by K. M. Shea
Angelique sprinted into the street, her hair swinging around her in a heavy curtain. She considering shooting the four on the spot—their shields were just about finished. But the road was a busy one. Two mages carrying books, a teacher herding four young students, a merchant with a pushcart, and vendors from the few stalls set up at the edges of the road all craned their necks to watch.
Angelique inhaled deeply as she thought through the possibilities. This was far more dangerous than facing the four Council Members. If they got everyone riled up, Angelique would be ripped to shreds by other mages due to sheer numbers.
She cleared her throat and made herself shout, “Crest, Lazare, Primrose, and Galendra are with the Chosen. They’re black mages! Council Members Tristisim and Felicienne are back in Hallowed Hall, being protected by some war mages.”
“She’s lying. She killed them herself!” Lazare declared. “They’re dead!”
“Lazare!” Crest growled. The younger enchanter had obviously realized they needed to live up to their lies, or the truth would come out without Angelique’s “aid.”
More mages joined the crowd, murmuring to each other as they ringed around Angelique and the Council Members.
This is dangerous…I’ve only been tolerated in the past. They’ll turn on me in an instant.
Several of the mages pointed to the glittering cloud of weapons that hung behind Angelique.
For a moment, she considered flinging them at Crest, Lazare, Primrose, and Galendra. But if she attacked like that, to the observers it would seem unprovoked and done in cold blood.
Reluctantly, Angelique tampered down her magic. It no longer rushed around her like a thick river, but a small stream, and she lowered the weapons so they didn’t hang ominously.
“Lord Enchanter Tristisim and Lady Enchantress Felicienne are safe—they are with Lord Enchanter Evariste, who has been freed from captivity.” Angelique had calculated the comment to be a distraction, and she wasn’t disappointed at the audible wave of murmurs that passed through the crowing crowd.
“Evariste is back?”
“He’s been found?”
“Did you see him…?”
“E-Evariste is working with her,” Galendra squeaked. “They’re the ones working for the Chosen!”
It was the wrong thing to say. Even though he’d been missing for years, Evariste had always been popular with mages.
Mages eyed Galendra with skepticism.
“Galendra, calm yourself.” Primrose appeared soothing as she patted Galendra on the shoulder and a fake smile pulled on her plump cheeks. “You’re confused.” She glanced at Crest and nodded almost imperceptibly.
“This is how badly she has scared poor Lady Enchantress Galendra.” Crest strode to the front of their little group, the blue shine of his black hair was nearly purple from the red light of the setting sun. “She was so frightened, she couldn’t comprehend what happened. Arrest Apprentice Angelique.”
The crowd, fickle and distrustful of Angelique, grew a sharper edge to it. Several mages took a few steps towards her, their gazes set.
Angelique hurriedly lowered her weapons all the way to the ground and broke off contact with her magic. “They’re lying. All we have to do is call for Evariste—”
Her stomach churned, and Angelique realized her mistake: she’d just used a large amount of her core magic. Her price demanded she pay for it.
Nausea swept through her body with such ferocity, for a moment, Angelique couldn’t track where the earth began and the sky ended.
Her legs gave out, and she crumpled to the ground, her stomach heaving. She retched and felt as if she was burning alive as heat ate at her skin, and she sweated. She tried to spit out the acidic taste left in her mouth before her body twitched and crumpled in another retch.
This time, when she finished, she was splayed out over the ground, road grit pressing into her cheeks as she tried to breathe without whimpering.
The familiar zing of magic rippled. Even through the murkiness of her nausea, Angelique could feel it. She peeled her eyes open and saw Primrose advancing on her with fists encased in magic.
Get up—I have to get up! Angelique tried to push herself up, but her arms trembled with fatigue, and she couldn’t even lift her head off the ground.
Primrose came closer. From this angle, Angelique could see the beadwork on the enchantress’s slippers.
Stand! She’ll kill me!
Angelique managed to pull her head off the ground, but it took so much effort to even rest on her elbows, her entire body shook. She licked her dry lips and tried to utter a spell—she needed to protect herself—but her tongue felt thick, and she couldn’t speak.
Primrose took a breath and pointed at her, uttering a spell in the booming language of magic.
Chapter 35
Angelique braced herself, but rather than the flare of pain she expected, there was a crackle and the angry explosion of ricocheting magic.
She peeled her eyes open and stared, gobsmacked, at the petite woman who stood between her and Primrose, her arms raised to support the pink-hued shield she’d created.
“Lady Enchantress Lovelana.” Primrose straightened in surprise and backed off. “What are you doing?”
“I stand with Angelique.” The enchantress rolled her shoulders back and kept the shield up.
“You’re making a mistake, dear,” Primrose said.
“No.” Lovelana shook her head. “Angelique would never slip. And her magic isn’t evil.”
The murmur of the crowd was so thick, it was almost tangible.
“I must strongly suggest you step aside, Lovelana. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Crest flicked back a lock of his black hair and smiled handsomely at Lovelana. “She’s dangerous. We never should have let Evariste make her his apprentice.”
“You’re wrong!” Lovelana shouted. “Making her his apprentice is what saved him! What will save us all! She’s chased Evariste back and forth across the continent, stopped rogue magic users, broken curses, and aided nearly every country on our continent! She’s fought Chosen mages and faced down black magic. More than anyone, she’d know a Chosen mage on sight, and if she says you are…I believe her!”
Angelique stared at Lovelana’s back, her shock blanketing even the churning sensation of her nausea.
She’d never imagined the other enchantress would ever stand up for her in this way.
“Lovelana, that’s enough,” Lazare grunted. “Run along like a good girl.”
“No!” Lovelana flexed her fingers and sent more of her magic into her shield. “I’m not running anymore. I’m going to stop you!”
“Fine,” Crest snapped. “You’ve made your decision.”
Angelique twitched, and Lovelana shrieked when Galendra summoned a lightning bolt. It crackled at an ear-splitting volume as it hit Lovelana’s shield.
Angelique’s ears rang, and she was half-blinded by the bolt, but she could feel the power thrumming in Galendra’s core magic as she wailed on Lovelana, hitting her pink shield again and again.
Lovelana’s pretty skirts flapped in the gale-storm winds, and she planted her silk slippers on the ground as she held her shield against the onslaught.
She needs help!
Angelique tried to stand, but her left knee gave out, and she fell with a painful crack.
The hiss of disintegrating magic drew her gaze up, where the flashing lightning was burning a hole through the shield.
Angelique opened her mouth, intending to speak a spell that would supplement Lovelana’s, but her stomach rolled, and instead, she painfully bent over in a dry heave.
The lightning flared again, but there was a crackle of magic, and a new power rippled through the streets, crawling up the side of Lovelana’s shields and shoring up the weak spots with an ice coating that was at least a foot thick.
Ice…but who?
“That’s enough out of the four of you.” Sybilla bustled past two gaping mages, pausing just
long enough to settle her spectacles on the tip of her nose. “I think it’s obvious your game is up. Angelique has successfully revealed you for the traitors you are.”
The fairy godmother held a ring which she waggled at them. “And no funny business!”
Could a mere ring hold enough power in it that Sybilla could block an enchantress with it? I don’t think even Stil could make such a creation.
Sybilla paused long enough to pat Angelique’s shoulder. “Just wait a moment, dear. Lovelana needs my help.”
Angelique waved her off. Her stomach wasn’t settling, exactly, but she felt like she could at least crouch without the world swerving around her.
The lightning subsided, and Galendra took a few shuffling steps backwards.
“What are you stopping for?” Lazare demanded. “Now is our only chance!”
“B-but—”
Crest unleashed a wave of water on Lovelana and Sybilla. With his magic, the water seeped under the shield so swiftly filling the bubble that the water splashed Angelique’s shoulders as she sat on the ground.
Angelique groaned as she stood, but with a twist of her magic, she summoned a dagger from the pile she had abandoned and flung it at Crest.
The handsome enchanter yelped and staggered backwards. His concentration broken, the water collapsed and flowed out from under the shield.
Her vision was a little hazy, but Angelique staggered forward and twisted her magic. It danced at her fingertips, silvery and cold, then wiggled through the ice shield Sybilla had created with her magic ring and Lovelana’s shield, sprouting her own opalescent shield on top.
Her magic cleared the leftover fuzzy bits from her bout of nausea, and Angelique’s eyes abruptly focused as the prickle of her powers cooled her body.
Why couldn’t my magic have done this when I was chasing the Chosen that swiped the mirror?
Despite her irritation with her power’s timing, Angelique recklessly grinned and once again loosened her grip on her core magic.
It spattered the sides of the buildings, crawling farther than it had before as Angelique brought new weapons to the road and reclaimed the ones she had abandoned. She raised them high above their heads, so they glittered in the dying sunlight like especially destructive stars.
Galendra mewled in fear, but it was Primrose who spun around, her eyes searching through the crowd of mages. She narrowed in on one in particular—a male mage Angelique vaguely recognized as a shape shifter.
“Don’t just stand there!” Primrose snarled. “Help us!”
The mage nodded and scurried to their side.
Angelique narrowed her eyes, and on a hunch, she flicked a sword at him.
An increasingly-familiar, green-colored shield sprouted around him, protecting him from the blade.
Another Chosen…But how? They couldn’t have arranged for him to just be loitering here on the off chance that I’d discover them and chase them. Does that mean…just how many of the Chosen have infiltrated our ranks?
A female mage joined them—this one a fire mage. When she passed in front of Lazare, a green shield grew around her as well.
“It seems to me, dearie, that perhaps there are more Chosen hanging around than we thought,” Sybilla casually observed. “What say you to the idea of flushing them out?”
Angelique stretched her fingers. “What did you have in mind?”
“Perhaps it is high time you show everyone here at the Conclave just what it is you can do.”
Angelique gritted her teeth as she stared down at the smaller woman. “And give everyone physical proof that I should be feared?”
“Do you really care what the rest of the Conclave thinks of you? Do you really need their favor?”
Snow White’s shy smile, Elle’s mischievous laugh, Odette’s fierce defense of her, and Quinn’s loyal presence at her back drifted through Angelique’s mind. “No.”
Sybilla nodded wisely. “And there you have it. So, what will you do?”
Angelique took a deep breath. When she exhaled, she actively pushed her magic outward. It switched from a purposeful drift to streaks of silvery white as it raced across the ground, dusted the rooftops, and invaded the darkest corners of the Veneno Conclave, racing until it splashed across the protective walls that surrounded the city.
Her mind felt…odd. Her senses were stretched in so many directions as she felt everything from the weapons at the war mage training ground to the needles the alteration and craft mages carried. Knives in kitchens and chipped glasses with sharpened edges brushed the back of her mind. But above it all, Angelique heard the screams.
Something in her twisted.
She might be willing to use her magic, and granted she didn’t really care what any mage thought of her anymore, but she never enjoyed being feared. She wouldn’t revel in the terror she produced with her abilities.
Angelique shut her eyes, as if she could shut the faint screams out just as easily.
“We’ve been found out!”
“Run!”
“Follow the escape protocol!”
Her eyes snapped open, and Angelique’s mind cleared.
She’d been trained for years at Luxi-Domus and had lived at the Conclave.
There was no escape protocol.
Angelique turned, away from the traitorous Council members, and studied the street around them.
It was pandemonium.
Most of the mages wore perplexed looks as they peered up at the weapons hovering in the air, then to Sybilla and Lovelana—who were still holding up a magic shield.
But a fair number of magic users ran. Some of them sported iridescent green shields, which made their sweaty complexions look sickly in the dim, purple light of almost-night.
It wasn’t until they started opening portal gates—all of them using a very familiar magic—that it really dawned on Angelique.
Everyone who was running…those who were panicking…they were Chosen.
No.
With a roar, Angelique turned back to Lazare, Primrose, Galendra, and Crest. She gestured, and with pinpoint accuracy smashed a collection of polearms into their irritating shields. She didn’t know if it was her anger at the realization of just how deeply the Chosen had wormed into the Conclave, or if her near-constant barrage had weakened Nefari’s spelled charms, but the green shields disintegrated.
“We’ve got to flee,” Crest shouted.
“But we can’t abandon our stations,” Primrose shouted.
“She’s going to kill us,” Lazare drawled, infuriatingly collected and sharp-minded, considering he usually acted senile. “Seems like a good reason to consider our covers blown. It’s over, Primrose.”
“It’s not like we didn’t plan in case something like this happened,” Crest added.
Angelique listened to their conversation as she shifted her powers, readying her next move. I can’t let them get away.
Rather than stab them through—which wouldn’t work because she saw the flickers of that wretched green shield recharging; this explained the large project Nefari had alluded to, unfortunately—Angelique arranged the seemingly endless number of weapons into walls of metal and wood.
As she wove them together, her forehead puckered. There aren’t a great deal of war mages. This seems like an excessive number of weapons for only a medium sized classification of mages.
Angelique saw Crest reach into a small pouch on his belt, and she slammed her creations into place.
The walls of interlocking blades snapped shut around the Council Members.
Galendra screamed and didn’t stop as she uselessly tried to push on the metallic wall, then tried to blow it down with a gust of wind.
The weapons stayed anchored in place, a glittering cage of sharp edges and inflexible weapons.
“Galendra, shut your piehole, and use your escape charm!” Lazare shouted, his voice loud and exasperated in comparison to Galendra’s terrified screams.
Escape charm? Concerned, Angelique rotated the
blades making up the walls so their edges pointed inward.
Peering through the gaps in the walls, she could see the four Council Members hurriedly pulling something out of their clothing.
They threw it at the ground, and fire blazed up from the spot, hardening into a gateway.
This close, Angelique could confirm what she already knew. They—and those who had already fled—were using charms forged with Evariste’s transportation magic.
“No!” Angelique screamed as they slipped through the gates and were transported into what looked like a darkened, rocky place.
Angelique broke daggers out of the walls of the cages she had built and flicked them through the gateways. She didn’t think the daggers would be able to pass through the gates, so it shocked her when she felt the familiar sensation of Evariste’s magic bloom in her mind.
Her daggers passed through the gate, and she heard Crest and Primrose each utter muffled cries that were warped by the magic of the gate—she’d hit them!
Angelique hastily collapsed her cages and maneuvered them to send her arsenal through the gates, but they snapped shut and collapsed in on themselves, disappearing without a trace.
“Again! They escaped again!” Angelique gritted her teeth, her eyesight unfocused with the bitter sense of failure.
Every time she thought she had Chosen mages cornered, they escaped!
“Angelique.” Sybilla’s voice had never before been so serious and urgent.
Angelique turned to face her but staggered when someone—another mage, a Chosen mage?—corrupted a protection spell placed on a nearby brick building, tweaking it, and the right side of the building exploded, flinging mortar, bricks, and splintered wood into the street.
Flames erupted in the Luxi-Domus buildings, crawling across the roof and consuming walls that should have been spelled against such destruction.
Water in a nearby fountain hissed and turned into steam as a black mage boiled it and then flung it over a courtyard. Mages screamed as the scalding water dropped over them like rain.
A jagged ice wall erupted out of the ground, splitting a wooden cart in half, flinging chunks of debris like an explosion. Several large pieces of cart were flung against buildings, shattering windows and breaking doors.