The Breeze Trials

Chapter 13

We were still on the floor of that dusty cabin. Jay was knocked out close by, but that didn't matter to me just yet. I finally regained enough consciousness to see a dirty green hoodie on the floor, covered in splinters and sawdust. She took him. "I'm going to kill her."

"Breeze, you don't know that she'll hurt him." Jace was quick to reason. I couldn't help a loud 'ha'. "Oh, she'll hurt him, don't you worry about that. She might kill him, she might take him hostage, who knows. Either way, she will hurt him and for that, I'll show her what pain feels like."

"Breeze! Listen to yourself and... look, the stone..." His tone was serious. Just as my eyes began to glance downward toward my stone, I heard a groan behind us. Jay was awake, and I was going to get some answers.

I moved with inhuman speed to grab his torn shirt collar. "Jay, you better listen to me and listen good," He wasn't. Testing me at that moment is a bad idea. My temper was beyond help. With a snap of my fingers, I'd tuned into fire's song and safely set my fingertips ablaze. I used my magic to singe his wrist.

"What the-?! Ow, damn! Breeze? Where's Karina?" There was intense fear growing in his eyes, making them shades darker. "Shut up. I might answer your questions later, but for now, you'd better help me find that disease-ridden badger."

"You look years older, Breezy." I could feel my eye twitch as I tried to restrain myself from further injuring him. "Where is she?" Jay shook his head, he seemed like he wanted to know, just to get me away from him.
I felt hands tugging me backwards. Jace was making sure to put himself between me and the other boy. "Dammit, let me handle this. Take a look at yourself for five seconds, please."

I didn't know what he meant, but a more rational part of me broke through for a second, telling me that intimidation wasn't going to cut it. I had to take a step back. I looked to the floor and stepped back in surrender. 

It wasn't hard to find a mirror, as if Karina wouldn't keep one, even in a place like this. From where I stood, I could see Jay's slightly relieved expression, directed at Jace. There was a broken window on the wall closest to him, and a bright, white butterfly rested there to investigate.
I didn't recognize the girl that stepped closer to the reflective glass, though. She had the same colored hair as me, the same basic features, the same clothes, but she wasn't me.

She moved with me to pick leaves out of her hair and attempt to tame the wildness. She moved with me to touch a bruise on her face. Her eyes weren't mine, though. They weren't bright blue, but instead shadowed navy. They were eyes of rage and insanity.
It was then that I remember what Jace might have been trying to tell me. I looked down to my stone. There was a deep and empty black beginning to consume the blue. I was horrified with myself.

I shouldn't have looked. The cat was out of the bag, and it was never going back in. My beautiful stone was becoming corrupted because of me.

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Sitting still on a couch and listening to Jace talk was hard to do after three hours had passed since the fight and we still weren't on our way to save Aaron, or at least try.  He refused to tell me where he 'hid Jay'. I guess it wasn't obvious that I was disgusted with myself for going dark and I didn't plan on making it worse. "Just tell me where to go, because I can't track her right now." I interrupted his speech.

Jace ran a hand through his freshly cleaned hair. "There are a couple places, but we can't get there on foot. And no, I don't know how to make accurate portals the way she can, another thing I didn't exactly specialize in. It's easy to get completely lost, and since she was attacked at the end, the two of them did. There's no way she wouldn't been able to focus."