Crescent Legacy Nicole Taylor (top young adult novels .TXT) 📖

sighed. Well, that was a bust. The barrier was pretty much blown to bits, and all that work I’d done was for nothing. Kneeling by the crystal, I tapped it, hoping there was some charge left. It flared, then died completely. Nope. I was learning the hard way why Aileen had never made her own barrier around the village. It didn’t work. Not on a scale like this.

Leaving the quartz behind, I made my way back to Derrydun, my mind swirling with the things I’d learned and the failure eating at my conscience. If I could call back my Legacy from a craglorn, could others call theirs back from Carman? Excitement mixed with the throbbing in my ass and stomach, a shred of hope lighting the darkness.

I didn’t know what drew me to Molly McCreedy’s, but I found myself pushing through the door once I got back to Derrydun. The scent of cooking food, wood smoke, and barley and hops hit my nose, and I breathed deeply, calmed by the familiarity. A group of people sitting by the fireplace turned at my entrance and proceeded to stare. Roy, another farmer and his wife, and Mary Donnelly were huddled together like they were in the midst of a football scrum.

Ever since Boone had left, the gossip mill had been in overdrive. The wheel was spinning faster than the back axle of a car in a Fast and the Furious movie, leaving a trail of rubber on the road an inch thick. Glancing down, I saw I was caked with mud, which wasn’t helping to slow the constant stream of hearsay.

“She’s been wanderin’ all over the place burnin’ sage,” Roy said, his voice floating across the pub. “It’s strange, even for her.”

“Aileen was always doin’ queer things,” another farmer added, not caring for his volume.

“Must be a family thing,” Mary Donnelly said, eyeing me across the room, sour that her wedding plans had to be thrown out. “They were all like that.”

“I can hear you,” I practically shouted. “Crazy Skye Williams has nothing wrong with her ears, thank you very much.”

“Skye, you’re covered in mud,” Maggie said, shooing the others away. “What have you been doin’ out there?”

If they only knew. Man, that was like my messed-up personal mantra. If only they knew what lengths I was going to protect them from craglorns who hadn’t seemed to have forgotten how to use their own magic…even though they were starved and on the road to complete mummification. What a mouthful.

“I slipped,” I muttered, eyeing the group in the corner. Old men and gossiping old ladies.

“Did you see the lightnin’ before?” Roy asked, ignoring Maggie and me.

“Lightnin’?” the other farmer asked. “There’s no lightnin’ this time of year.”

“Saw it with me own eyes. A bright flare, yellow like a firework.”

“You’re goin’ senile,” Mary said. “There’s no such thing as yellow lightnin’. Everyone knows it’s blue.”

“Like the rinse you put in your hair?” Roy shot at her.

Maggie clucked her tongue. “You need a dram of whiskey,” she said. “That’ll warm you right up. Don’t listen to those old eejits.”

I sat on a stool, the gravity of what I’d just experienced in the forest, catching up with me. I felt exhaustion tugging on every limb—the physical and emotional kind—and watched Maggie fussing behind the bar.

“How are you?” she asked, setting the glass down in front of me.

I knew she was getting at Boone’s disappearance, so I shrugged. “As well as I can be, I suppose.”

“Aye, it’s a difficult thing, to be sure.”

“I have…a lot of things going on.” I sighed and lifted the glass to my lips. Taking a sip, the liquor burned down my throat and hit my stomach with a bang. Wheezing, I pushed it away as Maggie chuckled.

“Still can’t hold your whiskey,” she said. “You know if you want to talk about it…”

I nodded. “I know.” But I couldn’t. Not all of it.

“I’m worried about you, Skye,” she murmured, leaning against the bar. “Is somethin’ more goin’ on?”

I blinked, suddenly on the verge of tears. Over my failed barrier, over sending Boone away, over the fear I felt about Carman’s looming assault on the hawthorn, over not being able to tell anyone about it, over protecting Mairead from being dragged back into this whole mess… The list went on, and I hardly had the breath to let it all out. The secret was burning a hole in my heart.

“I think I’ve just been trying to ignore everything,” I said, half lying. “And it’s finally catching up with me.”

“Ah, we all have to face our hurts at some point,” she replied. “That’s the law of life. You can’t avoid the truth in your heart for long.”

“You say that like you’ve been through it.”

“Aye, well most people have their hearts broken at least once in their lifetime,” she said with a nod. “But it’s what you do next that matters.”

My fingers tightened around the glass of whiskey. She was right. How many times did I have to be beaten over the head with it?

“So, what’s next, Skye Williams?”

“I’m going to fight,” I said, jumping off the stool.

“For?” Maggie called out to me.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you!”

“That’s not reassurin’,” she said. “It’s slightly terrifyin’, is what it is.”

A wave of nausea rolled in my stomach, and I tensed.

“Skye?”

“I think I’m going to hurl…”

“Not on the floor! Hold it in! Hold it in!” Maggie raced around the end of the bar brandishing a bucket, but…

I doubled over and…

“Blargh!”

Chapter 14

The moment I got home, I puked neon yellow into the toilet bowl. Again. The color had nothing to do with my magic, by the way. That was when I discovered the mark on my guts.

I stared at the red welt on my stomach in the mirror and grimaced. A handprint with five dots all spaced out to match the five claws the craglorn had pressed against me when it had tried to feed. Gross. The word feed made me want to