The House Of Gaian

at her rival. “What you should have been and never were. The Queen of the Witches.”
    She walked away, striding toward the center of the clearing. Too much power churned inside her. Too much. She couldn’t ground it, not until she’d dealt with these Fae, but if she didn’t release some of it and it got away from her...
    When she reached the center of the clearing, she raised her voice. “To make sure you understand who you now must deal with...”
    She gave her anger to fire, forming it into a circle behind the circle of women. She held on to it long enough so that flames a finger-length high shot up from the ground, giving the women enough warning to step forward before the fire roared straight up as high as a man, forming a burning wall.
    She formed another circle an arm’s length from the fire and summoned air and water. Wind whipped around that circle with enough force to knock several women off their feet. It rose into the sky, twisting through the clouds overhead, gathering them until they turned dark and heavy with rain.
    Thunder rumbled, loud enough to make the ground shake. Lightning flashed.
    She gave her power to the storm, letting her temper and raw feelings be its channel.
    The clouds released their burden, and torrents of rain pounded the clearing and the women inside the circle. In the pauses between thunderclaps, she heard horses neighing in fear, she heard the Fae men shouting, she heard women wailing—and she heard the angry, distressed bugling of one other horse.
    Then she heard nothing. She fed the storm. The storm fed her. The Fae didn’t want to accept her because she wasn’t exactly what they were? So be it. Let them see exactly what she could be. Let them
    —
    She saw the woman and her four companions. The woman, whose face had been filled with joy and delight while watching the dance, now looked at her with terror-filled eyes.
    Do no harm.
    For a moment, her mind went blank, her feelings went numb, hi that moment, she felt something flowing from the land, something that had been striving to reach her through the fury of the storm.
    Joy. Celebration. Love.
    Rhyann.
    Do no harm.
    She heard the horse’s angry bugling and turned to see Mistrunner rearing on the other side of the wall of fire. He wheeled, galloped away from the fire, wheeled again, and charged toward the flames. He stopped short of the flames, then wheeled again to make another charge.
    “No,” she whispered. The breeding or training that instilled in him a need to protect his rider would soon override his instinctive fear of fire. He would try to leap that wall of flames in order to reach her and—
    Fire burns.
    Do no harm.
    Moonlight swirled with the rain and wind. She whipped her hand in a circle, drawing that moonlight to her until it formed a large ball around her hand. She flung it toward the fire. It hit the ground a man’s-length from the flames, burst upward, and arched over the fire, forming a glittering bridge. She summoned the strength of earth to anchor it. She channeled some of the power from all four branches of the Great Mother to give the bridge strength. It still looked as insubstantial as moonlight, but it was as solid as the land.
    She barely had time to make it strong enough to hold him before Mistrunner charged over the bridge and into the storm, trotting toward her.
    Tears stung her eyes as he came up to her, whickering softly, snuffling her chest for the reassurance of her scent.
    “Silly boy,” she said as she rested a hand against his cheek. “Silly, silly boy. You know better than to try to leap over a wall of fire.”
    His presence helped her regain emotional control. Her anger at the Fae turned to ash. They would never be her people, but she wasn’t planning to stay among them forever. Just long enough to drive the Inquisitors out of Sylvalan once and for all. Then she could go home.
    Men rushed over the bridge she’d created. They hesitated when they realized she was watching, but when she did nothing to stop them, they hurried toward the Ladies they had escorted to this place—the five women who were somehow different from the others.
     
    Her legs trembled with fatigue. It felt good to lean against Mistrunner. But she had to deal with the storm.
    Wind still whipped the rain with blinding fury. Since she had contained the storm’s release to the circle within the clearing, she suddenly realized she was standing in ankle-deep water that was swiftly rising.
    She tried to get a