Page 98 of MidKnight
When Donaloo recovered from his fit of laughter over his own hilarity, he volunteered Fuzzy to fly us back. He and Quinn rode the bear through the forest until they caught up with me and Blue.
I begrudgingly accepted their ride since the castle was probably a two-day walk away. I climbed onto the bear’s wide back. I ended up sandwiched between Donaloo, who navigated, and Quinn who rode behind me and kept me from tumbling backward by hooking his feet over the front of Fuzzy’s wing bones. Blue flew beside us.
We were starting our descent to the castle when—Boom!A fireball the size of a wagon erupted from the formal wing of the palace. The wing where I would have been at dinner. Smoke billowed upward. And I heard a series of shrieks begin.
“What the sard?” My heart thundered.
My brain reeled. Those rebels were still planning. They weren’t supposed to attack! They were after Sedara! Why—
A secondboom. Closer to the main hall. Another fireball launched into the sky.
My mind shut down.
Shock.
Just utter shock overcame me for a moment.
And then fear slithered in.
Holy sarding hell. My home. My husbands! My people.
A sheen of tears coated my eyes automatically and I tried to blink them back.
I had to force my brain to turn back on. It wanted to curl into a ball as I had when I was a child during the Fire Wars.
No, I reproached myself. Think.
I grabbed at Donaloo’s shirt. “Can you help? Please?”
I heard Quinn start to mind-yell to groups, unconsciously including me on some of them. Words like—evacuate, Declan, water—
Donaloo raised a hand in front of me and the mage’s tower began to glow. The flowers on the vines lit up as if they were candles encased in colored glass.
Purple fairies rose in the night sky and unsheathed their bright yellow swords. Then they plunged, screaming, down into the courtyard. To fight what, I couldn’t tell.
Orange trumpet flowers shot off the mage’s tower and opened, floating in midair until they reached the flames from the explosion. Then they swallowed. They expanded after they ate the flames and then looked like bloated orange lanterns as they drifted through the air, belching smoke.
My heart was tight as a drum.Quinn, where are the others?I asked quietly. I feared his answer.
Quinn shook his head. I looked back at him. His eyes were scanning frantically back and forth as if he were reading quickly. I don’t think he saw the scene below at all. I felt certain a hundred people’s thoughts filled him at once. A million different micro-expressions crossed his face. Everyone who had a bead was probably yelling at him all at once. Only one sentence came from him.We have a leak. Someone’s turned.
I turned to Donaloo. “Do you know where my knights are? Can you help them? Can you protect them? Please?”
I looked below, where all the inhabitants of the castle scurried around, as chaotic as the bugs underneath a lifted rock.
All I could think of were Declan, Ryan, and Connor. Their faces flashed on repeat in my mind: Declan’s blond hair and piercing blue eyes, Ryan’s gorgeous curled lashes and the way he towered over me, Connor’s sweetly mussed curls. My heart pumped so fast that my body grew hot. I was sweltering inside even though the cold made my breath fog.
Nothing can happen to them, I thought. Nothing.
There was an endless moment as Donaloo surveyed the chaos below. He spotted Cerena running across the moat and pointed. “There!” He pushed Fuzzy into a dive. We landed on the bank of the far side of the moat, outside the castle walls.
We dismounted. Fuzzy didn’t like the chaos and so with a roar, he took off into the night sky, disappearing.
Blue settled on the ground near my feet, hiding between my legs so he wouldn’t get trampled. Donaloo strode immediately toward Cerena, who limped toward him.
I looked at Quinn. His face was still a somber mask and he did not make eye contact with me. That only made my hands begin to shake.
Sard. Sard. Sard. What could I do? Peace magic couldn’t fight fire. This wasn’t a beast. These were explosives.
