Page 162 of Bane of the Wild Hunt

My power surged up and steamed through my veins, and it felt glorious. Aside from practicing with Riordan, I’d been trying not to use it, since the griffins were wary of me already, and I did not wish to alienate myself any further by using foreign magic.

I knew I was completely charged up when I felt my blood pulsing with such intense heat and fury that my skin throbbed. I formed an orb of condensed fire between my palms and then hurled it into the midst of the Fuath where the magic exploded. Searing flesh from bone and warping metal armour so it screeched as it scraped against itself. The surviving Fuath screamed even more loudly when the fire began to spread unnaturally fast across the leaf litter without burning a single stick. Only the monsters.

“Sweet Mother of the gods, Amira!” shouted Helena, but I could not turn to see whether she was horrified or impressed as I focused on our enemies.

It was a spell I had perfected a long time ago, but I had never been able to use it more than once before resting because it took a lot of condensed magic to explode.

And yet it was as if my power was still ready to boil out of me. It was almost terrifying how feral it felt. Like a deep chasm of flame had yawned open inside of me that would be easy to fall into and never emerge again…

I’d heard enough horror stories of fire witches losing control and consuming themselves with their own fire that I knew to pull back. But this level of potential power was not something that I had ever experienced before myself. Since using Riordan’s magic, my own power had indeed felt hotter and fiercer whenever I tried to reach around it in search of his air magic again. But this was…

Volcanic.

And in spite of how tempting it was to flirt with magic that I sensed could decimate the whole forest, I ordered it backto sleep. I focused instead on using the fire which I’d already conjured to fight and pushed our enemies back.

“Alright, Riordan, I have had enough fun for today. Just kill all these fuckers now, please!” shouted Helena, gesturing at the Fuath pacing around my fire.

“He cannot. They are shielded,” Orion yelled back over the crackle of my flames.

“What the fuck do you mean that they are shielded?” Helena demanded, and I saw her spin toward him out of the corner of my eye. Turning her back on the enemy just the way she always told menotto ever do, so I guessed she must trust my magic pretty deeply.

“It is like my power bounces off a wall of air magic in their minds,” Riordan admitted.

“You are sure it is air magic?” she asked.

“Without a doubt,” Riordan answered with certainty. “This is the work of another Imítheos. Apowerfulone.”

“Who else knows we are here?” Orion asked.

Rhea, I told Riordan, my stomach sinking in guilt that I had not told him about my conversation with her before the coronation, but I felt him reject this possibility.

My sister would not do this.

“I will show you more later, but I had a very strange conversation with her before the coronation,” I insisted to him aloud. It was mentally taxing to concentrate both on speaking to him mind to mind and keeping control of my magic that was holding off the Fuath. But I did manage to send him several snippets of that conversation that had stuck out to me as particularly strange.

There was silence as he absorbed the information.

“Nikos then. She told him,” suggested Orion after my mate evidently shared what I had said with him as well.

“Who are we talking about?” called Helena before she snagged a spear thrown over my wall of fire and flipped it over to launch it right back at the enemy.

“Amira’s magic clearly still works against them which means that someone is specifically targeting Riordan…”

Orion trailed off so dramatically that I risked a glance of concern at him.

“Orion?” I called his name when I saw the tip of his sword lower slightly and was briefly terrified that he had been struck by an arrow or something.

“This is a test,” he seemed to realize suddenly aloud before he met Riordan’s eyes in horror. “This is a test to see if whatever spell they are crafting is working on you. At the coronation… They were not really targeting Amira, they only wanted you to use your magic so they could absorb some of it for this spell.”

Understanding swept through my mate as he realized this as well, and then his sheer determination swelled.

“Cover me,” Riordan ordered before he stepped back into our midst with his head lowered.

I had never seen him need to focus on his magic the way most witches needed to channel. But I saw the air magic actually shimmering around him as if there was an invisible force vibrating off him. I could feel it impacting me in my very bones, teeth clattering and ears ringing. Bolts of electricity leapt between his fingers with hissing snaps, and the air swelled, heating and growing thin.

I tried to focus on my own magic and our enemies to protect him while he tried to break through whatever shields had been set against him.

At first I thought he was shaking the ground under our feet as well, but then I heard a crash behind us.

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