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.“You are now Anaweir.Your link to the Dragonheart is broken.Live on in the knowledge of what you’ve lost.”Jess had nearly made it to the shelter of the alley before the Lady called her name.“Jessamine Longbranch!”Jess turned to run, but something slammed her to the asphalt.“Leave me alone! I’ve done nothing wrong.” She tried to scramble away on her hands and knees, but the Lady’s voice froze her.“Come.”The link between them drew her forward.Unable to resist, Jess turned and stumbled back across the plaza to where the Lady stood.“You are a murderer, a slavemaster, a ruiner of lives,” the Lady said.“Jason and—and Maddie are dead, and Ellen’s hurt, and believe me, I’ve about had it up to here.” The Lady paused, as if to collect herself.“You have desecrated the gift of power.And so I take it back.”The Lady reached deep inside Jessamine, gripped her Weirstone, and pulled it free, as one might remove a pit from a cherry.It felt to her as if she’d been disemboweled, though her skin was unbroken.Jess rolled onto her back, screaming in agony.“You are Anaweir,” the Lady said.Jess looked up at a world that had been drained of all color.She wrapped her arms around herself, breathing in great, heaving gasps as if she could somehow fill the void inside.She was a magical eunuch, exquisitely aware of what she had lost.Jess felt the touch of the monster’s mind, and another wave of terror rushed over her.Over her rage and pain, Jessamine heard the Lady say, “Now the rest of you had all better go on home and change your ways and preach to your friends and pray I don’t call your name.”Wizards stampeded out of the churchyard.They didn’t stop to help their fallen comrades.Madison was just so full up with anxiety that she was afraid if she opened her mouth, the worry would spill out and make all the possibilities real.So she kept her mouth clamped shut and looked out the window, the familiar landscape blurring with speed and unshed tears.Seph was just about as quiet.Now and then he asked a question about the road they were on, or how much farther it was to Booker Mountain.She could feel the tension in him, could see in the set of his jaw and the way his hands gripped the wheel that he felt entirely responsible for what she’d become and what she stood to lose.Everything had changed.She’d lost the raw craving in her belly that she hadn’t recognized until it eased.Seemed like an elicitor is just an empty vessel, always hungry for power.Raggedy mad, she’d called it.She couldn’t help wondering if it was Seph’s gift that had attracted her to him in the first place.She and Seph were still circling each other, wary as stranger dogs.She felt a connection with him that hadn’t existed before.His power was linked, entwined with hers.No one who hadn’t experienced the flow of power from within could understand its intoxication.But she was like a child with a powerful weapon, the safety off: all crammed up with power and no idea how to use it, which Seph immediately pointed out.“Try to settle,” he said, resting his hand on her knee, forcing a smile.“You’re sparking.We’ll have to walk the rest of the way, if you short out the electrical system.”“You should talk.”“I’m just saying.”“Then teach me.” She couldn’t help herself.Madison was desperate for knowledge in a way she’d never been about anything except painting.Seph removed his hand from her knee.“I told you.I will.But you can’t learn it overnight.I was a disaster before I was taught.You’re a lot more powerful than me, so more can go wrong.”Seeing his pale, haggard face, she felt a rush of guilt.“You should be going after your parents.”“I will.When this is done.” He paused, groping for the right words.“At least they’re grown-ups.They can defend themselves.”Truth be told, she was glad he’d insisted on coming.She would have welcomed an army at her back.Anything to bring the kids home safe.If she was really any kind of dragon, she would soar over the blunted hills of home and swoop down on Warren Barber, lift him high in the air, then drop him off the nearest cliff after she’d wrung from him the whereabouts of Grace and J.R.But she couldn’t control that metamorphosis, any more than she could control anything else.Her dragon self was like someone else’s memory that surfaced unsummoned and unannounced.And then she saw it, the yellow ribbon fluttering from the branches of a twisted pine.“Here! Turn here!”Seph made a hard right, skidding a bit, fighting to keep the car on the pavement.“You have to give me a little notice.”“This is Booker Mountain Road,” Madison said, wondering if Barber meant to meet her on her home ground.“Where could he be keeping them? There’s just my place.And the Ropers’.” She would not—could not—entertain the idea that they were already dead.“What did he say when you called him?”“He said to follow the yellow ribbons.He’d make contact.”It was nearly dark.The light from the dashboard illuminated Seph’s features and glittered off the amulets he wore around his neck.The air from the open window tumbled his hair into thick slices of dark that sluiced against his pale skin.Time was she had thought she’d die of embarrassment if Seph saw where she came from—the Booker house, all shabby grand and fading; her mother, Carlene, much the same.Her brother and sister living like young savages on the mountain—resistant to their big sister’s notion of civilization.Now she wanted to breathe them in like the scent of wildflowers rising off a sunny field.Seph felt the intensity of her gaze and glanced at her questioningly, then looked back at the road—which was no longer there, just open space where the bridge used to be.Seph stomped on the brake and twisted the wheel.The car careened sideways, rolling once before it landed heavily on its wheels in Booker Creek.For an instant, Madison was fighting with the side airbag, and then it was gone, and her right arm that she’d flung out in front to keep from going into the dashboard was gashed deep and dripping blood.She looked over at Seph, who lay unconscious, draped across the steering wheel, a purple swelling rising over his right eye.She pressed her fingers against the side of his neck [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]