Sleight of Hand

Chapter 25

A blood-curdling shriek jarred into Aivilo's peaceful sleep. She lurched upright in her bed, the comforter falling off her shoul­ders and baring her skin to the cool air that seeped through her open window. Had she imagined that scream? She almost believed that she did when a cold dread slithered down her spine.

She climbed out of her bed and grabbed the leather belt with her sheathed dagger on it. She strapped it to her waist over her nightshirt, and approached the door. The smell of smoke was overwhelming, and she coughed. She heard the pounding of footsteps on the wooden hallway floors. Terror took over as she flung herself sideways to avoid being run over by her father as he barreled into her bedroom.

The sight of her father again made Aivilo's throat close. His scar­let hair was blackened by soot, and his crystal blue eyes—her eyes—sparked against his ash-covered face, wide with alarm. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but he said, "Come on, Aivilo, we need to get out of here!"

Aivilo felt the dread settle in her stomach.

It was happening all over again.

She followed her father down the stairs, hunched away from the black smoke that shrouded them so much, she couldn't see anything but her father's lean frame in front of her.

"Where's Mom?!" Aivilo cried involuntarily, the dream—the memory—requiring it. She already knew her mother was gone. She'd only realized later whose scream had woken her up this night. The tear that traced its way down her father's ash-covered cheek was confirma­tion that nothing had changed. Her mother was still dead.

Aivilo tried to pull her father back as he reached for the door handle that would lead them to the back of the house where the forest was.

She knew what was out there. Knew her father wouldn't survive. But he tugged her along, and they collapsed in the grass.

Aivilo picked her head up in time to see the humans stalking toward them. She spotted the cold gleam of two guns and four knives; six humans surrounded them.

She glanced back at her house and sobbed. It was just like she remembered; a fiery inferno that had consumed her mother before she'd been able to escape. The flames licked up to the stars, the smoke fol­lowing its flickering into the sky.

"Aiv, you need to run," her father gritted as he rolled onto his back. Aivilo remembered what she had said to him.

"I can't leave you," she insisted, pushing up onto her knees. Her father reached over and gripped her hand faster than humanly possible.

"Aivilo," he demanded, despite his fatigue. "They're out to kill us. They're after you, especially."

The humans. They were after her, sent by the Mage, who was Kurtis's son—

"I can buy you some time," her father panted, glaring up at the humans. Aivilo shook her head furiously, tears streaming down her face from the mere memory of what she was about to witness.

"No, Dad—" she started, but her father hadn't listened to her. He'd lunged at the nearest human with a gun, knocking him to the ground with inhuman force. He'd begun to glow like the sun itself when he summoned his ability, and sent white-hot flames towards another human. The human had gone down on the spot, crumbling into nothing more than a pile of ashes.

Before Aivilo's father could do any more, a third human aimed and shot. Her father slumped to the ground, moving no more. All in the span of a few seconds. Aivilo watched with the same horror she had that night, her voice stolen from her throat. She couldn't make a sound. The grief settled in as she realized that she would have to live out this nightmare knowing she didn't do anything to stop it.