Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130991 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 437(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130991 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 437(@300wpm)
Oh my God.
I saw it now. The crooked lamp—Maud and I had knocked it over when she was chasing me around the house, and we could never get the lampshade to sit straight again. My old desk. The remnants of my rug.
This was my bedroom. This was my parents’ inn. My home. He ruined my home. He was torturing our inn.
I stumbled away from him, toward the rotting floor and the magic that waited for me there. It washed over me, stabbing into my heart, and I felt the last weak pulses of Magnolia Green. The magic I had sensed, the one so desperately trying to touch me, was the lifeblood of the inn spilling from its dying core.
His voice chased me. “Do you understand now?”
I made my mouth move through the pain. “Yes.”
I understood.
“This is a demonstration of my power.”
“It’s a demonstration of your fear.” I called on my magic and poured my pain into it. I shaped and molded my power as only an innkeeper could. “You feared my parents. You tried to kill them and failed, so you defiled their inn in your impotent rage. You used its suffering to convince yourself that you won. And now you fear me. You have gone through all this trouble to give me a warning, because deep down you are afraid. You’re right to be afraid.”
He sighed. “So be it.”
The man smashed his white broom into the floor. Corruption burst from him in twisted dark currents and bit into the walls, burrowing into the inn, forcing it to comply. The wooden floor moved like a churning sea, speeding toward me.
I sank all my magic into the floor under me. It burst through the currents and eddies of Magnolia Green’s lifeblood, colliding with the corruption squirming through them. My power shot through the fading inn, rushing through its branches, its roots, all the way to its injured core.
Our magics collided. The bond reignited in a blinding burst of power. The patina of corruption that permeated the inn, sliding over its branches and smothering its roots, burned away in an instant, opening a clear bath between me and the core.
Magnolia Green was mine.
The corrupted innkeeper screamed. His polluted currents slammed into me, battering the inn, hammering at my defenses, each blow sending an agonizing jolt through us both.
I held my hand out, and my broom landed in it.
“It won’t help you!” he snarled.
My power wound through the broom in a tight spiral, ready to be unleashed. My body buckled, struggling to channel all that power, and I had to force the words out.
“This inn cradled me as I took my first breath. No matter how hard you try, it will never be yours.”
I planted the broom into the floor.
Magic tore out of me like a magic hurricane and smashed into the corrupted innkeeper.
The corruption flailed around me, burning and raging. It was pure hate. Hate and anger, a torrent of it streaming from him. There was so much of it, more than any being could contain, and I could not understand how it didn’t tear him apart. Every lash of it frayed my soul. There was blood in my mouth. My chest hurt, every breath a conscious fight against the anvil sitting on my ribs.
I gripped him with my magic and squeezed.
We tore at each other, he with his corruption and I with my innkeeper magic. The dome quaked. I felt the rotting walls collapsing behind me. The substance of the inn disintegrated, as it sacrificed more and more of its power to feed my attack.
He’d drowned Magnolia Green in his corruption. It fed like a leech on the inn’s magic for nobody knew how long. The inn had fought against it, trying to survive, trying to preserve some small part of itself. But now I had asked for its help.
Magnolia Green loved me from the moment I was born. It gave everything to me. All of its power. All of its magic. Every last drop.
Its branches withered. Its roots turned to dust. It kept nothing for itself.
Magnolia Green was killing itself to protect me.
I pushed against the current, trying to hold it back. The magic swept my resistance aside and poured out of me. The inn had made up its mind. It would defend me. I was powerless to stop it.
We were bound, the three of us, caught in a terrible circle of power—me channeling my innkeeper magic, him whipping currents of corruption that seared agony into me, and Magnolia Green, tied to us both, split in the moment of death between coercion and love, devoured by one and freely sacrificing itself for the other.
The horror of it was too much to take. I heard a sound and realized I was screaming, crying like a child from pain and grief. I would be the end of my parents’ inn. Magnolia Green knew it and still it fed me. Its desperation coursed through me. It knew that its death throes would take me with it. I would not survive the death of the inn where I was born. Our bond was too strong.