Page 29 of Wings of Snow

“This might feel...interesting.” With a rush of power, the veil covering my affinities was ripped off, and a crackling magic exploded through the air as whatever had been encapsulating my affinities sizzled out of existence.

I gasped. The annihilation of that veil within me happened so quickly that it burned.

“Be free, young one. Let them feel your might.”

A crash of energy slammed into me, wrenching me apart until everything inside me compressed and imploded before a rupture of power burst to the surface. It felt as though the strength of a thousand suns, a million bolts of lightning, and the hand of a god smashed a final layer inside me containing what had been buried within me all along, before everything flooded to the surface of my skin like a geyser.

A rip seared along my back.

Power skated along my limbs.

Unfurling tendrils burst between my shoulder blades as the shell that had contained other affinities within me shattered into a million pieces as rupturing magic beneath it unlocked and exploded to the surface.

And then I was rising.

Rising.

Rising.

Rising.

Snow-flecked light glowed all around me.

I was spiraling, zooming, going up, up, up.

Rushing to the surface, I careened through the realm with the God Zorifel’s power at my back, bursting me through time and space, through dimensions I couldn’t comprehend as the galaxy flew past me.

And then I was slamming into something. Awareness flooded me as my limbs became whole. A gasp pierced my ears.My gasp.

Air rushed into my lungs. Beautiful, blessed, salty air filled me up as fire raged across my limbs, and someone else’s scream pierced my ears.

Strength flooded my veins as my legs whipped out, moving me into a crouch so fast that I was poised and ready to destroy anything that came near.

A brush against my back and the spread of white along my peripheral vision had shock reeling through me as great feathery wings stretched along each side of my shoulders. Their snowy appearance reflected the light as the sense of new appendages flooded my clouded brain.

One flap, two. The rhythmic feel of them latched on to something in my brain as the need to fight and spar, destroy and swing, hit me all at once.

The warrior moves Sandus had taught me vibrated along my limbs, and a sense of absolute rightness came next. This,thiswas who I was.

“Ilara?” my sister called, her voice sounding as though it came from far away.

Through the haze of fire and air swirling around me in a powerful cyclone came the image of four fae standing just outside of my reach. Wings flapped behind me as my brain slowly calmed, and the tornado of power barreling out of me asallof my affinities burst free from within hit me all at once.

“Oh gods, what happened to me?” I felt air, fire, life, warrior, and...something else rumbling along my back.

My mind became grounded abruptly, as though my soul and body in that exact moment locked back together like a puzzle clicked into place.

I stood in a blur of speed and power, and coiled my magic back inside me, ceasing the fire radiating along my limbs and the air whipping within the circular temple. My life magic hummed through my veins, but I quickly calmed it.

Priestess Genoova looked as though she’d seen a ghost when I finally stopped the magnificent display of my affinities, but that power, that barely leashedmight,rippled just beneath my skin, waiting to be unleashed with every breath that I took. A warrior’s power.

Dear gods, Matron Olsander had been right!I’d had other affinities locked within me. I could feel the warrior power coursing through me now, just underneath my skin, and something else, something so foreign that I didn’t have a word for it, heated my back.

I whirled around when that flash of white hit my peripheral sight again and gaped at the wings—wings—that spread behind me.

“Blessed Mother, I have wings!” They weren’t Solis wings, though. Not black. Not leathery. Not tipped in talons as the prince’s were.

Instead, they were beautiful white feathers that were as crisp as snow. They sparkled with magic as they lifted and swayed. They glittered like falling icicles, so mesmerizing as they shimmered in the light.