells.

But that was the thing.How is she doing this without faltering?

I don’t know.Owein barked. Several flying items returned to their original places, order to chaos, but the gusts only ripped them away again. When Prince Friedrich grabbed Cora’s ankle, a head-sized stone appeared above him and dropped, crushing his hand into the floor. Cora danced away, putting her hands over her ears. The wind, somehow, increased.

Hulda shouted something to him, but the gusts carried it away.

Merritt threw up a wardship spell, and the sound of the gusts pummeling it was more deafening than the storm itself. The force quickly knocked it down. “What?” he yelled, then winced as a chair swept into him. He tried ducking back to where the wall jutted out a little, pulling Hulda and Owein with him.

A hole opened in the floor beneath Cora—Owein’s doing—but she spell-turned it before she fell. A lump formed on Owein’s back, universal punishment for using alteration magic.

“Thebead!” Hulda yelled. “I saw a bead in the vision. She must have it. There’s nothing else!”

“What bead?!” Merritt gripped her close as a large portrait whipped by them.

“The conjurer’s bead, from the Tower of London!” She had to scream at him to be heard, especially as sconces ripped from the wall. The chandelier tore from the ceiling, and Merritt threw up one, two,three invisible walls to hold it in place, which made the bruises from the chair ache all the deeper.

He remembered that bead. Lore said it could negate the effects of magic. He recalled how simple it had looked. Was that because it’d been a fake?

Cora was a member of the royal family. Surely she hadsomeaccess to the Tower of London. Had she seized it for herself? It seemed the only explanation. She must not have used it in the carriage house to “prove” her innocence.

The carriage house. The breakfast room. The bedroom. Good God, she was going to kill them all.

Shielding himself with another wardship spell, Merritt crawled forward to see Cora. He couldn’t hear her over the noise, but she was sobbing, tears swept into the wind. She was only thirteen. Surely she couldn’t wantthis.

Maybe she’d known Merritt and Owein had moved rooms. Maybe she’d only meant to scare them.

Her fists were still pressed to her ears, like she was trying to drown out the terror she was creating.Fists.Could she be holding the bead?

Another hole opened beneath her; this time she fell a ways before spell-turning it, again without consequence. The floor entrapped her leg just above the knee.

And suddenly stones appeared everywhere, stones as small as a shoe and as large as a donkey. Too heavy to be swayed by the wind, the heavy stones dropped with loudthuds. One barely missed Briar. Another crushed the chair Hulda had been sitting on.

“You have to stop this!” Merritt bellowed, but his voice, too, drowned in the storm.“CORA! LISTEN TO ME!”

A greatthumpsounded behind him, and he caught the tip of a whine before the gale whisked it away.

For a moment, despite the torrent, time seemed to stop.

Hulda screamed. Merritt turned around. Owein’s paws reached toward him over the carpet, slowly staining it red as blood seeped into the fibers. Owein’s back half Merritt couldn’t see. It was trapped under a boulder.

Merritt stared at his uncle, and his entire body flashed cold.

No.

He slammed himself into the boulder. It didn’t move. Debris whipped by, cutting into his clothes, his skin, leaving hot, angry marks behind.

---