“Aurora! This is a mistake!”
“Guards!” she shouted in a loud, angry voice. In the blink of an eye two guards pushed into the tent and stood on either side of me. Aurora sat back in her chair again and absently waved one hand in my direction. “Take her outside and kill her.”
“Aurora! You’re not just killing me! You’re killing our people!” I shouted as the two guards hooked their arms through mine and lifted me up off the ground. They proceeded to drag me out of the tent while I continued shouting at my sister. “You can’t save the earth if Cynnia kills you first! Call off this war now!”
The last thing I saw before I exited the tent was Aurora’s smiling face. Triumph filled her features. She was going to have me dead at long last. She had tolerated my existence for centuries, used me to do her dirty work, and now that I had reached the end of my usefulness, she was happily putting me down.
Thirty-one
As the two guards dragged me down the hill from Aurora’s enormous white tent, I pushed my feet against the slanted earth and flipped over the two naturi, pulling free of their grasp. I quickly backed away from them, remaining wary of the other naturi soldiers closing on me from other directions. I had to think of a way to safely get out of Aurora’s camp, but then I had always known that my chances of escape were extremely thin and highly unlikely.
Tapping into the energy flowing up from the earth, my enormous black wings sprung from my back while at the same time I summoned up a massive burst of wind. I curled my body into a tight ball while extending my wings to their fullest extent. The wind carried me higher into the trees while arrows soared toward me straight and true. Their tips buried deep in my arms and around my body, forcing a scream of pain to rise up in my throat, but I swallowed it back. I had bigger problems. My hands were still tied, and the trees I was attempting to fly through were beginning to reach for me. The earth clan was using its powers to control the trees so their brittle limbs clawed at my wings, plucking black feathers.
The wind gusted again and again, hammering at the trees as they struggled to reach for me while being pushed about by the wind. I was pulled back but found a thick branch with my feet. I shoved off and stretched my wings again, struggling to gain altitude. This was my only hope of escape. If I didn’t get away through the air, they would hunt me down too easily on the ground.
Beneath me the shouting of the naturi increased as I flew higher. Above the din, I could hear Greenwood’s deep voice directing his people to go after me. There was desperation in his tone as his voice rose to a shriek. And then silence fell over the camp. My stomach twisted with a new fear even though I managed to clear the last of the treetops. With the wind blowing fiercely, I flapped my wings once as I turned around in time to see Aurora standing outside her tent, staring up at me. I knew the look of rage that twisted her features, sweeping her beauty aside.
Keeping my wings tucked close to my body in case I got a second chance to use them, I ran as fast as I could through the woods. I darted between trees and leapt over fallen logs while sliding through piles of dead leaves left from the previous fall. My arms, tied behind my back, screamed in pain. On my heels I could hear the light footfalls of naturi closing in. I had put enough distance between Aurora and myself that she wouldn’t have another shot, but that didn’t mean I was safe. The rest of her army was hot on my trail. To make matters worse, I was stuck on the ground, while being chased by the earth clan. It was only a matter of time before they halted my progress. I had to get back to the clearing where I had initially landed so I could regain flight.
As I ran, more arrows thunked into tree trunks and whizzed by my head. Laughter followed my progress as they tracked me. My heart pounded in my chest and my lungs struggled to pull in enough air as I plunged through the woods. My legs were starting to ache, causing me to misstep here and there. I slid down a small grade, nearly losing my balance before pushing on like a rabbit being chased by a fox.
This couldn’t continue much longer. I needed to stop and free my hands. I needed to get back into the air. I had spent a lifetime in battle against those that would kill me, but the odds had never been so great in their favor. And in truth, I didn’t want to kill them. I had spilled enough blood of my people and I’d grown sick of it. They followed Aurora because she was the only queen they knew and they had always trusted in her judgment. They didn’t realize they had a choice.
With a grunt of exhaustion, I pushed forward while in the back of my mind focusing on the powers coming up from the earth. I turned the energy toward the skies above me. Dark clouds rolled in overhead, blotting out the sun. For a moment I could feel another force in the area pushing against the coming storm, leaving the sun to break through in sparkling patches. Aurora was fighting me. Gritting my teeth, I summoned up more energy and pushed harder against the spell she was attempting to weave to block my own. We pushed and pulled for several seconds before I could hear her scream in the back of my mind in either pain or frustration.
Clouds poured forth like a black wave, blotting out the sun so that night reclaimed the earth. The wind gusted, throwing my hair in front of my face, nearly blocking my vision as I dodged between one set of trees after another. Occasionally, limbs would reach for me, but I pushed on, moving just out of their grasp. My shirt ripped in several locations and the weight of my wings seemed to grow on my back. They needed to be stretched, lifting me into the sky instead of pulling me down.
As I leapt over another fallen log, the heel of my right foot landed in a sinkhole covered by leaves. I slammed to the ground hard, knocking the wind out of me and nearly breaking my nose as I was unable to catch myself with my arms. Twisting onto my side, I tried to get my feet under me again, but the ground was shifting beneath me from all the leaves.
“Stay down!” ordered a familiar voice. I jerked around so I was lying on my back, looking up at Rowe as he stood over me with swords drawn. The one-eyed naturi charged forward and in a few swift motions killed six of the naturi that had been chasing me. Sliding one sword into its sheath again, he spun around and walked back over to me. His face was a blank mask, but I could sense the rage boiling inside him. He pulled me up to my feet with one arm, then used the sword he was still holding to cut the rope that bound my wrists together. Then, wordlessly, he shoved me forward.
We never spoke as we ran through the woods. He simply handed me one of the swords and remained one step back to protect me from behind, while it was my job to take out anything that got in our way from the front. For several minutes we plunged through the dark woods, killing anything that crossed our path before we finally reached the clearing.
Standing in the center of the clearing, both Rowe and I threw out our wings while a group of naturi surrounded us on all sides. Plunging the tip of the sword I was carrying into the ground, I held my arms out to my sides, letting the power of the growing storm consume me. Lightning jumped from cloud to cloud, only to be followed by a hammer of thunder. When the naturi had closed in far enough and I could feel the earth beneath my feet starting to grow soft, I called down the storm. The clouds broke open in a tidal wave of rain while lightning pounded the earth in a brilliant blast of white light. My enemies were charred in an instant, leaving me standing alone in the rain with Rowe.
Calling up one last large gust of air, I threw out my wounded wings and caught the wind, allowing it to lift me high into the dark sky. Rowe was behind me, keeping a close watch to make sure we weren’t being followed. I wasn’t willing to take the chance of leading them back to Cynnia in the heart of Savannah while the nightwalkers were sleeping. Kane’s forces remained just outside the city, like Aurora’s, leaving Cynnia’s only immediate defense a handful of naturi and an exhausted witch.
We flew silently for nearly twenty minutes before I decided to land in pasture below that appeared halfway between Aurora’s camp and the camp of the animal clan. I didn’t need to deal with Kane and his people looking as I
