Page 82 of Enchantment of Silver and Sea
“Brielle,” I began. “I don’t have time to explain what’s going on. But I need you to trust me. And I need you not to tell anyone. At least not yet, not until I’ve had time to finish…whatit is that I’m doing. This is hard to explain, but I need you to remember who I am and trust that there’s a good reason behind what I’m doing.”
Earlier I had felt my words reflecting Nya’s. Now they were reflecting Kieran’s yesterday with The Council.
“Please trust me,” I begged again. My voice faltered on the last word.
Brielle didn’t say that she would. But she also didn’t say that she wouldn’t. She didn’t scream or yell or take off running. And that was something.
I refused to look back again as I sprinted for the stairs.
Leaving Brielle as frozen to where she stood asBergam, tears streaming down her face.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I rushed down the stairs as fast I physically could, practically leaping from landing to landing. Meanwhile, Larimar’s magic felt like it was sizzling beneath my skin. I hoped that just meant it was waiting, ready to be put to use, and not that it was doing some kind of irreparable damage to my body. Larimar had forewarned me that it was a possibility, especially considering that I had had exactly zero training with this.
There were no Enforcers posted in the stairwell, and when I burst through the door to the first floor and startled only two of them, standing by themselves in the long hallway, I realized that most everyone must have been called to handle the situation—the “battle,” as Larimar had referred to it—with the Strangers. The door the two men were guarding obviously led to the storage room, because it was almost directly across the hall from the room we were in yesterday, as Bergam had said.
I held out both hands this time, focusing on releasing energy from both. Moisture began to build on my palms as if they weresweating. Then water began pouring steadily from them, creating two puddles on the carpet.
“What in the actual fuck are you doing?” one of the Enforcers asked, starting to walk in my direction.
I wanted to tell him his guess was as good as mine. What the hell was I doing wrong?
Then just as with Bergam, I felt something like click. Like Larimar’s magic and my intentions had finally found one another. A cacophony of creaking and snapping filled the hall. Thick tendrils of ice climbed the two Enforcers.
Unlike with Bergam, genuine shock, horror, and fury paraded across their faces.
“You fucking bitch!” one of them snarled as I pulled another shirt out of my bag and stuffed it in his partner’s mouth. I shoved a third shirt—my last one—in his mouth as he was gearing up to hit me with another slur.
I looked down into my bag, already knowing what I would find there. What was left of the bread that I had devoured earlier. A reusable bottle of water. And no more clothing, shirt or otherwise. If I encountered more Enforcers, I was going to have to cover them in ice fully and hope that it melted before they ran out of air.
I pushed between the twoEnforcerstrapped in their icebergs and tried the handle to the storage room. Unsurprisingly, it was locked.
I took a deep breath and again summoned Larimar’s magic to my palms. Having used my right hand several times now to expel it, the burning sensation was becoming more intense. Likethe circulation had been cut off to my hand and forearm, but worse. My left hand wasn’t far behind. As I focused my breathing, my energy, my mind, my soul on the ice that was now forming over the handle and the lock within, a dull ache began to spread from the back of my neck to the front of my head.
“If you feel a headache setting in,” Larimar had said. “It means you are doing too much, too fast. You are still a human wielding another being’s magic. Your body still has limitations.”
I didn’t have time to care about limitations. I steeled myself.
There was a screechy, grinding, crunching sort of noise that seemed to be from metal bending in ways that it shouldn’t.
Gritting my teeth, I focused on what I wanted the ice to do next. I curled my fingers into a fist, willing that physical motion to guide the ice.
I could have cheered when it did.
Clouds of steam began to rise from the surface of the ice. And then the surface became damp. Melting.
The ice was still dissipating into liquid water when I shoved the door open.
And there he was.
“Kieran,” I breathed.
He was sitting against a wall, hands still bound behind his back. His legs were straight out in front of him, his ankles also bound. Tears of relief welled in my eyes as I observed that his chest was rising and falling. He was breathing.
Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. He was alive. Kieran was alive.
But the tears of relief turned to tears of horror when I saw that his injuries were endless. It seemed there was no part of his body that wasn’t covered in dried blood and the beginnings of bruises.
