The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  The battle was still raging, but their voices were crowing that the tide was turning. Exactly as the attackers had foreseen and tried to prevent, once the combat mages were back on campus, the teachers released, and the students no longer contained, the extremists were unable to maintain control. The terrorists excelled at being a hit squad, not warriors on an equal battlefield. Sections of the enemy force who had realized their fate were starting to flee.

  Still, with my hands gripping the dirt and only the smallest bits of magic recharging in me, I was seriously vulnerable. Even with the thick ring of downed bodies from the blast surrounding me, there had been plenty of time for magic to arc over the top of the ring and end me. I looked around, slightly confused by why I was still alive.

  Constantine stood behind me, wielding his ribbon like a whip in an eight foot circle around us, snapping each piece of magic that ventured close. Blood was dripping down his forehead. His right fingers, hand, and forearm were bubbling with burns. Comprehension was swift. Constantine had been the one who had grabbed me.

  There was a very interesting smile on his lips as he studied the chaos around us, and as he looked at the reactivated arch nearest to us. His burned arm hung at his side as if of no consequence. He batted away streams of magic coming at us with easy motions of his left hand. As with the fight in the First Layer, he didn't lift a finger to aid anyone else. Bryant's scarf dangled from Constantine's back pocket.

  I shakily pushed myself upright and put a hand on his arm, activating the shields in both scarves that I was now wearing and spreading them to his as well.

  “Get what you needed?” He asked, somewhat distantly, as he wielded a blast back at the woman who had thrown it. Most of the attackers were now fleeing in earnest.

  “Hopefully.” I touched Olivia's scarf, then the crisped flesh of his wrist as gently as I could. “I'm sorry.”

  “Never be sorry for such magnificence of magic.”

  “If you weren't so hot, you'd be a dork,” I said, voice shaking like everything else in me. I could feel the magic of our latest leech prototype in his belt, under the edge of the scarf. I unclasped the metal stud, flipped it, and pressed it against the burn on his limp arm. “Heal.”

  I was burnt out and my magic channels were raw—magic itself was like a severely overworked muscle that I didn't feel I could flex again. But there was a little leftover juice from the scarves running along my skin and Constantine knew how to heal himself.

  His eyes, heavy-lidded with amusement and pain, were fever bright. “You simply do not understand danger, darling.”

  Before he even finished the sentence, he began pulling the last dregs of the scarves' magic out of my body. His crisping skin sizzled and smoothed to pink, then tan. Gold seeped down his arm and a full bodied shiver rippled through him.

  He scraped through my magic—burned out as I was, the feeling was akin to fingernails raked down the inside shell of a melon, as if he was trying to dig out the last bit of fruit.

  “What have you done to yourself, Ren? Any magic you try to channel will be a horrible mess. We can't have that.”

  His magic thrust through me and gripped the gold edge of the Layer hovering around us.

  The ground shook. Shouts echoed. The mages fighting near us stumbled and fell. Constantine was looking around us with a strange, dark anticipation, as if waiting for something.

  “Constantine.”

  At my strangled call, he looked down. “You should know better than to give me such toys to play with, Ren.” A grinding sound echoed and he pulled the magic through me, rehydrating the husk of my body. Magic flowed over me and healed as it went. I flexed my fingers as the leftover ache in them eased. The magic connecting me to the leech released.

  The earth trembled again.

  I squeezed his newly repaired arm, digging a nail in. “If that caused anything other than some poor woman's toilet to explode in the First Layer, I will beat you.”

  “Bound to have made some woman's day more exciting, and don't make such lovely promises.” He flexed the newly repaired flesh of his wrist.

  I gave a shaky laugh. I had to find something funny right now, otherwise I was going to sob.

  “You always were a smart boy, identifying the real prize,” a rough voice said. The leech was blasted from Constantine's fingers.

  Constantine pushed me behind him as Godfrey rose from the dead. Godfrey looked terrible—scorched and drained—but his eyes were manic.

  I couldn't call up a thread of magic, but I expected Constantine to blast Godfrey. Instead, he was carefully examining each face as the soldiers rose to completely surround us. Godfrey's personal force had obviously been laying in painful wait.

  “Blow the Midlands,” Godfrey said to a soldier at his right. “The combat mages are in there right now and the muses will never be able to hold campus together without them.”

  “I can't reach the men, sir,” a soldier said apprehensively. “The combat mages engaged our forces and are sweeping through the processing factory, dismantling our bombs and traps.”

  Dare was in the Midlands. Relief rushed through me. He would take care of everything. And Constantine would whip out some insane device at any moment.

  “No finale today, then,” Godfrey said tightly. “But we are gaining something far greater than terror. Leandred.” He beckoned forward with his hand. “Bring her here.”

  Constantine was still carefully examining each face surrounding us. “That is not part of our agreement.”

  My stomach dropped.

  Godfrey's eyes narrowed, as if he was contemplating strange new information. “Interesting. Come here, girl.” Godfrey's voice pulsed.

  My foot took a horrifying step forward. Constantine grabbed my arm, the only thing that stopped me from completing the command.

  Godfrey's sharp intake of breath turned to an exhalation of glee. “Sit, girl.”

  I sat horrifyingly fast—my arm ripping from Constantine's fingers.

  Godfrey's words were not insidious like Bellacia's, they were a flat out command that didn't try to hide the auditory magic control laced within them. Far more obvious than Bellacia's, but also far more undeniable.

  Godfrey laughed gleefully. “Oh, Leandred. You have made me a happy, happy man.”

  Constantine's eyes were dark and he cast a brief, almost involuntary glance toward the Midlands as if looking for someone there. He shrugged. “You haven't fulfilled your end of our bargain. You said he'd be here.”

  “And he is. Rise and come to me, girl,” Godfrey said.

  I began walking. Panic didn't come close to describing the horrid, sick, weeping feeling inside of me. I thought I had gotten a lock on auditory magic, but this was none of the cajoling that Bellacia legally employed. This was a steel handcuff.

  I had been practicing. But nothing in that practice had prepared me for someone using auditory magic illegally against me. Not like Bellacia's Level Two Offense that I had subverted just enough to use Constantine's vengeful device. This was far worse. Jail sentence worse. But Godfrey already had a death sentence waiting for him. Illegal magic was just magic to terrorists.

  “You cannot take her,” Constantine said, voice rising.

  “I beg to differ. I am doing so right this instant.” Godfrey pushed and maneuvered me between the bodies littering the ground. “You should focus on your own goal. He came here, just like you thought he would. And I now understand why he did so. But if you cannot figure out where he is, that is your problem. Forgive me if I don't stay to chat.”

  “I invoke Penalty Two for a broken contract.” Constantine's palms were out at his sides.

  Godfrey froze and turned slowly. “You are playing your trump card now? All of those little debts you've been saving, making all of those little contraptions and vortexes for us, and this is what you are turning it in for?” He looked at me, even as he still spoke to Constantine. “You will never be able to keep her. I'm not the only one with eyes on this mountain.”

>   “It doesn't matter. Let her go.”

  “Hasn't your father slammed his dreary speech about your poor life choices into your brain enough times already? No?” Godfrey snapped his fingers and motioned to the men surrounding us. “Don't touch him, not while arbitration is active. But don't let him move while we quickly iron out this little problem. Shields up at a maximum.”

  I could feel contract magic swirling overhead as shields rose around us.

  Godfrey leaned down and said to me in a low voiced whisper still meant to carry to Constantine, “Do you know how I knew you were susceptible to auditory magic? Leandred told me exactly how to incapacitate the most powerful mage on campus. I had asked him the question as part of our agreement, assuming the answer would yield Alexander Dare's weakness, of course. But the puzzle pieces have assembled together in a rather different fashion. What do you have to say, little mage?”

  His words twisted in my ears, hooking into me by magic.

  “I'm not the most powerful mage on campus,” I said, gritting my teeth and trying to fight the compulsion to answer whatever he asked.

  “Ah, you believe that. But power is sometimes nothing more than perception. Like you perceiving that you have less than others. It is a truth to you. While Leandred's truth is believing something quite opposite. That could be for any number of reasons, of course. Mages can word things in astoundingly devious ways. Like, what Leandred might have meant was the mage with the most power over him. He is a rather clever boy.”

  Those last few lines weren't meant for me. Godfrey was looking at Constantine and his words were taunting. A question to see if he was right.

  “He hates his roommate so much and has no attachments to anyone other than Alexander Dare, that I never even questioned the answer would be about anyone other than the Dare scion. I never questioned his betrayal. An artful double blind. Of course, he would think I needed more than a few auditory spells to hold someone such as you. Might have even thought his betrayal wasn't a betrayal at all. But no one can anticipate everything.”

  He snapped something roughly around my throat. All ability to touch magic froze inside of me.

  Constantine dropped his show of indifference. “No.”

  Godfrey smiled at him. “I stole that from Verisetti after he left the base. I wondered why he had it—always playing his little side games—and now I know. Now I know from where he was getting all of that Origin Magic. Filtered and created through an actual Origin Mage. But he shouldn't have let you run free, little girl. The old legends about letting Origin Mages reach their full potential are ridiculous. You can use them up at half-strength just as well.”

  There was a metallic flash across Constantine's knuckles. A silver ring changing properties to liquid and moving across the hills and valleys of his hand, waiting. I knew what that liquid metal coating his knuckles was—he had pored over the details of it with me.

  He had pored over the details with me at the same time that he had given elaborate instructions on how to use the stamp to greater effect—and how to protect myself, if caught. That he had done all of that...was interesting in the current course of events.

  “Con, you told them about my weakness?” I asked distantly, trying to focus my thoughts and ready my magic, even though I couldn't touch my magic with whatever Godfrey had put around my neck still in place.

  Constantine looked straight at me. “Yes.”

  “And the perimeter ward?” I focused on readying for a single blast.

  “I left the mixture to destroy and regrow it in a specified location near the Midlands.”

  “He is a betrayer,” Godfrey said. “Like every mage in the Second Layer. Only good for death.”

  I stared at Constantine. Olivia would agree with two parts of Godfrey's statement. I was the only one who believed he was not firmly on the path of destruction—even when faced with his betrayal, surface-level or otherwise. Constantine wasn't like Raphael or Godfrey, at least not yet. His soul was conflicted and screaming, not dark with black magic madness.

  If someone had healed Raphael, who was equally brilliant, of that rift—what might he be inventing now? What good might he be doing?

  Godfrey kept speaking. “He used you—set you up for a cold, sterile cell.”

  An expression finally sparked in Constantine's eyes. “You underestimate the place in which I would ever set her.” He turned to me and his expression was deliberately lazy and offhand, but there was an intense sort of wrath underlying his gaze that was not focused on me. “It would be canopied and blanketed with velvet, and there would be at least two over-sized tuffets. Very plush.”

  I reached out a hand, as if to touch his wrist, and his expression calmed somewhat.

  It wasn't okay—not at all—his actions had enabled Olivia’s kidnapping—but Constantine never did anything without five reasons. I would hear them out.

  I nodded slowly at him and something akin to painful relief flashed across his face. The liquid metal was nearly coating his hand now, but it needed another fifteen seconds.

  Godfrey motioned to his minions. “Time to go.”

  Constantine's jaw worked and his ribbon flashed out with cutting magic from his other hand. The minions stopped in their tracks. There was a cruel, savage aspect to his expression. “You don't touch her. You don't leave with her. This is not the deal we agreed to.”

  Godfrey sliced a hand through the ribbon and Constantine's magic, and Constantine fell in a long arc of blood and magic. Blood splattered to the ground in a long line. The minions inched closer around us.

  “Your arbitration time is up and now the point is moot. You didn't word the magic quite carefully enough, boy. Teenagers—always thinking you know more than you do.”

  Godfrey knelt next to Constantine, pulling his head up by the hair on top. “Sad, really. Such a disappointment you are. Even to your enemies. So much power, yet so little direction.”

  There was blood on Constantine's lips, dripping from his mouth. His eyes drifted up toward the Midlands, then back to Godfrey. “You will die.”

  Godfrey sighed. “You say that as if you have any use or life expectancy left. For your help, you will have your ten minutes, but nothing more. And in this battle zone, that will count for little. Had you simply stayed quiet, you might have lived to see another sunrise. What did you hope to accomplish by keeping her from us? To have your own secret pet? She is far too valuable. Verisetti tried to keep it quiet too. His stupid games will get him killed, but not now, I don't think, by you.”

  Godfrey tutted. “Sad about your revenge. I was hoping you'd end him for me.”

  “You will die,” Constantine repeated.

  “You should have just given her up—made a nice deal of it,” Godfrey said, like a mentor forever disappointed in his students. “Maybe asked for Verisetti's head on a pike. Our superiors might even have considered it. She is obviously the one the informants have been reporting about. It was merely a matter of time before she was exposed completely, yet you didn't exchange her. I think I see why now. But, it matters not. I have her now. I will be celebrated, and the Third Layer will rule again. We will be the ones with the leash to the entire Layer system in hand.”

  Constantine looked...unhinged. Vicious and deadly and without care for his own safety as he pushed upward. “So you think you are the only one who knows what they hold?”

  “I am the one with my fingers on the prize,” Godfrey spit. He held out a hand and Constantine's fallen leech zoomed into his palm. “And I will wield that ownership to glory.”

  The metal coating Constantine's broken hand glowed the moment before he flung it toward me. It splashed against my chest, then flowed upward, traveling against gravity in glops of goo, seeping into my skin as it did. Magic vibrated up through me and cracked the band at my neck and the spell in my ears. Already ready, I immediately blasted the broken spells outward, just like Dare had taught me, and the men went flying.

  I lurched to Constantine and quickly sketched a healing
rune on the underside of his forearm with my finger, sending the dregs of my magic through it as best as I could. Our skin contact seemed to be working better than the rune.

  “Sympathy and connection,” he responded to my unasked question, blood coughing from his lips.

  I could see the men starting to rise. Constantine didn't wait to heal more fully, he rolled and let out a concussive wave of energy through the living magic that still coated his knuckles—the remnants of the liquid magic he had thrown at me. The blast rippled, bending the air as it went, and the men went flying. They landed at odd angles.

  Godfrey panted on the ground, back arched strangely. Constantine's blast must have cracked half of the bones in the man's body.

  Constantine pushed himself up unsteadily and stepped over to the man. He put his foot against Godfrey's throat and pressed down. “Well, look at that,” he said bitingly, then coughed briefly into his elbow. His hair fell into his face but did not hide his vengeful expression. “I must not have worded my magic carefully enough.”

  “Con?” I touched his arm. I tried not to look at Godfrey as Constantine pushed harder.

  “Do you know what he would have done with you?” There was something savage in his eyes as he looked down at the leader of the group, even as he addressed the question to me.

  “No. Knock him out and let's get Marsgrove.”

  He leaned over Godfrey. “I'll give you your ten minutes, and not a thing more.” His foot pressed down and I blocked my ears to the resulting sound.

  Constantine yanked the leech from Godfrey's fingers and stepped over his body. The lines of his face were calm again, but his eyes were vindictively pleased.

  I lifted a leaf and transformed it into a bandage. It would only stay a bandage for a half hour or so, but it would have to be enough. There was no way I was letting Constantine do another leech maneuver. Not when Godfrey's body lay so near.

  I wrapped the bandage tightly around his arm. “Does this hurt?”

  “A bit.”

  I gave the end tie an extra tug. “Good.”