“I’ll explain later.”
Though I wasn’t entirely sure there was any way to explain the sudden certainty I needed to be barefoot. But it wasn’t the first time I’d buried my toes into the earth to draw on her power—I’d done the same thing up in Kalimna Park when I’d summoned a will-ó-the-wisp to light the way the night I’d unsuccessfully tried to save a teenager from a vampire.
And perhaps the reason the wisp had answered me—and had, in fact, interacted with me several times since, even though they had a well-deserved reputation for mischief—was due not so much to a decision to be helpful, but rather the connection we both shared to the energy of the earth. Perhaps it had sensed what I hadn’t then begun to suspect.
I shoved my socks into my boots, then tied the laces together and rose. The minute my toes dug into the ground, the pooling magic slipped deep into the earth. A heartbeat later—with my body acting as a conduit—a connection formed between the strip of material gripped in my right hand and the energy of the earth. It was a connection that would lead me directly to death.
I could feel it. “See” it. In my mind, if not yet in reality.
“Liz.” Aiden’s voice held an edge of uncertainty and concern. “What are you doing?”
“Finding.” My reply was soft. Distracted.
I handed him my shoes and walked away, concentrating on what I was seeing in my mind rather than where each step was going. I had no real awareness of my surroundings, and yet I didn’t trip. I didn’t stumble. My feet moved unerringly over the rough ground as I led the rangers deeper and deeper into the forest.
Eventually, we reached the top of a deep ravine. I paused and stared at the shadows haunting the steep, heavily treed slope. Death waited for us below. I couldn’t see the full extent of that death, but I could certainly feel its weight on the earth. Could taste the bitterness of the blood that had leached into the soil.
I swallowed heavily, then blinked as the ravine and the trees began to fade in and out of existence. The pulsing connection between the earth and me briefly faltered, and I became aware of the unnatural racing of my heart and of the fierce pounding in my head. Moisture trickled over my eyelashes and dribbled down my cheeks. Not tears. Blood. I had to break the connection. Now. Before it was too late.
Before the sheer force of it tore me apart.
“He’s in the ravine.” The words were little more than a ragged croak. My throat was raw and scratchy, and speaking hurt. “Directly below this point. I have to rest.”
I dropped heavily onto a nearby rock, ignored the pain that slithered up my spine, and drew my knees up to my chest. The connection to the earth snapped as my feet left the ground, and the force of it rebounded so hard, my whole body shook. A tide of weakness threatened to wash me away, and it was all I could do to remain upright. To not collapse into unconsciousness and escape the tear-inducing pain pounding through every part of me.
“Tala, Mac, go,” Aiden said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
As the two of them moved off, he squatted in front of me and gently touched my bruised and icy feet. His hands were so warm they felt like a furnace, but maybe that was because I was suddenly so cold.
His gaze searched my face—a heat I could feel rather than see. “What the hell just happened, Liz? Your eyes are bleeding again, and you were glowing.”
“I was using the wild magic to find your friend.”
“It was more than that,” he growled. “I’m well aware of the toll using the wild magic takes on you, but this was something else. It was almost as if you were fading in front of our eyes.”
Because I probably was. I swallowed again. It didn’t help my throat. “There’s always a price to pay when it comes to using magic, Aiden. Wild magic is no different.”
“Yes, but this—” He stopped, and sucked in a breath. “This frightened the hell out of me.”
Me too. At least it did now that I had a chance to actually think about it. I finally opened my eyes and met his gaze. “I was using the earth’s energy as a sort of magical GPS, and that shouldn’t be possible. Doing the impossible does tend to take a little more effort.”
I said the last part lightly, but he didn’t look at all amused.
“I’ll be fine, Aiden,” I added. “Go do your job. I’ll wait here until you can spare someone to take me home.”
His gaze searched mine for several seconds, then he rose, stripped off his coat, and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“You forget I’m a werewolf and can smell your utter exhaustion. I’ve also got a very high detection rate when it comes to bullshit.”
A smile tugged at my lips. “Maybe one of these days I’ll learn to lie better.”
“Or maybe just learn to stop lying.” He kissed the top of my head. “Put your shoes and socks back on and warm your damn feet up. I won’t be long.”
“But the investigation—”
“If it is Patrick down there—and I don’t for an instant doubt your certainty—then someone will have to inform his parents. I’ve known them all my life—it wouldn’t be right to give someone else the task.”
I shifted a hand and briefly gripped his. His sorrow and grief were now well under control, but tears nevertheless stung my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Aiden.”
“So am I.” He grimaced. “It’s the one part of this job that I absolutely hate. Back soon.”
He turned and disappeared into the ravine’s darkness. I tugged his coat closer, letting its length fold over my toes rather than going to the effort of pulling on either my socks or boots. I just didn’t have the strength right now. Instead, I concentrated on my breathing, drawing in the musky, smoky scent that clung to the coat’s inner lining and finding an odd sort of comfort in it. In very many ways, he was my rock, as important to me as Belle.
Belle would not only always be in my life, she was in fact as vital as life to me.
Neither could be truly said about Aiden.
It took a while for the world to stop spinning and my heart rate to calm. The eye-watering ache in my head wasn’t showing any sign of abating, but that was no real surprise given I’d pushed to the utter limits of my strength, both physical and magical.
Had I pushed beyond them, what would have happened?
Could it have actually torn me apart?
That had certainly been Gabe’s fate, but we’d always presumed it was a combination of the spell he’d been using and the forces he’d unleashed in the process. But what if the spell hadn’t been the problem? What if it had been the wild magic itself? Had it formed a connection to the earth’s energy via the spell in much the same manner as my inner wild magic?
Gabe had warned that if I kept using the wild magic in extreme ways—such as when I’d propped up Émigré’s collapsing ceiling and walls to save Aiden and the others trapped in the basement—it would, each time, take me longer to recover. What he hadn’t mentioned was whether it could do to me what it had done to him. But maybe he figured he didn’t need to, given my own nebulous certainty at the time that the connection made me more even as it made me less.
Which did tie in somewhat to Aiden’s comment. Perhaps it wasn’t so much an all-consuming explosion of flesh I had to worry about, but rather using so much energy that it consumed every part of me, gradually dissolving flesh until I became nothing more than a spirit.