I lost track of time as I worked. At some point, Xander crouched beside me and his large hand landed on my back. He rubbed gentle circles as I worked. We didn’t need to exchange words for me to know he would be there for me. The two of us were more in sync now than ever. I would help the earth for as long as it needed, and he would protect me.
After a time, a strange feeling filled me. My well of magic was still more than half-full, the land giving as much as it took, but the ground pulsed strangely.
My brows furrowed; I reached out to the land.Do you feel that?
Another tremor came from the ground, and fear tainted the land’s words.Something is wrong.
What is it?
The earth sought the vocabulary to describe what was happening, but it couldn’t find them.
You must go,it finally urged me.
Pushing one last burst of magic out of me, I withdrew from the land and stood. My legs burned after kneeling for so long, and that sense of wrongness remained.
“Aileana?” Xander’s worried voice came from beside me as he brushed my arm.
Exhaling, I shook my head. My gaze swept through the trees, but I didn’t see anything. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of doom settling over me like a heavy storm cloud.
Opening my palm, I released ribbons of magic.
“Sunshine?” Xander came near, and the others stopped talking. The weight of their gazes was heavy as I sent more threads into the woods.
I murmured, “One moment. I feel… strange.”
“Shit,” Kysha cursed. “That’s never good.”
“Can you use the Amulet, Xan?” Daegal asked.
“It’s not… it won’t work,” was Xander’s hurried response.
That got my attention. I paused my search, glancing over my shoulder. “What do you mean?”
He sighed. “Inferna said it must be blessed beneath a full moon. There is a… process to activate it.” He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s… complicated.” He met my eyes. “We’ll need a witch, and… let’s just say it’s going to be a lot.”
I eyed the blue sky. It would be far too long until the next full moon. “Well, that’s clearly not happening anytime soon.”
“We should—”
A branch cracked in the forest. Then another. Xander and Daegal drew their swords, but I didn’t bother with my daggers.
This, at least, was expected.
Kethryllian’s majestic form appeared through the trees. He kneeled before me. “My lady?”
“Thank you for coming, Kethryllian,” I said in a rush, moving towards the deer. “My magic… something is wrong with the land.”
The Guardian’s eyes widened. His ears twitched, a miraculous motion for a being made of bark, and he said something in another language that could only have been a curse, it was so harsh to my ears.
He turned in a slow circle, his nose bent as he sniffed the ground. Then his ears flattened against the back of his head, and I could have sworn he paled.
The sense of doom worsened, and a heavy foreboding settled over me.
“Kethryllian?” I asked.
His eyes were wide, and he shook his head back and forth. “This day should not have arrived so quickly,” he said ominously.
Alarm ran through me, and I stumbled, slamming into my dragon shifter.