Page 79 of Elemental Fae Academy: Book Three

A sharp pain to my abdomen had me dropping the mug, which tumbled to the floor after splashing hot liquid all over me and the couch. But I felt none of it, the pang inside me too great to feel or hear anything else.

Sol! I cried out, our link quaking uncontrollably as his agony flooded my soul.

I leapt up, threw the blanket and book—which, thankfully, caught the majority of the spill—and took off for the Earth Quad with Cyrus, Titus, and Exos sprinting along behind me.

They were saying things.

Telling me to slow down.

But I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.

My mate was in trouble and needed my help, his anguish unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

Classes had restarted today, and I’d spent my time in fire class with Titus. Sol had gone to his usual courses, but the Earth Quad was huge. He could be anywhere, except for maybe the dorms.

Where? I demanded, calling upon my spirit to follow the thread to his soul. There.

He knelt in the middle of an orchard with an unconscious woman in his arms, his tears streaking down his face.

Aflora, I realized as I took in the dark hair and petite form. “What’s wrong? What happened?” I landed on my knees beside him, my hands running over his bulging biceps. “Talk to me.”

“She’s…” He broke off on a growl laced with such agony that my heart fractured in two.

I saw it then, the blue lines traversing her skin, flooding her veins with a plague her small body couldn’t fight. It blanketed her skin in a sheet of white laced with sweat.

“Claire,” Titus whispered, the strain in his voice drawing my attention to him and then to the field around us.

“Oh God…” Aflora

wasn’t the only one.

There were at least twenty, all lying in the grass as if on their deathbeds.

And the trees moaned with their loss, the branches drooping in sorrow before my eyes.

My hands ran over Sol, searching him for signs of the infection, but he remained as sturdy as ever, his soul flourishing beneath my touch. “How?” I demanded. “How are you unaffected?”

But he didn’t answer, his heart breaking before my eyes. “Don’t do this to me, Aflora. Don’t you dare die on me.” He sounded so anguished, so terrified. And I understood then that she was the only family he had left—his final root to the Earth Fae. It wasn’t a romantic connection but a familial one that mattered more to him than I realized before.

His mother had raised her as her own, a detail I picked up from our bond, something he’d never before mentioned. No wonder they had such a close relationship. She wasn’t just his sister’s best friend, but his sister as well.

Sol had already lost his parents and the sister Aflora once called her best friend.

“Don’t do this to me,” he repeated softly. “Please don’t do this to me.”

Tears pricked my eyes, the once beautiful female wilting in his arms like a dried-up leaf.

This can’t happen.

I glanced around the field, noting all the others in similar positions.

Exos and Cyrus were with a few of them, offering words of encouragement that did nothing to stir life into them.

This plague—or whatever the cause—had reached the Academy, and it was taking them all.

“No,” I breathed. “No.” I wouldn’t accept this.

My mother was involved with this once, or so the rumors said. And I had a way to contact her. She would give me answers.

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