through her, unbearably heavy, eager to drag her down out of the sky. Glenn fought them as hard as she could, wrestling against their exhausting weight. Still, she fell. The sounds of the soldiers and explosions were louder now. The smell of smoke and blood was nauseating. Glenn was above the treetops and sinking fast when she felt the power in the lights slip. She landed hard in a small forest clearing. There was movement in the trees around her. A swarm of soldiers emerged and surrounded her. Their malice and the thrill that rose in their chests, knowing they were so close to victory, washed over Glenn.
Glenn struggled to stay focused. She pushed again, and the
complex of power that coursed across the land began to give way. The walls of the prison were cracking. Glenn threw all of herself into it, and in one immense tear, it was ripped apart. There was a howl of pain and rage, and when Glenn opened her eyes, she and the soldiers were not the only ones standing amongst the trees.
The forest was alight with the Miel Pan, their glittering bodies cutting through the darkness like daggers. There were three to Glenn’s right: a man and two women. To her left were five more. The lightning flashed, shadowing the lean muscles of their nearly naked bodies.
Surrounding all of them were their animals, glowing wolves and birds of prey and strange and enormous things that Glenn had no names for.
One of the Miel Pan women, with skin the color of tree bark and shimmering green eyes, turned to Glenn.
“You’ve freed us, Glennora Amantine,” she said, revealing rows and rows of needlelike teeth. “What do you ask in return?”
One of the soldiers at the head of the company turned the shaft of the spear she carried in her hand, ready to throw. The soldier to her left drew an arrow into his bow and leveled it at the Miel Pan woman.
Glenn turned to the woman with the green eyes.
“Remove the invaders,” she said.
The woman’s barbed smile rose impossibly wide and then, with a scream, the Miel Pan launched themselves at the soldiers.
29
Battles raged everywhere Glenn looked as she flew over the borderlands. The Magisterium came alive as hordes of Miel Pan appeared from every rock, tree, and hillside and threw themselves, with years of bottled-up rage, into the fight. Glenn wished she could close herself off to it, the cries and violence and the sudden darkness that rolled over the land when the soldiers died, but there was no stopping it.
Every death, every injury, every prayer to be back home and away from this rose up and hung from her like a chain.
It was getting harder to stay in the air. The effort to break her mother’s spell and release the Miel Pan almost finished her. She had to end this as fast as possible. And she knew only one way to do it. Glenn reached out, searching, until she felt a familiar presence miles away on a strip of ruined earth. He was alone and out in the open.
Michael Sturges.
Lightning crackled around her, dancing over her fingertips. The hunger to release it was undeniable. She could destroy him with a thought and end all of this.
She found Michael Sturges on a flat expanse of mud, his blue suit soaked and heavy, his hair plastered to his skull.
Glenn touched down a few steps away from him.
“Glenn,” he said with a smile. “I honestly didn’t think you had it in you. I — ”
With a sweep of her hand, Glenn lifted Sturges into the air by his throat, squeezing hard enough to shut him up. She let him dangle there before her, his eyes wide. His face was creased with old burns.
“Tell your people to go,” she said.
“Wait,” he rasped, clawing at his throat. “Glenn. Listen to me. I want what you want. To have things back the way they were. We can work together. Put me down and we’ll talk. I know you don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
Glenn clenched her fist tighter and his words cut out in an instant.
She could end this now. Twist one way or another and his neck would snap like a twig. Sturges hung in the air, his face red and bloated, panic coming off him in steely waves.
The strength rushed out of Glenn. She slackened her grip on Michael’s throat and he gasped and tumbled to the ground.
“Just go,” Glenn stuttered, feeling as if she were speaking from the bottom of a dark hole. “Leave and don’t come back.”
“If I do, they’ll send another just like me,” Sturges said. “This won’t end until they have what they want, Glenn.”
“I can stop them.”
“And live like your mother did?” he said. “Alone. Spending
every thought on us. Eaten up by power. It’s happening already, isn’t it, Glenn? You can feel it happening. You’re slipping away.”
Sturges drew himself up and crossed the muddy ground toward her. Glenn tried to push him away and stop him from talking, but it was getting harder. Affinity was pounding at her from every direction. It wanted to devour her. The effort to control it brought Glenn to her knees.
“I think you just want to go home.”
The next thing she knew, Michael was standing in front of her, his hand resting on her shoulder with a kindly weight.
“Isn’t that right?”
Glenn nodded. She was so tired. Michael smiled, then nodded to someone behind her and walked away. Glenn turned and there, standing at the edge of a muddy crater, was the black-draped figure of Abbe Daniel.
“Hello, Glennora.”
A column of fire materialized at the end of Abbe’s fingertips.
Glenn grasped a reserve of strength and leapt up into the sky to avoid it.
She didn’t make it three feet before something grabbed her ankle and yanked her back down again. Glenn crashed through the mud and hit solid earth beneath it. The air shot out of Glenn’s lungs and she rolled over, coughing. She tried to get her hands under her chest, tried to get up, but before she could, what felt like an immense hand pushed her down farther, filling her mouth with muck.
In the next instant, she was in the air again. Abbe flipped her upside down and let her hang there, admiring her as if she was a prize catch.
“What are you doing?” Glenn asked, gasping for air. “The
Magisterium is your home.”
Abbe laughed. “I think you need a better sense of which way the tide is turning, Glenn.”
The blood was rushing to Glenn’s head. She tried to strike back, but Abbe laughed again and spun her around in the air so fast that Glenn couldn’t concentrate. She went limp. The earth turned faster below her, a brown and black swirl. Glenn reached down into it.
The ground beneath Glenn was vast and hard, miles of rock
stretching into darkness. Glenn prayed —
and let the earth flow up into her, stiffening her joints and weighing her down. She became more and more dense until her spinning slowly stopped and she felt herself lowering to the ground. Abbe strained against her, only now she was losing. Glenn touched down, iron, rock, and the molten heart of the earth coursing through her. The earth trembled as she moved toward Abbe. The girl in black called down a flash of lightning, but Glenn shrugged it
