The power escaping from the cracks within me might not have compared to what I'd once been able to do, but it energized me now. As I ran, I easily listened for heartbeats. There were five guards already in Nash's path. I couldn't leave all of them for him. My eyes fluttered as I aimed my bow and drove my arrow with my mind. It whizzed between trees, around branches, and flew straight into the heart of a guard headed for Nash.

Despite not being able to use power for so many years what I could grasp came back to me naturally.

With my hearing attuned, I noticed the stomping of the guards as they all switched directions, running straight for me. They must have been watching their radars and I must have exuded enough energy for them to detect.

A group came into sight. They scattered between the trees, using them as cover as they wove through the woods.

I had to break through this seal on my power. These few hours on the Mountain of the Gods had helped me to regain far more than I had during years of training and struggle. Everything was different here. I could do this.

When Piercey and I had trained at the Sacred School, he had increased his powers by studying the science behind what we did and by actually understanding the code of our world. I'd always felt it, like water I could run my fingers through, or sand I could gather in my hand. It was the same as seeing the visible world versus reading a description of it. Without thought, I experienced it.

Together, we'd made a great team by combining those imperfect methods. I didn't understand exactly why this mountain changed my access to my power, but as I reached for it, I felt as if I could actually touch it for the first time since it was sealed. If only I had Piercey with me to help me get there faster by seeing the world through his eyes as well as my own.

I could not allow anything to hold me back, though. Lifting my palms, I scraped down to the depths of my soul with my will. Everyone was counting on me. If I couldn't do this, it wasn't just Leif, Wren, and Nash who would die here. All of our warriors and innocents would too. I had to let go of my past failures and my fear that I couldn't do this. I had to kill the curse.

A wave of energy exploded out from me.

The guards flew through the air from the power of the hit. They slammed against their backs and slid across the ground, knocking into each other, into thick trees.

Wow. The rush flooded my body with energy. It was by far the most power I'd managed since losing mine. Even so, it was a pathetic shadow of what I'd once managed to do. I should have been able to instantly kill all of them.

I lowered my head. The burn of my power ate across my skin. This sting was only a taste of how bad it could get. I needed to get used to it again.

To my heightened senses, the subtle twitch of a guard turning his hand for his knife jolted through my chest like he'd slammed his fist into me. My eyes snapped to him.

I bound his hand with my mind. Turned his own weapon on him so the quivering tip pushed for his throat.

He clasped it with both hands. The veins in his arms and neck and face strained like massive worms thrashing to break free of skin.

He shrieked. Maybe they all shrieked. The noise faded in the background for me. I only heard my own blood rushing through me. I felt alive again.

I drilled the knife into the man’s neck as I lunged for another guard.

The rest happened fast. Incredibly fast. It’d been so long that I had forgotten how quick I could move, think, act when I accessed my power.

I snapped the wrist of a woman and drove my sword through her gut.

A flash of power and I closed the throat of two others, strangling their screams into the guttural, gasping sounds of dying animals.

My own fear drummed beneath the thrum of my power. Fear of myself. Of what I could do and had done before. I couldn't hold myself back because of it. I strained for every ounce of power I managed to draw out from myself.

The last one left untouched backed up against a tree and choked on her sobs. The other two had collapsed onto their sides, their movements weaker now. Power rippled across every inch of my body, the burn more like sparks of electricity.

I snapped the necks of the ones I was strangling.

“D-demon.” The living guard trembled. “Demon!”

I slashed her throat with my sword. It split in a neat, thin line that opened to the fountain of blood within.

In the old days, I would have killed them all before they could take a breath. This little rush of power had my skin burning and covered with sweat. We were never meant to wield our gift for destruction, and the pain of it was something that took training to overcome and banish. How could I take on the Prophet when I was in such a state from killing five powerless humans?

My eyes snapped shut. We were all humans. I was a human. I repeated it to myself until I was sure I would never forget. Thoughts like that were dangerous. Words like that. They were every bit as powerful as the energy I could use to tear apart a body.

Cold air nipped at my burning skin. No, no, no. It was warm today. My friends needed me. No slipping.

But in the cold air, I heard the whisper of Piercey’s voice the last day I’d seen him, so calm and so in defiance of his usually soft spirit.

"None of this is real. Don’t hate yourself.”

I tried to shake his voice away. The woods blinked blue. The pale blue of my hall as a child. Pale blue streaked in blood as black as the sun during the eclipse.

My instructors' faces blurred against a veil of tears. The twist of their mouths frozen in terror, frozen as snowflakes fell from the hole in the ceiling onto their lips. I'd told them not to hurt Piercey anymore. Told them. "I didn't mean to… I thought I had control now…"

"No one can control a power like this," Piercey said. "The Prophets are wicked with it. The gods have gone cruel with it. It's the power, Max. Not us."

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"I can't stay here." I lifted my bloody hands, eyes wide. "I killed two instructors. We have to go, Piercey. It's time."

I nearly slipped entirely to that day when I saw the eyes of the last guard I’d killed today on the mountain. Wide hazel eyes stared into mine, frozen forever in terror.

My breath came in broken gasps. I couldn't slow down, no matter how hard I tried. I doubled over, breathing so rapidly that none of it reached my lungs. If only I had my medicine.

In the hot haze of my guilt, Piercey's voice whispered in the woods. Whispered on the breeze.

"You mean more than the world to me too, Max."

Even though Piercey had said it, he still hadn't come with me. With all the time that passed, the pain of it still burned deeply within me. If it was true, then how could he stay behind? I had stayed at the Sacred School for him even when it killed me. So why hadn't he fled with me? It had felt like betrayal. Abandonment.

If I let myself feel the lost friendship, the slip would steal me away to the past. Or even worse, the future. My legs wobbled beneath me, more from what I’d done than from the fight itself. That power, as limited as it was, would be like a beacon. More would come our way. We needed to make it to a passageway.

I walked forward as I notched an arrow and used my power to drive its aim through the throat of a guard approaching from the east. Again with another. Another.

Fire flooded my veins. I didn't want to kill these people. It didn't feel right, like I was attacking someone who was unarmed. But if I didn't kill them, they would kill my friends, and I would never make it up the mountain. The guards would never give up on killing intruders. I needed all my power, not these crumbs. Either the journey to the top would help me break free, or I'd force the instructors to break their seal.

I focused on Nash, the strong beat of his heart stilling my own. I sprinted for the pass to meet him and found him there, walking straight through the narrow hall of stone. Nash rolled his shoulders, both blades in his strong grip.

Four guards ran forward. Or at least, four guards had when I entered.

Nash plucked a knife from his side and threw it into the eye of one guard. A long step. Drove his blade straight up through the soft underside of another's chin.

The others pushed forward with their faces red and strained.

Nash sidestepped one swipe and then another from the third guard. I rushed forward to help when he carved his blade through the man’s back. Only one remained and Nash rushed him, charging forward like a bull.

The last one raised his sword, but Nash knocked it from his grip with one hit and plastered him against the rock wall with his shoulder so hard that spit flew from the guard's mouth. Blood rushed down the man’s legs in a stream. He collapsed into the red puddle on the ground, his stomach open and pulsing.

Nash ended his suffering with a stab into his carotid artery.

“Holy shit.” I looked at each body. He’d used no power. I’d never felt any from him. That was definitely natural. “Nash.”

He nodded toward the light at the end of ten feet of solid rock. “Let’s go, Sharpshooter.”

“Oh, you’re going to pretend that was no big deal?” I stepped over a body on my way to his side. “That’s how good you are, huh?" His skirmish managed to plant me back in my body, away from those I'd abandoned behind me.

Nash rubbed his side. “Glad we can agree on something.”

I rolled my eyes and looked at his side as we continued forward. “And you hurt yourself, didn’t you, Nash the Badass. You could have left two for me. You didn’t have to slay everyone in sight by yourself.”

“It’s just a bruise from the fall.”

“Let me show off next," I said. "Be a gentleman and give me a turn.”

“I figured you’d had your fun, flying down a landslide to save me.”

“I need much more fun than that."

Nash smirked. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

I gasped. “Are you really flirting right now?"

"You're the one who was flirting. I merely played along."

"Please." I scoffed. "There's people trying to kill us, you know.”

“Not right this second. They’re obviously going to ambush us once we make it through. This might be the last flirt of my life. How can I pass it up?"

I shook my head. “What’s wrong with you?” I didn't know whether he teased me because it was just how he was, or whether he was trying to manipulate me after all, or if maybe he actually was interested. It made my stomach flop. This was a dangerous game to play. Too dangerous.

But he was right about what he'd said. Out in the open, they would have plenty of room to fight us, and they had numbers on us. They wouldn't send in more guards to get slaughtered. If we continued forward, I’d have to use my power and he’d know what I really was.

Only we didn't have to face that just yet. This path wasn't more difficult because of the battle we'd just survived. It was because of the battles to come now that the guard knew about me. For now, I could avoid the fight.

"You might have time for more flirting. There's a passageway." I moved forward and felt along the rock for the familiar, deep crack. I closed my eyes and focused. Gravel fell from the crack onto my head as the rock widened and moaned until it had opened enough to squeeze through.

“How did you do that?” Nash’s eyes were wide.

I eased part of the way through. “It's a door. I was taught how to open it.” I nodded. “Come on. It’s safe.” I slid into the cool air of the passage. Eternal flames burned in the lanterns along the rocky wall. A slight breeze wafted down the tunnel, like we’d stepped into the mountain’s own little world.

Nash’s hand fumbled through the crevice and then his head. He grunted as he squeezed his shoulders through.

A narrow hall carved into the rock stretched before us in an upward slope that led to the start of the spiral staircase. "If we hurry, we can make it to Wren and Leif by morning." I closed the passageway and breathed a sigh of relief.

His eyes widened. "We'll be in this tunnel that long?"

"It connects with theirs higher up the mountain." I nodded toward the stairs.

"I'd rather go back and fight." Nash started for the stairs. I couldn't help but smile.