Page 119 of A Storm of Fire and Ash
Four shots. Four kills.
Everything was like it was happening in slow motion as I let my Fae instincts carry me through the air. The arrows streaked down, each one slamming into an executioner’s chest. Fire bloomed instantly, devouring them before their bodies even hit the ground. Before I even landed on the ground.
I landed hard, the stone cracking under my boots. The air rippled with the force of my magic, the heat curled from me in shimmering waves.
“ELARA!” Fintan’s voice cut through the chaos as he sprinted toward me, his blade already red with someone’s blood.
Across the square, Zayn lifted his head. That wicked smile—the one that promised trouble and delivered mayhem—spread slow and sure across his face.
And in that moment, I knew the king and queen’s world was about to burn.
“Catch her! Kill her!” the queen’s shrill voice split the air, but I was already raising my hand.
Mage Hand shimmered into being beside me, it’s dark but translucent fingers aglow with searing light. Screams and whispers flooded the courtyard—low, eerie, curling through the air like smoke. Faces turned pale and wide-eyed, and I drank in the horror that twisted Faylinn’s features.
Her voice cracked as she screamed, “How?! That is forbidden magic! Arrest her! Kill her!”
Mage Hand shot forward, an arc of shimmering power slicing through the air until its fingers closed, almost lovingly, around the queen’s throat. The crowd gasped.
“The queen is not as she seems—and neither is the king!” I shouted, my words sliced through the air. “They plan to rule all kingdoms, to slaughter innocents until nothing remains but their power. We—” I pressed my hand to my chest, “are the same as you! The queen has lied to you all. She is a Mage practicing dark magic, and she has been controlling your king from the shadows.”
Fintan gasped at my side. “What? What are you saying, Elara?”
I didn’t take my eyes off Faylinn. “She’s lied to you all! She plotted for me to bear children with the prince,offspring that would be both Fae and Mage that she would turn into weapons! She tried to control me. But she failed.”
The queen’s lips curled into a sneer as she choked out her words. “Y-you think they’ll be-believe a filthy—”
I met her gaze, my voice steady and cold as I cut her off and repeated her own words back at her. “Magic calls to magic.”
With a single, deliberate twist, Mage Hand snapped her neck. The sound echoed, sharp as breaking bone in frost. Faylinn’s body crumpled, her crown tumbling uselessly to the stone.
People screamed.
People ran.
Fintan gasped.
But I smiled.
A choked cry tore from Fintan, and he collapsed to his knees. Not from his mother’s death, but something I knew entirely too well. His eyes widened as magic poured into him, flooding his veins now that the queen’s leash was gone. I was at his side in an instant, steadying him as his body trembled with raw, unbound power.
Mage Hand spun away from the queen’s lifeless body, flying toward the execution blocks. One by one, the iron-silver cuffs clamped around Zayn, Makar, Eryn, and Gavrin’s necks snapped open and clattered to the ground.
“Makar! Help Fintan!” I shouted.
The courtyard erupted in chaos.
“Bring me my son’s head!” King Aymon roared, his voice thundering above the screams.
Guards swarmed, weapons drawn. I shifted, my magic burning hot, throwing up walls of air and bursts of flame to shield Fintan. Blades clanged against my barriers, arrows splintered midair. Nothing would touch him.
“I’m coming, Peach!”Zayn’s voice soothed me.
I turned, planting my feet, and slammed my palms into the ground. The earth groaned and obeyed—stone tendrils erupted from the flagstones, coiling around the king’s arms and legs. He roared, struggling as the bindings tightened, holding him fast.
I rose, tall and unshaken, my voice carrying across the square.
“If you stand with Aymon, you will die a coward’s death and live in a world choked by hatred and prejudice!” My words cut through the chaos, and heads turned toward me. “But if you stand with the new King—King Fintan, first of his name—you will live in a realm of unity, of strength, of magic unchained!”
