by J. M. Briggs
“East door,” Jenny said quickly. Her whole body was tense.
“That was the first one I did,” Morgana said. “It’s the main one into the food court.” Sighing in relief, Jenny slumped against Lance. Morgana watched them and took a sip of her tea. “After that, we cast a spell to confuse anyone who saw you come out and disrupt any cell phone footage. That one was a little concerning… I’m not sure how well it worked, and it is sure to cause questions.” Morgana shook her head. “We kept ourselves hidden, which is utterly exhausting.”
“Where is Merlin?”
“He’s at the admin building. As I said, it is chaotic. I’ll have to report soon, but everyone is so badly shaken that my absence won’t be an issue for a little longer.”
“Thank you for helping contain everything,” Alex said. “I don’t want to be questioned.”
“You still might be,” Morgana cautioned her. “You came out after the bomb went off. There might be questions about your survival.”
Bran cursed softly. “Yeah, anyone inside should be dead just from the shockwave.”
“Maybe: the seemingly small explosion but the shredded interior will confuse them for a while,” Morgana said. Her lips curved into a strange almost sarcastic smile. “There is a clear line, I’m afraid, where your dome was. Merlin and I were able to muddy it a little, but the police were right behind us. Everything inside had been torn up into small pieces while things outside were mostly intact.”
“The pressure waves kept bouncing,” Bran explained. “The shield, well, shielded us, but it didn’t cancel out the pressure.”
“Still, it was well done,” Morgana said quickly. Her eyes softened, and she looked at all of them, including Jenny. “We will deal with the aftermath as best we can, but far worse would have been losing you to Arthur’s attack.”
“At least people were able to get out,” Jenny said.
“Yes,” Morgana agreed. “Setting off a bomb at the Student Union during lunch was clearly an attempt to kill as many students as possible and make a statement. With all of you having different majors and very different classes at this point, you’re rarely together on campus.”
“What happens now?” Jenny asked.
“The university is starting to make calls to students to make sure that everyone is accounted for,” Morgana said. “Be sure to keep your-”
“I don’t mean that,” Jenny said softly. “I mean, what are you mages going to do? Are you going to leave Ravenslake? Arthur knows where you and Merlin live. Nothing is stopping him from bombing your houses. We at least have Timothy here to keep an eye on the alarms and he has a cell phone; as weird as that is. Are you going to go on the road to hunt him down?”
“You just started your junior year,” Morgana said carefully. “If you decide that you need to leave now then there is time for you to finish your educations at a later date.”
“Do you think we should?” Aiden asked.
Morgana opened her mouth but hesitated. She looked down into her tea. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “This is… Merlin and I have never dealt with anything like this. In the past, the wars were public because everyone knew about the Sídhe. But the world changed, and we started hiding the conflicts, but even then, it was always about magic. I- I’m honestly not sure what the best course of action is now. Arthur escalated to using guns and now this… I’m very worried about how far he will go.” She looked up and met Alex’s gaze. “I dare say that you were right about the Queen’s death. With her dead, Arthur is doing things his own way.”
“So, what do we do now?” Nicki asked. “Wait it out?”
“We need to see what happens on campus first,” Morgana said. “I don’t want you to draw attention to yourselves by taking off. If other students leave, then it becomes an option. I hate the idea of retreating, but destroying Arthur is now our greatest priority.”
“So, we wait,” Bran said. He didn’t sound impressed.
“We need to plan,” Morgana corrected. “Arthur has changed the battlefield on which we fight. Tomorrow, once people have rested, we can start trying to scry for him and see what we can learn.”
Despite her desire to go upstairs and crawl into bed, Alex turned her attention back to the television. Arthur was pushing things into real warfare. Modern warfare. She should have taken the guns as a warning, but she hadn’t. Whatever Arthur was after, he was going to fight for it using whatever tools he had. Regret that she’d ever trusted him welled up in Alex’ chest and she looked down at her hands. He had to die.
But what did he really want? Was this all about becoming King of the Iron Realm, or was there something more? Had he truly dismissed his mother’s concerns about the Darkness or did he have something planned? She didn’t know. But Alex knew that Arthur had to die. That would be the starting point of anything that came next.