The Rise of Fortune and Fury (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 5)

Not even a sizzle or a wisp of smoke.

Zora frowns, thrusting her hand out again.

Nothing.

She takes off across the yard, ranting and cursing. When she looks at Carrick, he merely points to the sky—a silent command to take a flight around the island. When she lifts off, we’re left alone.

Carrick glances over. “Can I go hard on her?”

I hate to do it, but I nod. I just hope we don’t traumatize her.

“I’m going to need you to assist me,” he drawls with a knowing look.

“Are you going to put me in danger?” I ask, but I already know the answer.

He doesn’t respond because Zora’s form comes into view as she lands with a light touch before folding her wings back as they disappear.

She doesn’t appear relaxed.

She looks incredibly frustrated. I’m almost ready to ask Carrick to just call it a day, but we’re short on time. If we don’t break through to her powers today, she’s not going to have the time to develop them. Once they are set free, it still takes a lot of practice to control the magic.

“Want me to try the chair again?” Zora asks grumpily.

“No,” Carrick says softly as he waves a hand at the chair and it disappears. “I want to try something a bit more radical.”

“Radical?” Zora asks, but before I know what’s happening, I’m being pulled off the stairs by an invisible force that has me cocooned in a gentle grip—Carrick’s grip, I realize—and I’m lifted high into the air above them.

Zora gasps as I rise ten, twenty, thirty feet up before Carrick stops my ascent.

I hover as Carrick turns to Zora. “I’m going to drop your sister. It’s up to you to ensure she doesn’t get hurt.”

I have to admit… it was smart of Carrick to couch it in those terms. He’s only offering Zora the consequence of me getting hurt—most likely in a grave manner. She’d never buy that the consequence could be death because she’d never buy that Carrick would let me die.

She might just think he’s crazy enough to let me get hurt, though, because she also knows he can heal me.

“And to make it interesting,” Carrick says slyly, giving a wave of his hand toward the ground.

Deadened rose vines push up from the ground, slithering and writhing over one another. The thorns are long, and the vines wind around each other until they make a thick copse of bushes that cover the entire ground above which I hover. I grimace, knowing that dropping onto those is going to hurt like a bitch.

Hell, I might poke an eye out.

“Those will help break her fall,” Carrick says nonchalantly.

“I can’t,” Zora says with a shake of her head, taking a step back.

“You can,” Carrick replies easily. “Imagine the vines disappearing and a huge air mattress appearing, or merely grab her out of the air before she hits. You have options.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?” Zora whispers, her expression somewhat terrified.

“Only one way to find out,” Carrick says. With that, he releases his magical hold on me.

I go plummeting down, my eyes wide and pinned on the thorny bushes that are rushing up to meet me. I don’t have time to see what Zora is doing, I merely hope for the best as just a few feet from the vines, I close my eyes and grit my teeth, hoping an eye doesn’t get punctured.

My body slams to a halt, knocking the breath out of me. When I open my eyes, I see I’m no more than five inches from an exceptionally long thorn protruding upward from a vine. I look over to see the disappointment on Carrick’s face and the fury on Zora’s. She turns and stomps off, lobbing vicious curses at herself.

Carrick vanquishes the thorns before lowering me gently to the ground. He’s the one who stopped me from falling into the vines, as I knew he would. If Zora didn’t pull on her magic, I knew there was no way he was going to let me get hurt.

His golden eyes pin on me, and I can read his silent message.

She can’t do it.

“Let me talk to her,” I murmur as I move past him across the lawn where my sister stands with fists clenched, eyes on the bay.

I stand beside her. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

She twists to glare. “Weren’t you hard on yourself when you couldn’t use your magic?”

“Point taken,” I admit glumly.

Zora turns to me. “You told me that the way you tapped your powers was that Deandra put you into a position of having to save Rainey, and that fear of failing her outweighed your other fears.”

I nod with a grimace. Exactly what Carrick just did to Zora, and it didn’t work.

She turns away from me. “I’m a terrible sister, Finley. Me not saving you must mean I don’t care about you. That I don’t love you. That I don’t care if you die.”