1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of Air: Book #5, Chronicles of Marsdenfel

Year 242 of the Bynding - Grehafen - Midsummer

Then when Evonalé is nine, her father tries to kill her.

I don't even know what infuriates Darnell, but it's evidently enough that he decides his son can wait for another female, or perhaps father a child on me, to gain access to the magic Barnett stole from my mother.

Or maybe he's not thinking about his own heir. Maybe he's too angry to remember that Drake can't access the magic yet.

Children are immune to curses, though, unless they're set on the eighth day after birth. I lied, told him the wrong day.

And he's discovered that now, in the middle of this royal courtyard, surrounded by witnesses.

Darnell's outright snarling in his fury.

The purple of magic-fueled flame whips at me, and only my own air magic prevents it from claiming and killing me. My skin reddens and tightens from the heat, but my magic forms a whirlwind buffer that protects me from the worst of it, even as my clothing collapses into ash.

A bush down the way trembles, revealing the little elf girl hiding inside. Evonalé.

She's shaking and compressed as small as she can go, but she watches. She watches, refusing to leave me to suffer alone.

She needs to, though. Needs to flee before she's old enough for Drake to do to her as their father's about to do to me. Again.

But she won't leave me.

But she must—and soon. Three of her four grandparents were human. That's one more than Tully had, and she bore a child before sixteen.

I can't protect her. I can't protect anyone. Even Onlé...

Onlé, who faces a fate at least as horrible as mine, if anyone realizes what she is.

Onlé, whose son will suffer like my own, if my daughter won't leave.

This is public enough to be a spectacle, and the bullies in Darnell's favor will take inspiration from whatever their master does to me...unless he does something they can't do. Just as my people can't protect themselves from the fire like I can, thanks to my air magic, a human affinity.

And my daughter won't leave me.

She must.

She won't.

The answer strikes like lightening, though it takes precious seconds to sink into my brain.

Evonalé won't leave me, so I must leave her.

I stare my half-brother in the eyes. His magic-fueled fire whips about me, begging to sear me to the bone, longing to collapse me into ash.

I let it.

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A/N: I've known the end of this story since A Fistful of Fire, and I knew A Fistful of Air would have to be shorter than the others because I didn't want to go that far into the depressing details, but I really did think this story would turn out significantlylonger. 

Which, I think, is part of why I've been "stuck" on it for so long. My apologies who has been waiting on that.

First Draft Fridays will continue with book 6, as yet untitled, which I am expecting will also ultimately be a shift in style to a multiple-narrator third person PoV, rather than the first person here—but we'll be seeing what life's like for people who've been busy on their own things while we followed this.

As the series continues, is there anyone you particularly want to hear about or from?