Sun Catch Her (Book 1: Three Rivers Deep series) COMPLETE

Chapter Fifty-One

"Let go of me!"

His grip encircled my wrist.

I dangled in midair as the smokestack disappeared. I must have jumped, but I didn't remember doing it, and he had a hold of me now as I blindly bucked, my eyes squeezed shut against the brightness of the yellow sun. I twisted like a wild cat caught in his unyielding clutches. "Let me go!"

"Little one!"

My resistance left me instantly, and I was yanked up into Micah's embrace.

"Micah?" My eyes opened under my soaked hair. In his other hand he held a staff, outstretched as far as he could manage to keep it away from me. His focusing rod. A weapon made solid from his aura. Electricity orbited a blue-hot sphere mounted on the far end.

"Micah," I croaked again and threw my arms around his neck.

Oh Micah, my lion, my Micah.

I clung to him, coughing as I choked on my own relief. He twisted his wrist to release the focusing rod back to his aura, its solidness shattering apart like cooling sparks in the rain. With both hands free now, he hugged me fiercely, a rumble going through him like thunder. His focusing rod had been bright on one end—but it was blue light. I had seen yellow. I knew I'd seen yellow sunshine. But Micah was here.

"Aurora, what in the world—" he managed to get out before a great rumbling sound drowned out the rest of his words.

Trembling from the ground rose up to us in the sky. Everything was overcome in a moment of utter destruction, a shattering of bricks and mortar meeting concrete, a giant dust cloud rising. The entire valley shuddered from one end to the other, quaking as if a massive hand had descended to take hold and shake it.

The quiet that followed was almost as astonishing. Dark, wet, roaring silence, like the valley had gone into shock. Most of the orange halogens flickered out. Eventually, the fire siren in the valley's downtown section sounded to pierce that shocked silence, its cries like the building wails of a startled infant. His hold on me loosened, and I brought my head up alongside his to search the lightning flashes.

"Oh no," I whispered. That could not have just happened. But it had. Tears of frustration welled in my eyes.

"The hillside took the full blow, well to the right of our houses," he told me, looking around. "The fence and the main road have been crushed where they came down, but everything can be rebuilt."

"They came down?"

"They," he echoed softly, and he stretched out a hand.

A pulse of elemental will surged through him, and in the prolonged lightning flash that followed, I saw that both of the golden smokestacks were gone.

"The one you were on clipped the other when it went down. Like dominoes, really, they couldn't have fallen any more perfectly."

"Did Ai find you?" I asked, a spike of worry going through me for the wind devvi amid the sickening shock of the current moment. Justix had threatened him; and Eelios was still out there.

Micah nodded. "He told me you were back here clinging for your life. Aurora, how did you manage to get from where I dropped you off at the dance to the middle of the oil refinery?"

Letting out a choked hiccup, I leaned my head against his wet shoulder, trying to process his question. My mind wasn't working again. They had fallen. Both golden smokestacks, they were really gone. "The umbrae hunted me at school, and—" I needed to remember to breathe. "And Alex kept me away from them."

Micah frowned at the mention of the other's name. "Where is the water devvi now?"

"I don't know where he is," I mumbled miserably.