The wind responds, surging around me. I’m wary of lightning now, but the air is just as eager to obey my call, to bend to the tiny voice inside me that wants to see her dead.

End it now. You’re more powerful than her.

My hair and dress wave wildly in the storm-force winds that gather around me like a shield, so much building force I don’t know what to do with it. Aris’s eyes are wide, and I watch her release Raze with satisfaction, fingers grasping at her throat.

The wind had to come from somewhere. I’ve pulled it straight from her lungs.

Her green eyes get round and shiny, and I see all the pain and fear I felt reflected in them. I want her to feel it. I want her to know what it’s like to be helpless. I call more and more wind, enough to make her hollow ribs ache.

“Seelie,” Isolde’s shaky voice breaks through the storm around me, the storm in my head, and all of a sudden, I realize what I’m doing.

What am I doing?

Panic mixes with the dregs of my rage, and I push the winds with all my might. All the air rushing around me knocks Aris square in the chest, and it feels like a release of all the built-up pressure. Her breathing relaxes, even as she goes tumbling off the edge, voice too ragged to scream.

Raze, looking like he might throw up again, meets my eyes, and this time, the fear is much less satisfying. “Run!” he shouts, forcing himself to his feet and sprinting back the way we’d just come.

We don’t think. We don’t pause. We don’t double-check that she’s really gone. We just run, as fast as our legs will take us.

chapter sixteen

The inn is starting to wake (possibly due to the sounds of battle outside), and the stunned faces of a few early risers blur as we stampede past. Raze is already stumbling and looks like he might be sick again, and Olani has to support his weight, dragging him along beside her.

“Horses?” Isolde pants. A slow drip of blood trails down the side of her face from her reopened wound.

“No time!” Olani says, slumping Raze forward. Raze. The shapeshifter.

Isolde looks at him, considering. On Revelnox, Leira Wildfall morphed into a huge, beautiful mare. If Raze could do the same, even for a short time, he might be able to get us a head start. “Can’t he—?”

“Not really,” Olani interrupts. “Hurry!”

That settles it. Our only hope is to dodge and hide and hope they lose our trail on foot.

We skid into the sleepy town. The smells of breakfast, farm animals, woodsmoke, fresh hay, and coffee pool around us. Chickens flee, squawking indignantly as they narrowly avoid getting stepped on.

I twist abruptly to avoid knocking over a mother carrying a wailing toddler to the center of town and instead crash into a man with a cart selling coffee.