“What do you mean?”
“I think this was magic,” I say.
Chapter 55
NATE
IburyEmlyn’salphain the woods a few yards away from the place where we fought. I don’t want to make her do it. He might have wanted to kill her, but he’s still someone she was close to.
When I get back, she and Milo are studying the crack in the ground on hands and knees. I watch as Em picks up a rock and drops it down.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Quiet,” Emlyn says. “I can’t hear with you talking.”
“What are you trying to hear?”
“Just be quiet,” she says. She picks up another rock and drops it.
I’m quiet this time.
Several long seconds later, I hear a clatter. It sounds like it’s coming from a long way away.
“They’re definitely dead,” Milo said. “No one could have survived a fall like that.”
“You’re sure?” Emlyn asks.
“Yeah,” he says.
“I don’t get it,” I admit. “You said this was magic?”
Milo points down at it. “Look at the mist,” he says. “That’s not natural. Why would there be mist underground?”
“But you didn’t do it?”
“No,” he says. “This is elemental magic. That’s seriously advanced stuff. I only know how to do the things children can do.”
“Andyoudidn’t do it,” I say to Emlyn.
“Definitely not,” she says. “Unless there’s some way I could have done it without realizing it.”
“No,” Milo says. “You were using magic during the battle though, weren’t you?”
“Healing magic,” she says. “I used it to keep Victor from shifting. Shifting is maiming the body, in a way. Your bones have to leave their natural alignment. I used healing magic to hold him together in the form he was in, so he couldn’t take his wolf form.”
“I never thought of that,” Milo says. He sounds impressed. “You just came up with that?”
“I knew it was a gamble,” she says, shrugging.
“It’s genius,” he says. “I’ve never even heard of a Moon Caster doing something like that.”
“Yeah, well, we’d better hope none of the rest of them find out about that trick,” I say. “If they figure out they can stop us from shifting, we’re going to have serious problems.”
Milo shrugs. “I don’t know who would tell them,” he says. “The one I was facing is the only one left alive, and he didn’t see what was going on between you and the one you were fighting, Emlyn.”
“It was Victor,” she says quietly.
I look at her.