“It is true, you just haven’t had to live with it.” I shake my head. “The least you can do is tell me how to make my mother’s death count. How to use the power to keep myself alive!”

‘You are the one who decides now how to keep our Line alive, Briana Matthews.’ Vera narrows her eyes. ‘I have done my part.’

She pivots on her heel, and disappears in a flash of light. The circle is cast in darkness. Its edges only lit by the small candles that sit in metal trays on the outer lawn.

I collapse onto my knees, rubbing my palms into the earth. “Come back,” I demand. “Come back here!”

“Bree, stop this,” Lu calls. She stands at the edge of the communion boundary. “I can’t enter the circle right now. I need you to come out.”

My chest heaves, taking in great, furious gulps of air. My lungs and chest rise and fall like bellows, feeding the fire still lit in my chest from this calling. “No.” I dig my fingers in like claws. “Come. Back!”

Fwoom!

A column of flames explodes upward from the circle around me. I scream into it, roar alongside it. “I’m not done with you, Vera!”

The swirling pillar of my root and fury gets hotter, brighter, and blasts upward in a powerful rush—burning a round hole through the protective golden dome of Volition.

49

SHAME DRIVES ME to my feet.

Fear douses the great column of flames.

Terror sets me running.

Tears blur the way, but I know the direction. I feel the buzz of the barrier—and then I’m on the other side, crashing through the forest that surrounds Volition, red flames streaking from my fist and mouth.

“Stop!”

I keep running—until I trip on a log, and tumble to the other side, knees knocking painfully against hard earth.

“Bree, stop!”

I grunt, scrambling to press back against the wood and pull my knees tight. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. I drop my head back against the log harder than I intend to, but the pain feels good. It zips, electric, across my skull. I deserve it, for what I’ve done. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry….”

Sel leaps over the log, twisting to land in front of me in a crouch. “Are you all right?”

My root flickers around my palm, illuminating the woods, painting stripes of light against his dark clothes.

“The barrier… I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay, Bree,” Sel assures. “They’re getting it back up. The ancestors are filling it in.”

“But that much root.” I drop my head into my burning palms. “Any demon looking could have seen that, they’ll find Volition.”

He inches forward. “They’re calling Valechaz. Asking him to tap his network, see if anyone noticed. It was quick, Bree.”