Page 105 of The Tree of Spirits
“Are you sure?” Victoria asked as I swayed to the side. “You don’t look so great.”
“I’m sure,” I said and teleported away.
This time when I reached my destination, Ididfall over. I curled up on the soggy ground, clutching my head. I felt like a ball of aluminum foil being slowly crushed by a very large fist.
“Winters? Are you all right?” Asher’s voice echoed from somewhere beyond my curtain of dizziness.
“Don’t worry about me.” I planted my hands on the ground and pushed, forcing myself to stand. “Let’s get the two of you to safety.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Kylie said, catching me as I stumbled. She and Asher helped me over to the nearest picnic bench. “At least not until you can stand without falling over.”
“But you need my help. I have to save you! I can’t let you down again.” I planted my elbow on the picnic table and used my hand to prop up my heavy head.
“It’s not your fault the Templars took us,” Kylie said, sitting down next to me. “We told you to leave us.”
“Besides, Winters, I am definitely not letting you teleport me as long as you look like you’re going to puke all over me.” Asher hit me with a crooked smirk.
He was right. I couldn’t teleport like this. I’d probably just mess up and get us all killed. The boys had warned me about pushing my magic too far. I should have listened.
“What’s happening with the Templars?” I asked, trying to focus on the battle at the other end of the picnic area. But all I saw were big, bright blurs. Having no magical endurance was so annoying.
“What’s happening is your boyfriends are still fighting them,” Kylie tried to tease me, but she sounded way too tired.
“They’ve moved on from swords to magic,” Asher added.
I managed to focus well enough to find Kato. He sang a deep note that made the earth split open under one of the Templars. The fiend fell into the pit, then the ground sealed shut over him.
Conner wasn’t far from Kato. He stood over one of the Templars, who was flapping on the ground like a fish out of water. Conner must have enchanted the Templar to think he was in pain; he’d used that same spell on the Cursed Ones the first time I’d met him.
The boys drew together to face down the third Templar.
“You need to get away, while the Templars are distracted,” I told Kylie and Asher. “I can’t teleport you right now, but can you run?”
“We’ll do the best we can,” Asher said.
“But what about you?” Kylie asked me.
“I can’t leave the Knights. I have to stay and help them fight.”
Asher’s brows swept his hairline. “No offense, Winters, but you don’t look like you can stand right now, let alone fight.”
I peeled open the extra energy bar Kato had given me hours ago. “I just need to recharge. And you guys need torun. Go to the district gates. That’s where I brought the others.”
Kylie gave my hand one final squeeze, then she and Asher took off hobble-running down the path.
They didn’t make it far.
The ground burst open, and the Templar jumped out of the pit that had been holding him. He summoned wild vines down from the trees. They slithered across the ground, snapping around the Apprentices’ ankles, dragging them toward the Spirit Tree.
The Templar that Conner had incapacitated, the one with the smoky voice, was on his feet again too. He hit the boys with a wave of vertigo. They fell to their knees, their movements jagged with dizziness.
The third Templar grabbed the Knights. First, she slammed Conner into a picnic table, so hard that the wood split down the middle. Then she heaved Kato over her head and hurled him at the barbecue pit. Kato’s hard armor bounced off the roof over the pit, and he slid down one side of the angled metal shingles.
I pushed off the bench where I was sitting, staggering to my feet. Thankfully, I’d already regained some of my strength, so I didn’t topple over. I started humming as I ran. Branches rose from the ground, weaving themselves together to form a shield—with me and the Knights and the Apprentices on one side, and the three Templars on the other.
“Everyone still in one piece?” I asked them.
Behind us, Kylie and Asher were tied up in a bunch of vines close to the Spirit Tree, but I couldn’t do anything about that right now. I was barely holding my shield together.
