Free Web NovelChapter 367: Blue Sky
"It’s working!" Liam shouts. The excitement in his voice is unmistakable and completely earned.
He has every reason to feel it. The rain has stopped entirely. The snow on the ground is slowly melting and evaporating, the cloud cover is thinning, and pale sunlight is beginning to push through the gaps.
Fueled by it, Liam drives his teammates faster. They respond without hesitation, feeling the shift themselves, feeling the weather finally yielding.
He draws on Thea’s mana harder now, pulling it faster.
I have never felt Thea’s mana be this pure. No wonder she is the strongest among us.
In his excitement, Liam draws freely, generously, not once considering what rapid mana withdrawal actually does to the person it belongs to. In this case, the person it belongs to happens to have no access to it at all.
Theo, the one occupying Thea’s body, bears every consequence of it.
His face drains of color within seconds. Cold sweat breaks across his skin. His body begins to tremble, strength leaving him faster than he can compensate for, until he can no longer hold himself upright. Linus catches him before he goes down and lowers him carefully into one of the patio chairs, his eyes already calculating how long he can let this continue before he has to stop it entirely.
He decides in a split second. The moment Theo is settled in the chair, Linus dashes to the kitchen and comes back out at a run, first aid kit in hand.
He lays out what he needs and holds himself ready, watching the weather, watching Theo, calculating.
Almost there. Hold on, Thea.
The moment the sky breaks clear and blue appears, he moves fast. He bandages the wrist with practiced efficiency. Theo has already lost consciousness.
On the patio, the mages are erupting.
"We did it!" Liam is the first to say it out loud. He opens his eyes to find the sun blazing directly down at him, the sky wide and impossibly blue after nearly two weeks of darkness. The others follow him in turn, each one surfacing from concentration into disbelief and then joy.
"We actually did it!" Sonia’s smile is wide and completely genuine. She tips her face up toward the sun.
"I can’t believe we actually did it!" Julian beams. He limps out from the patio to stand under the open sky with the rest of them.
Laughter and noise fill the garden.
Even Elder Loujt cannot hold himself apart from it. He steps out into the sunlight and closes his eyes, face turned upward.
This is the first time I have ever felt this proud to have been part of something. He thinks. Truly extraordinary.
He simply stands there and lets the sun reach him.
Liam takes several deep breaths, eyes closed, letting the smell of fresh grass reach him properly.
He laughs.
"I never knew how much I liked the smell of grass. I never knew I could miss it." He laughs again, openly, and the sound pulls the others into it with him.
Then he looks around for Theo.
He half expects to find her standing somewhere nearby, wearing that particular smile he has come to appreciate and finds himself missing when he is tired or uncertain. The one with the sparkle behind it.
Instead, what he finds stops everything.
Theo is crumpled in a chair. Linus is leaning over him, doing something Liam cannot quite see from here. But the face he has admired for so long is completely pale, and the brows are pressed together as though in pain.
Liam’s own face drains of color in an instant.
"Thea!" He screams, and he is already running.
The sound of his voice startles everyone. Heads turn. It takes several seconds for what they are seeing to register.
And then they all run too.
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Across Solarys, cheers erupt everywhere at once.
People flood the streets, faces turned upward, eyes closed against the brightness. Some weep openly when they see the sun. Some stand perfectly still in the middle of the pavement, not quite able to believe it. Others comment, to no one in particular, on how beautiful the sky looks. How they had forgotten what it looked like.
The puddles left by nearly two weeks of rain and snow dry quickly. The temperature settles into something that feels, for the first time, like the kind of early winter Solarys is supposed to have. And by widespread agreement among the people standing outside with their faces in the sun, it is the warmest winter the city has felt in a very long time.
The news reports nothing else.
Even the Baroness, who has always preferred grey skies and overcast mornings, allows herself a faint smile when the light catches her eye. She steps out onto her spacious balcony and confirms it for herself, the snow gone, the rain that had been gathering on the horizon also gone, and above it all, a sky so blue and clear there is not a single cloud in sight.
She stays out there for a while, enjoying the cool breeze and the unusual warmth of it.
Then she looks down at the street below. People are dancing on the sidewalk. A woman is spinning in circles with her arms out. A man is sitting on a bench with his eyes shut, face tilted upward like a plant reaching for light.
The Baroness scoffs and retreats inside.
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Hawk is in the park, walking slow circuits to work the stiffness out of his legs, when the sun appears. He stops. Pulls off his hoodie. Looks straight up.
The warmth hits his face and something else happens at the same time, something he cannot explain. It feels like something lifting, evaporating off him, as though a weight he had not consciously registered is being drawn out through his skin.
He stands very still and wonders if he has finally lost his mind.
He has not.
Liam and the others did not only dispel the storm. They purified the corruption magic entirely. What Hawk is feeling is exactly that, the last remnants of it leaving his body. He is not the only one experiencing it. Across Solarys, thousands of people feel the same subtle shift, something unnamed lifting away from them in the sunlight.
None of them name it. None of them connect it to anything beyond the simple relief of the sun coming back after too long without it. They assume the lightness is just that, the joy of warmth after cold, the relief of light after darkness.
They are not entirely wrong. But they are not entirely right either.
He calls the rest of the Hunters immediately, asking if they felt it too. They confirm it without hesitation. They are already on their way to him.
A few minutes later his friends arrive, checking him over and taking in the changed sky around them.
"On the way here, people were just standing in the street." Ethan says. "Cars stopped moving. Every driver got out and just stood there. Some were saying they needed to enjoy it while it lasted, in case it didn’t hold."
"What do you think, Hawk?" Taylor asks.
Hawk takes a slow breath. "I think it’ll hold. The storm and the snow, they’re not coming back. I believe the weather has returned to normal."
"I feel lighter." Carter says. "My head is clearer than it’s been in weeks." The others nod and murmur in agreement, each of them feeling some version of the same thing.
Hawk looks at the sky one more time.
I wonder if this is her doing. If it is, thank you, Thea.
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Unfortunately, Theo cannot hear Hawk’s thanks. He cannot hear any of it, not Rhaenas’s concern, not the Vaelins hovering in the room. He is lying unconscious in his own bed, wrist wrapped in a clean bandage, with Maeve working over him and everyone else crowding the bed.
Eventually Maeve has had enough.
"Alright. All of you need to stop hovering. This room is not big enough for nine people standing over one bed. Give her room to breathe." freewēbnoveℓ.com
"We’re worried, Maeve." Liam says. He does not move.
"Yes, Liam. We all are. But standing this close is not helping anyone. You can wait outside just as easily as you can wait in here. Go. Let her rest."
"If you’re healing her, why isn’t she waking up?" Liam ignores the instruction entirely.
"I genuinely do not know. But from what my Light is telling me, and from what Sonia can sense, there is nothing wrong with her beyond exhaustion."
Sonia nods. "I agree. I am not as practiced as Maeve in healing, but her condition is not life threatening."
She pauses. "Anymore." She adds quietly, making clear that it had been, not long ago.
Linus takes a breath.
"Alright. That is enough. She needs rest. Two people in the room at a time is more than sufficient. Everyone else, out."
They move. One by one, they file out of the room, including the Vaelins, who would not normally take direction from a Monfort without at least a visible protest.
This time, they go without one.
