Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

started torturing me. Only the red-hot, unending, searing pain as the silverstone rune melted into my hands and burned my palms. Even now, the air still smelled of charred flesh—my flesh. My stomach roiled at the acrid stench of it.
    I’d been sitting here, tied to this chair, ever since, just drifting along in a dull daze of pain—until I’d heard Bria scream.
    I knew what my baby sister’s scream meant. That the Fire elemental or one of her men had finally found her, despite the hiding place that I’d put her in, the spot where I’d told her to wait for me while I’d gone back inside our smoldering mansion to lead all the bad guys away from her.
    I’d heard Bria yell, and I knew that the Fire elemental was going to kill her, just like she had the rest of my family. So I’d let out my own scream of rage in response—one filled with all the Ice and Stone magic that I could muster.
    The first chunk of the ceiling slammed into the ground beside me, snapping me back to the here and now and spraying bits of stone everywhere. Even now, in my shock and confusion, I could hear the black, angry, unending mutters of the stone—all the rage and fear and helplessness that I’d infected it with when I’d used my magic without thinking. All that coursed through the stone like a heart steadily beating, pushing my fury outward with every bloody pump.
Thump-thump-thump.
    Another piece of the ceiling fell. Then another, and another, until my own house was literally raining down on top of me.
    And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
    I couldn’t even move my chair enough to try to get out of the way of the collapsing ceiling. But the stone did it for me. A large section plummeted to the floor right beside me, and the shock wave from it knocked my chair over and sent rubble flying all over me. I coughed and choked as the dust rose up like a cloud of gray death around me. I flailed around as much as I could, trying to get free from the ropes, from the chair, even though I couldn’t see anything now but a thick, dull fog. Somehow, in the roaring confusion, I felt a sharp,jagged edge against my hand, a small piece of rock that had broken off into a daggerlike point.
    Hope flared up in my chest, a tiny, sputtering match, and I moved my body as much as I could, trying to use the rock to cut through my heavy bonds.
    To my surprise, it worked. Even as the stones rained down on top of me, I felt one of the ropes loosen. I got one of my shoulders out from under it, then my other shoulder. In the fog, I searched for that sharp point, pricking my finger on the edge of it and drawing blood. But that pain was nothing compared to all the others I’d endured tonight.
    When I was sure that I knew where the point was, I maneuvered myself around until another one of my bonds was on top of it. Back and forth I rubbed first one rope, then another on top of that tiny, sharp piece of stone.
    Finally, the ropes snapped free. It was too late to try to run, so I put my arms up over my head, curled into a tight ball, and protected myself as best as I could from the falling rubble.
    I don’t know how long it took for the house to collapse, for all the stone and wood and plaster and nails to cave in. But sometime later, the earth quit shaking, and the roar faded away. The stones still muttered around me, though, with low, dark, ugly murmurs that whispered of unending rage and pain. I might only be thirteen, but part of me instinctively knew that the sound would never, ever fade from them.
    But I was somehow untouched by the falling debris. I hadn’t felt any of it even hit me.
My magic,
I thought in a daze. I must have used my Ice and Stone magic to harden my skin, even though I didn’t remember consciously doing it.
    I was still alive—which meant that I needed to find Briabefore the Fire elemental and her men recovered, assuming that they’d survived the collapse of the mansion. So I forced myself to open my eyes, push the rocky rubble off my body, and get up on my trembling, wobbling legs. It took a couple of minutes before my eyes adjusted to the gray, dust-choked air. When my vision finally snapped into focus once more, I wished that it hadn’t.
    It looked as though a bomb had gone off inside the house. It was just a disaster. Everything crumbled and broken and shattered and torn apart. Small fires flickered here and there in the dust, licking at splintered pieces of wood, furniture, and everything else that had once been part of