by Jessica Gunn
“How?” I whispered, mostly to myself. Mostly because no one else here knew the story. Or what he looked like. Or, really, what this meant for Giyano.
Ashbel reached for the demon and placed a hand on either side of his head. His eyes flashed white in color. Then the demon dropped before him, unmoving.
Ashbel, Giyano’s ex-lover. Ashbel, who should be dead. An Ember witch Giyano had saved from the pyre in Salem during the witch trials.
Giyano stood before him, staring down at me. When he noticed me standing there, watching him and Ashbel, he lifted his chin up the tiniest bit.
Understanding came screaming over me even as Ben cried out so loudly that it spurred the fighting back into action. My mind blocked it out, blocked everything else out.
Somehow, Ashbel hadn’t died. For some reason, Lady Azar had been keeping him to use as blackmail against Giyano.
That was why he went back to Lady Azar after everything. Because the absolute only thing Giyano cared about other than stopping Lady Azar from using Riley to get to Alzan was Ashbel.
And Giyano wouldn’t have been on his Riley-saving mission had Ashbel not died in the first place.
She’d blackmailed him all along.
Giyano’s eyes shone with a fierce protective glint, a determination that cut straight through bone to my soul. And I knew in that moment that if I or any of my comrades did anything that got Ashbel killed, we’d all die.
Even me.
Chapter 24
Ben
Giyano’s face turned a blotchy red, as if the flames he wielded had crept beneath his skin. In a flash, he jumped from the dais, building a massive storm of flames as he flew, and launched them down at all of us.
Nate was there, building up an ether shield alongside one of Cassie’s Hunters. I hadn’t realized her team had magik-users. But I also hadn’t realized Lady Azar had another person with the Power in her back pocket. Suddenly, her offer to trade Riley for Krystin and Shawn made total sense: she wouldn’t need Riley if she’d had this other man all along. Which then begged the question why she’d kidnapped Riley in the first place.
Demons and Hunters both screamed as the flames leapt onto them. I turned and patted out a fire that’d caught on the back of Avery’s shirt. He nodded a thank you before shoving me out of the way of a sword attack from one of the demons. He spun, stabbing the demon through the heart.
“Thanks, man,” I said.
He nodded. “Go get your son. We’ve got your back.”
But with Giyano going crazy with unrestricted flames, I didn’t know if anyone in this room would make it out alive.
Krystin’s voice cut through the chaos, louder than everyone else, even Lady Azar. “We can save you both!” she screamed, standing before Giyano with a ball of her new Alzanian magik in her hand. Tendrils of power stretched out from the ball, reaching up into the air like a fire in slow motion. “I don’t know how she did it, Giyano, but it doesn’t have to go this way. We’re here now. You both can live!”
What the hell? What was she talking about? Giyano was going to die, hopefully by my hand. For everything he’d done, including turning on Krystin in the end.
Understanding slammed into me and I looked to the stage again, where Lady Azar was now holding Riley’s hand. The man next to them stood with wide, scared eyes at the scene before him. At Giyano as he squared off with Krystin. A wave of Ember witch magik flickered in his hands, the same orange ether Shawn once wielded.
Holy shit. That’s the guy Giyano had been in love with, right? But didn’t Lady Azar have him killed hundreds of years ago?
Water snapped around my middle and tugged me sideways. A rush of ether slid past where I’d just been standing.
“Head in the game!” Rachel yelled as she ducked from more demon attacks, water canister backpack on her back.
Right. Krystin could handle Giyano. At least for now.
I looked around for my next target and found Cassie halfway between me and the dais where Riley stood, holding on to Lady Azar like a scared child clinging to his mother. My teeth ground together. Riley had nothing to fear and she was not his mother.
Lightning built in my palms and I let it loose, wrapping the demon attacking Cassie with strikes that bounced from him to another demon a few feet away. He yowled, giving Cassie the opportunity to strike. His body grayed and fell to the floor as soon as Cassie pulled her knife from him. She turned to me and nodded a thank you before jumping into the next fight.
I ignored everything else around me and stalked toward the stage, making it almost fifteen feet from Riley before the heat from a fire raged close to my head. I spun at the last second and deflected the torpedo-like fire attack from Giyano with a quick twist of my wrist.
My lightning slammed into fire, exploding with a sound that deafened me for a long moment, during which I watched Krystin sail Giyano into the air and up against the ceiling. Then she spun and ran for the stage, Rachel on her heels.
I jumped in and the three of us raced toward Lady Azar. Krystin reached out and squeezed the air, pulling on seemingly nothing until Lady Azar fell to her knees. But whatever hold Krystin had had on her broke and she stood, laughing as Krystin stayed on course.
“What? Did you think you could go turn your magik into something ancient and still beat me?” Lady Azar cackled again, her shoulders shaking. It sent her whole outfit into ripples, the loose fabric at her back and legs dancing in the air. She hadn’t been in her armor tonight, which meant they probably hadn’t sensed us coming. It was the only thing that’d kept her from calling in reinforcements. If she’d gotten that message out, we’d have died from aura sickness as soon as more demons appeared.
As it was, every step I took was weighed down with the same feeling of pure dread I’d had at that house in the woods.
“Hand him over to me!” I demanded.
Lady Azar’s eyes met mine, an eyebrow lifting in a challenge. “Take him, if you think you can.”
I roared and jumped, zapping lightning underneath my feet to give me a boost as I launched from where I stood up onto the stage. I landed on Lady Azar and we tumbled, rolling. Ashbel backed away, his fearful eyes jumping from one threat to another. But his quick steps stopped and he stumbled. That’s when I saw the chains holding him in place bound to the dais even in the midst of all this fighting.
Riley stood there, tears welling up in his eyes. “Mommy!”
The false awful word cut through to my soul, shattering it. I’ve lost him. He’s gone.
But he wasn’t. Riley was standing right there and all I had to do was throw Lady Azar off of me long enough to teleportante over to him and out of here. But where would be safe if she was still alive? Where could I possibly have taken him?
A wind kicked up around us, sliding into the space between our bodies, and Lady Azar shot me off of her with her air-elemental magik. My knees hit the ground first, then my hands and face. I groaned with the impact, already able to feel how badly bruised I’d be.
I looked up, watching as Lady Azar stalked toward me, a small cyclone in her hands. Twisting and writhing and totally at her control. Unlike the rest of this fight, which was utter chaos. Some of our fifteen Hunters had fallen and so had demons, but not many of either side remained standing. And yet Lady Azar was still winning.
“You can’t take him back, Ben,” Lady Azar said. Her golden-slippered feet barely touched the ground as she walked, as though she were hovering instead. Golden jewelry hung from her neck, wrists, and ears, and only now did I see the small golden tiara tucked into her wild mane of red hair. It was a new addition.
She did it. She overthrew Ammon and became Darkness’s new heir.
Or she was about to. Maybe she hadn’t yet. That kind of shakeup would have been felt everywhere. Was it possible she planned to overtake Ammon before moving on Alzan?
Lady Azar smirked, watching my reaction as though she could read my every thought. “You wouldn’t give me the Son and Daughter of Alzan, and now yo
u will not have any of the three of them.”
She shot the cyclone out at me. At the last second, I rolled out of the way and into a teleportante that took me behind her. I elbowed her in the back of the head, then went to use requirem on her, but a burst of lightning snapped against my hand. It knocked me away, sending me sailing through the air.
I landed with a hard thwack against the stonework, stars dancing along the edges of my vision. Looking up, I searched for the source of the attack, and instead found Riley on the dais, his hand outstretched and tears streaming down his face. “Riley?” He’d attacked me with my own magik? The last demon he took power from must have been a lightning-elemental user like me.
“You. Hurt. Mommy!” he shouted, sounding for all the world like an angry three-year-old throwing a temper-tantrum. Lightning swarmed around him and he sent it all straight for me.
I threw up my hands, grabbing on to my son’s lightning attack and moving it around to take aim at Lady Azar instead. She knocked it out of the way with another cyclone.
This had to stop. I would not end up in a three-way fight with my son as one of my opponents.
BANG. A explosion rocked the chamber, followed by a bright flash that ripped across my vision. My ears went deaf except for a single, piercing ring.
I fell to my knees, crawling toward Riley through smoke that filled the chamber. Lady Azar and Riley both blinked wildly, confusion twisting their brows as they coughed.
Flashlights appeared, their beams revealing more of the scene as the echoes of boots against ground sounded through the space. I looked back toward the entrance we’d come through and saw a dozen or so soldiers, real soldiers, file through the doorway. Then one was next to me, helping me up.
Max, Rachel’s boyfriend. A Hydron agent.
They’d come to help us. But how the hell had they known where we were?
Max’s words filtered into my ears in pieces and strands. “…called to tell me… you were here… she knew you’d need help…”
I turned, spinning back toward the dais and pointed where Riley stood. “Rescue him!” I yelled, though it sounded like I’d only whispered. So this is what it was like to be flash-banged.
The Hydron agents—soldiers, really—swarmed around the demons, fighting alongside Hunters to subdue them, but these weren’t normal demons. They were of Shadow Crest’s ranking and power, and they weren’t going down easily.
“I got you, Riley!”
I looked back toward the dais where Rachel leapt onto it and grabbed Riley. She pressed a hand against his back and spoke a word I couldn’t hear, then wrapped him in her arms. He fought it as best a three-year-old could, but she held on tight—not getting her magik drained. She must have gotten him with a requirem.
Lady Azar’s face twisted into rage. “No!” she screamed, the sound making it past my muffled ears as she dove for Rachel and tore Riley from her grip. She yanked Rachel off the dais, wrapping her up in a tornado and hoisting her up into air.
Rachel’s eyes went wide, her hands going to her throat to pull away invisible hands.
I scrambled from the ground and the world tilted as blood seeped into my eyes. I’d been hurt? I wiped my forehead with my hand and it came away slick with crimson blood. “Riley!”
A pillar of fire appeared out of nowhere, soaring right for the dais. But instead of knocking Rachel off of it like I’d thought it would, the attack slammed square into Lady Azar’s back. She dropped both Riley and Rachel as she fell. Ashbel scrambled forward to catch him, straining against his binding chains to pull him away from the fight.
Lady Azar picked herself back up and we both looked for the source of the attack.
Giyano stood, Krystin at his side, an expression dripping of abhorrence and retribution and death. “Let them go. Both of them. Now.”
Lady Azar flicked her wrist and a wind scooped up Ashbel and Riley and brought them to her, snapping the chains binding Ashbel to the dais. She hovered them up thirty feet into the air, to the top of the chamber’s ceiling. The winds surrounding Ashbel and Riley moved so fast, I couldn’t see either of them through the tornado. And if Giyano hadn’t attacked, then there was no way either of us would get magik through that tornado to our loved ones. Why didn’t Ashbel teleportante them free?
Maybe he never learned the word-magiks.
Lady Azar sneered. “If you do not stop this, Giyano, I will kill them both. Starting with Ashbel.”
I watched, horror filling my heart. The fate of my son, of the entire world, now rested in the hands of his kidnapper. Hands that now caught on fire with a bright, blue-hot flame.
Chapter 25
KRYSTIN
Giyano’s body vibrated with anger and hate. I stood next to him, as ready to aid him in whatever his next move was as I was to stab him through the heart myself. I’d convinced him to turn on Lady Azar easily enough. But if she killed Ashbel, I had no doubt that all bets were off. For good.
It didn’t help that my veins had started to burn. Not from aura sickness, but from something more immediately sinister and inescapable: my magik had started backfiring. I was honestly surprised it’d taken this long, after six months of non-use and the transformation that’d occurred at Alzan. All the yo-yoing I’d warned Shawn about, all the times my magik had backfired before… It was nothing compared to this slow burn, sitting so closely on the edge of a scorching wildfire.
“Set him down or I will kill everyone in this room,” Giyano said coolly. “You can’t get to Alzan if both your conduits and your magik sources are dead, much less overthrow your brother in the process.”
Oh, shit. She really was going for broke. Ammon and the throne. Alzan. What more did Lady Azar want?
She snarled and rose her tornado as high as it could go against the ceiling. Riley’s wailing roared over the winds of the tornado. “I will kill him.”
Giyano’s expression didn’t change a single millimeter, but his aura began flashing through a kaleidoscope of colors along with his emotions. “He’s already dead. You’ve kept him as a slave for all these years.”
I looked toward Ashbel as Giyano’s words bit into me. All this time, he’d thought Ashbel dead, just for Lady Azar to have kept him prisoner. And Giyano was right; Ashbel did not look to be in healthy shape at all. But with time and recovery, I was sure he’d be okay.
If he wants to live after all these years.
Maybe Ashbel didn’t.
“Then so be it,” she said, brazenly cavalier, and dropped the hand to her side that’d been holding Ashbel and Riley up in the air.
Riley screamed as they dropped, nothing to protect them as they flew to the ground. Ben shouted something unintelligible, Rachel right behind him as they both raced to the spot where Ashbel and Riley would land. I went to reach for them both with my telekinesis, but someone latched on to my arms and swung them behind my back.
I looked over my shoulder. Giyano stood, restraining me, as his ex-lover and Riley tumbled. “Are you insane?” I cried.
But his face remained stoic, his body unmoving.
Shawn appeared from nowhere, blinking in from a teleportante, until he stood beneath both Ashbel and Riley. He reached out into the air and faced his palms against the ceiling. The pair stopped falling, held by Shawn’s newfound powers. Which didn’t give me much confidence because although he’d used telekinesis okay so far, there was one hell of a steep learning curve to this particular magik.
With them both caught, Giyano released me.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
Giyano’s form lit up with the blue-hot flames he loved so much and he took off like a rocket powered by flames beneath his feet for Lady Azar. He smacked into her and they tumbled across the ground, a mass of flames and the wind knocking them around. Her swishy pants and the almost-cape behind her caught fire as they rolled. But she flicked out the flames with a simple twist of her wrist before too much damage to her clothes had been done.
I looked for Rachel and Ben in
the mess, dodging errant magik attacks as I went. A swipe at the air to move earth bullets out of their path at my head. A touch of ala-ether to hold off one of Lady Azar’s ether-shapers.
The more I moved around the cave, the more I realized we were winning. Between Avery and Cassie’s team and the Hydron agents who’d appeared out of nowhere, only three demons remained standing. And they could handle the three.
Me, on the other hand… The magik coursing through my veins burned with every use. At one point, I stepped in to save Nate and instead of letting me go once the demon was down, Nate squeezed my arm.
“Your magik,” he said, eyes wide and afraid.
“I know.”
“Stop, then—”
I tore my arm from his grasp. “I’m not stopping until she’s dead and Riley is safe.” I turned, focusing my attention on Ben and Rachel, who’d cornered Riley to try calming him down. If we got Riley back, then whatever happened to me because of my magik backfiring would be tolerable.
“It’s me. Daddy,” Ben said, kneeling before his terrified child.
“Get away from me!” Riley wailed, twisting out of Ben’s hold. “Mommy, no! The fire!”
Giyano had completely engulfed both himself and Lady Azar in flames, although something told me that any demon as old as Lady Azar would be able to somehow keep them from burning her. Her air-elemental magik kicked the flames up and redirected them at Giyano. He cried out, burned by his own magik.
I jumped toward them, flicking her away from his hold even as the movement sent magik rippling through my system as though I’d been electrocuted. I stumbled as Lady Azar sailed into a nearby pillar and slid down it. “Stay the fuck away from him.” My voice was as shaky as my legs suddenly were.
Giyano spun on me. “Go. Run. Take Riley and run to Alzan before—”
A howl of pain cut through Giyano’s warning, silencing the entire chamber. Giyano’s face paled as he spun toward the sound. For one frightening moment, I forgot what the wail sounded like. If it’d belonged to a man or a child.