“I wouldn’t waste his life like that.” Emmi looms over us and reaches for the dagger.

A moment later, she’s blasted backward by a surge of power that gives me an instant rash of tingles.

“Holy crap, it’s your mom,” Morgan says.

I peer up through the curtain of tears currently blinding me to see Mom stride into the clearing, a billowing mass of crows flocking around her. They wheel and dart at Emmi.

“Emmi, how could you?” The expression on my mom’s face is equal parts rage and astonishment. “You betrayed us. You betrayed everything we stand for, everything that’s sacred!”

“You don’t understand. You’ve always been so shortsighted,” Emmi snaps while defending herself from the crows.

Several of the birds explode in a shower of black feathers, but more keep coming. Mom continues the barrage of magic against Emmi. The chaos mage is powerful, but she’s tired and injured, while my mom is fresh to the fight.

“You have desecrated this sacred place. You have broken our covenant with the forces of nature. You are no tietäjä!” Mom says, every word sharper than Emmi’s dagger.

“This is your doing,” Emmi spits. “You and your council members took everything from us. You took everything from nature. Did you feel the stones? Can you feel the energy here? We’re draining the worlds. It’s only a matter of time before natural magic is gone for good, and then what?”

“So, you resort to this?” Mom says. “We could’ve talked about—”

“We tried!” Emmi yells. “We’ve been trying for years. For centuries, but you’re as ignorant as your ancestors.”

We. The word sets a dozen alarm bells ringing in my head as I can’t help wondering how many more chaos mages there might be, who they are, and if any more lurk at our school.

“Mervi did what she had to to maintain order,” Mom says.

“Is that the story they tell you?” Emmi presses a hand to the bloody slashes cut by the bear across her belly. “Mervi was a tyrant. The order you speak of is just an excuse to bleed this world dry of magic.”

I don’t get it. Nothing she’s saying matches with anything I’ve read. Mervi the Magnificent was a hero, who won the war against the evil of chaos. Of that, I’m sure.

Aoife staggering toward us with Hannah in her arms distracts me from Mom and Emmi’s continued argument.

“She’s breathing, barely, but she’s still with us,” Aoife says.

Morgan wraps his arms around his sisters as Sorin limps across the clearing, shaggy and blood-flecked, peering into the shadows of the surrounding forest as if expecting another attack. He glances at my mom, but warily keeps his distance.