The Witches of Glass Castle: Uprising (The Witches of the Glass Castle Series Book 2) (12 page)

Suddenly, she began to stumble. Something was happening, but it wasn’t what she’d planned. Instead of sweeping towards Colt, the wind began to swirl around her, wrapping her up inside a tornado.

Mia yelped in shock as the tornado began to engulf her in its rotations.

Somewhere outside her cocoon, she heard Colt’s stifled laughter.

‘Help me!’ Mia cried.

‘I can’t,’ he called out to her, laughing openly now. ‘If I keep helping you, you’ll never learn.’

Still spinning in circles inside the twister that she was supposed to be commanding, Mia called out to him again. ‘I’m new at this!’ she appealed to him. ‘Have a little sympathy. I’m sure you were a beginner once, too.’

Colt groaned. With virtually no effort at all, he reached into the hurricane and grabbed hold of Mia, pulling her out and steadying her against his body. In the blink of an eye, the tornado collapsed and the air resumed its natural flow.

‘Very good,’ Colt joked dryly. ‘You’re not even capable of saving yourself from yourself.’

She pursed her lips. ‘At least I made a tornado. That’s got to count for something.’

‘Try again,’ Colt advised. ‘This time, don’t compete with the air. Simply become a part of it.’

‘I’m
not
a part of it, though.’

‘Not with that attitude.’

Mia took a deep breath and stepped back from Colt. She raised her hands again.

‘Be the air,’ Colt murmured.

‘I’m trying.’

‘You don’t have to try. You already
are
the air.’

Mia opened one eye and peered at him. ‘I can’t take this seriously if you keep saying that.’

‘You take nothing seriously regardless. Now
move
me.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Mia returned her focus to the task. She thought of air, then wind, then windy air. After several minutes, she opened her eyes and looked at Colt. ‘Nothing’s happening,’ she told him, stating the obvious.

‘There’s no drive. No passion.’

‘I have passion! Just not for being air.’

‘Well, where
is
your passion, then?’ he challenged. ‘Tap into it. Use it to your advantage.’

Mia bit her lip uncertainly. ‘So I should, um, think of airy things I really like?’ she ventured tentatively.

Colt rolled his eyes. ‘How about you try thinking about the threat to your life. Doesn’t it make you angry?’

‘Well, yeah, I guess.’

‘That doesn’t sound passionate. Get angry!’

Mia fell silent for a moment.
Get angry?
‘I’m just not an angry person,’ she told him honestly.

‘So there’s nothing at all that maddens you?’ he challenged her. ‘I don’t believe that! Dig deeper. Show me what you’re capable of.’

She shrugged her shoulders, losing hope by the second.
If the threat on my life doesn’t make me angry, what hope do I have?

‘Think about why you’re here,’ Colt went on. ‘About why you came to the castle. Someone or something wants to kill you...’

All of a sudden, her hands dropped to her sides. ‘Where were you?’ she said, her voice suddenly amplified above the moan of the wind.

Colt frowned. ‘What?’

‘Where were you?’ she repeated. ‘I got to the castle a whole twenty-four hours before I found you. You knew I was here, right?’

There was a long pause.

‘Well, yes,’ Colt eventually admitted.

The wind began to move along Mia’s arms now, looping around her fingertips.

‘So why didn’t you come looking for me?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you
ever
come looking for me? Last summer you told me that if I needed you, all I had to do was call out to you and you’d be there. In those four months, do you know how much I needed you?’

He stared back at her, silent.

‘Every day,’ she told him. ‘Every day I called for you. Do you know that?’

He swallowed. ‘Yes,’ he admitted quietly.

A burst of air shot from her fingers and knocked into him, causing him to jolt backwards like he’d been shocked by a current of electricity.

Colt smiled. ‘See? Look what you—’ 

‘No,’ Mia stopped him. ‘I’m not done. Where were you?’

‘I was here.’

‘Why didn’t you come for me?’

‘I...’ Colt began, casting his eyes downwards. ‘I suppose I thought it would be easier if I stayed away.’

Mia stared at him, tears prickling her eyes. ‘Why?’

There was another long pause before Colt spoke again.

‘I suppose I thought that if we were no longer tied to one another, then everything would be simpler,’ he said, returning his gaze to Mia. ‘Surely you can see that, too?’

‘Can I see that my life would be simpler without you?’ she murmured into the wind. ‘I wouldn’t
want
to see that. I wouldn’t
want
to imagine a life without you.’

Colt looked away from her again, this time casting his eyes to the vast forest that unravelled beyond the embankment.

‘Is that why you didn’t search for me when I got here?’ Mia asked. ‘Because you didn’t want me in your life? Because you didn’t want to be
tied
to me?’ She winced at the words he had used.

For a long while, the only sound was the moan of branches as the wind bore down on them.

Mia’s chest tightened. ‘Please answer me.’

Colt lifted his head. ‘Yes,’ he said finally.

That was Mia’s breaking point. It was all she could take. She felt weak, as though her body really was made of air, insubstantial and flimsy. A gust of winter wind knocked her forwards and she stumbled to the ground, her palms smacking on the boggy earth.

Without missing a beat, Colt was at her side. He crouched before her and raised his hand against the gale, using his palm like a windbreaker to provide them with a patch of refuge.

Mia staggered quickly to her feet. ‘No,’ she said, stepping away from his protection. ‘Don’t help me. I don’t need your help.’ She started across the garden, heading back to the castle as the wind whipped at her skin in cold torrents.

‘You
do
need my help,’ Colt called after her. ‘And you’re welcome to it. It’s yours!’

He was following her. Mia could sense it. She spun around and glared at him. He stopped in his tracks.

‘No,’ she said again. ‘I
don’t
need it. And I don’t want it.’

She raised her arms and felt the air shoot over her skin, through her veins and her bones and into her fingers. It shot out from her hands and rushed at Colt, jolting the hedges in its path. The gust flung Colt backwards, hard enough to send him skidding across the grass.

Mia turned and ran.

* * *

Colt sighed as he rose to his feet. He watched Mia flee from him, but he didn’t follow her.

I’ve done it again
, he thought. He had a knack for upsetting people—it was part and parcel, really. This time, however, he knew he deserved it.

He sighed again. In his hand he caught the squall, allowing it to spiral around his wrist. It moved along his arms and then down his legs, shackling him.
How fitting
, he thought,
for one like me to be so bound.

He bit his lip. He knew what he had to do.

Run
.

At first he ran slowly, at nothing more than a leisurely pace. He jogged towards the forest, breaking free of the invisible iron-clad chains of the wind. The shackles slipped from his body as he descended the embankment. His pace quickened, but quite by accident.

Now he was running full pelt, changing direction for variation. He bypassed the forest, heading up to the graveyard instead. His feet barely touched the ground as he weaved in and out between the stone slabs—the graves of witches who had walked this earth before him. Better witches. Stronger witches. Only once did he pause, subconsciously and just for a fraction of a second—and that was as he passed Lotan’s gravestone.

Colt’s eyes read quickly.
Lotan. Leader of the Hunter coven. May you rest here, my brother and friend
.

Colt felt a familiar rage bubbling inside of him. Scarcely breaking stride, he kicked the gravestone with such force that the huge grey slab exploded into dust and rubble, crumbling down onto the moss that grew over Lotan’s buried body.

Colt winced.

He increased his speed, causing the dainty graveyard wind chimes to rattle in his wake. But the sound was gone as quickly as it had come; he was already too far away to hear the echoes. His eyes moved in triple time, judging every obstacle in his path as he ploughed forward. Soon he was in the forest, moving between the trees like the hurricane that he was, tearing away their branches just because he could, then hurling them into the undergrowth and listening to their crash.

He’d been doing this a lot lately—running, with no real purpose or place to go. He’d gotten used to running until his body couldn’t take it anymore, even if it took all night. He’d push himself harder, until his insides felt as though they were on fire and cried out to him in agony, begging him to rest. Only then was he numbed from the other pain.

The pain of...what?
Grief?
He wondered.
Loss?

When would it end? Lotan had been dead for months. Colt was coven leader now. And there were new boys to train—Talon and Finn, two blank canvases who needed some direction. Siren had taken them under his wing—Colt simply couldn’t. He hadn’t grown up with them as he’d grown up with Lotan. He didn’t even
know
them; they were virtual strangers. He was alone. He still had Siren, sure. But Siren couldn’t know about the pain. Siren was stronger than afflictions of the mind—and Colt knew that he should be stronger, too. He was coven leader!

It’ll end soon
, he told himself.
This pain will numb at some point
.
I can’t be this weak forever.

There was no sign of healing, though. In fact, the pain only subsided when he forced the rest of his body to suffer—which wasn’t an easy thing to do. After all, he’d spent the past eighteen years training himself to become immune to physical pain, to endure the most gruesome of suffering with a sneer. It was his most admirable feature, if he did say so himself. And yet now, his enviable tolerance had bitten him like the sting of an ironic serpent. Now he wished he could feel the sweet release of pain.

Curse my excellence
, he thought bitterly.
And curse my weakness, too.

He often wondered how such an accomplished Hunter as himself could be so susceptible to human emotions. If only he’d been stronger. If only he’d been able to prevent Lotan’s death in the first place. But he had let his emotions stand in the way of his duty—his duty to protect his coven above all else. Colt knew he had been weak, and that his weakness had caused him to fail. And as a result, his brother was dead.

He vowed to never let that happen again.

But until he could find a cure for this inexplicable hurting, the only solution was to feel pain everywhere else.

And so Colt kept running. Because sooner or later, he might feel pain.

* * *

Back inside the castle, Mia raced to her bedchamber. Tears stung her eyes, but she fought to hold them back. She
had
to hold them back. Blindly staggering up the staircase and into the upper hallway, she flung open the bedchamber door and collapsed onto her bed. She wished for her best friend Kizzy to miraculously appear and tell her to forget about Colt, tell her that he wasn’t worth her tears. But Kizzy wasn’t there. So, alone and hidden behind the bed curtains, Mia buried her face in her pillow and broke into uncontrollable sobs.

Hot tears soaked her hair and her breath escaped in painful rasps. In her anguish she barely heard the sound of footsteps pad across the room.

Dino
, Mia realised. Her heart sank. She had presumed she’d been alone in the room. The last thing she wanted was for Dino to find her crying. She couldn’t bear to hear an I-told-you-so about Colt.

‘Uh...’ Dino cleared his throat. ‘Mia?’ He knocked on her bedpost.

‘Go away,’ she managed, burying her tear-streaked face deeper into the pillows.

‘Okay,’ he said. But there were no departing footsteps.

Why won’t he just leave me alone?
she despaired silently. ‘Go away, Dino. I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, hovering at her bedside. ‘You seem upset.’

Mia rolled her eyes but didn’t respond.

Taking that as his cue to stay, Dino gingerly opened her bed curtains and perched on the edge of Mia’s bed. He began fidgeting, smoothing out the imaginary creases on the bedding. Then, even more awkwardly, he patted Mia on the head.