The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  He smiled.

  “You led those men to us in the First Layer.”

  “Yes.”

  I nodded sharply. “Why?”

  He had been looking for someone on the battlefield. He was still looking.

  People were fighting a hundred yards in the distance. How had we gotten so far removed from everyone? As I stepped around and in between the bodies of the fallen, I tried not to look down at them in answer to that question. “Why did you make a deal with Godfrey? Who are you after? What do you need?”

  I was pissed, but I would help. Constantine seemed to understand that.

  “All I've needed for months was you. My very own angel.”

  “Con.”

  “In more ways than you could know, darling.” He smiled, but his expression tightened. “I'm hunting someone. Someone I can never find. But someone who should be here. He should have come through the perimeter ward, but I searched and found nothing. I was promised that he wouldn't miss whatever was going to happen here. And you are here. And you broke his—”

  Emrys appeared in front of us so suddenly that I jerked. Constantine's expression reflected my astonishment, then as his gaze moved from Emrys to me, then back again, it morphed into some sort of horrible, bitter realization. He threw one hand toward Emrys and the other—the one that held the leech—toward me. His hand wrapped around my forearm, but Emrys was already in motion.

  A cord of magic whipped across Constantine's cheek, snapping his head to the side. He fell like a stone dropped from a cliff. His fall took me with him and he landed on top of me, knocking the wind from my lungs.

  Emrys kicked him off, ripped the leech from his hand, and stared down at Constantine, expression loathing. Air wouldn't re-inflate my lungs fast enough for me to do anything but stare.

  “I would have left you alone, an endearingly bitter little boy,” Emrys said. “You amused me with your attempts to track and undermine me. But no more, not after you dared.” The leech burst into flames in his hand. Green eyes reflected the promise of imminent, irrevocable death.

  Air returned and I rolled partially onto my knees, hunching over Constantine, hands thrust upward toward Emrys. “Stop!”

  Emrys looked physically hammered, as if pieces of him were a moment from breaking and falling off. He had been nearest to me when I'd blasted the magic from the Origin Dome outward. All of the time we had been arguing with Godfrey, Emrys must have been piecing himself back together and biding his time—but despite his physical wounds, his expression was of a man who didn't understand limits.

  Constantine reached around me and the end of his broken ribbon licked Emrys's chest, leaving a small paper behind. I could see the dodecaplex cells on the paper rotating for a split second before the edges of the sheet grabbed Emrys's chest with a crumpling paper sound, then a pulse of electric blue rippled over his body, thrusting him back a few steps.

  Something...something strange was ripped from Emrys...but he remained standing. A little pulse of gold magic rolled over his body and dissipated out into the air.

  Constantine grabbed my wrist, palm pressed over my control cuff. His palm was laced with the same liquid paint that had been on the dodecaplex paper. My paint. His fingers scrabbled over the metal, trying to get it to release. To set my subconscious magic free.

  Emrys's green eyes were looking down in mild surprise at the paper attached to his chest. “That might have actually worked, had this been another situation. Clever, idiot boy.”

  He threw out a hand and Constantine's head slammed against the ground. Constantine didn't rise, and the magic I was frantically sending to him—his fingers still connected to my skin—wasn't working. I gripped his cheeks between both of my palms.

  “Get out of the way, butterfly,” Emrys said.

  Magic leaped to my fingertips and I flung them toward Emrys, panic and terror giving my magic added strength, but he grabbed my wrist and the magic shoved right back up my arm, internally igniting me with pain.

  He dropped my wrist abruptly, but pain lingered along with the feel of my magic being unnaturally stoppered. I stared numbly at the man above me, the puzzle piecing together from my nightmares.

  Marsgrove had once told me that my shield set would give me tremendous advantage and protection, but that it would also make me especially susceptible to Raphael, whose spells were inextricably woven all over me.

  I touched Constantine's cheeks again, then grabbed his hand, but only the tiniest drip of magic was making it out from whatever had been done to stop my magic.

  But there was a drip. I looked at the paint on Constantine's fingertips, it was slowly seeping into my skin.

  “Clean-up is beyond dull.” The man above me sighed and rubbed his eyes as he paced. Green eyes bled quickly to gray than turned to a sapphire ringed with teal—the colors that made up my own irises. His blonde hair darkened and lengthened. He looked down at his chest, poking it strangely. “And that maggot actually broke something. How utterly delightful, though, that he failed so miserably in his revenge at the same time. Eight years. Delicious,” he said through the lips of the vessel I had come to know as Emrys Norr.

  But the real Emrys Norr, wherever he was, had never been on rounds with me. The real Emrys had likely never stepped foot on campus this term.

  Almost nothing physically remained of the blond, green-eyed man I'd been doing rounds with. The vessel in front of me now looked...like Christian.

  I knew exactly what stood before me. I had shaped the features on its face.

  “All this time,” I bit out. “I'm surprised the body count isn't higher.”

  “I thought you'd figure it out sooner, I have to say, even with the tedious task on my part to act like that buffoon Emrys most of the time. His body style fit your creation best, unfortunately. Alas, on the body count. I had a very nice plan in place in case you uncovered my identity before today.”

  The dolls at Alexandria. The familiarity of Emrys. I should have figured it out—the person on the other side of Emrys's flashing eyes.

  “And Constantine?”

  My golem poked his chest again. His body was slowly growing taller and even more athletic. “The Leandred spawn's lovely, celebrated mother was shopping in Salietrex the day I wiped the town from existence. One of my first pieces of art. A little messy, that one. I've gotten better, of course.”

  “No,” I whispered.

  I could see Dare running for us, casting magic left, right, and straight at us as he did.

  “I've gotten far better, and with you, butterfly, I've become divine.”

  His fingers twirled, and the air cracked and earth shook as magic pulled from the ground through me. A dome shot around us, twenty feet in diameter, trapping us inside with Constantine, Godfrey, and an obscene number of bodies—both minions and students. Dare's spells impacted the dome and ricocheted away.

  Dare skidded to a stop a foot before he splattered against the side. His gaze met mine, then immediately started probing the dome's magic, looking for a way in.

  Movement beyond the dome registered in only the vaguest way.

  “I hate you more than I've ever hated anything,” I said numbly.

  And I was tired, beyond done, with having my magic cut off, turned back on, and cut off again, like some sort of magical faucet controlled by everyone but me. I pulled my wrist slowly and deliberately along Constantine's painted fingertips.

  Raphael watched Dare methodically examining the dome's magic and flashed him a smile halfway between a smirk and a grimace. Dare spared a moment of his examination to exchange a look with him that promised death.

  Raphael pulled a fingernail along his own throat in a long draw, then turned. “Come, butterfly. We have appointments to keep. And these last few weeks have truly exercised my patience.”

  I gave a short laugh. “I'll bet they have.” I exchanged my own look with Dare. A far different one. Stall, his said, and five fingers were open on one hand indicating the minutes required. I turned back
to Raphael. “You stole that body from me.”

  “And such a glorious one it is.” My golem—controlled remotely by Raphael somewhere probably miles from here—pulled a tube of paint from his pocket and gave it a wiggle.

  My lips tightened in fury. “A drop of my Awakening paint to keep you going when you needed it? And to keep me under control whenever I start to slip your grasp?”

  I gripped my wrist and willed the paint to seep in faster. My sudden bouts of fatigue every time Emrys touched me were stupidly, easily explained now. And why Emrys had been furious the other day—the day following the loosening of Raphael's leash. And the sudden need to have control devices become an expelling offense.

  I looked down at my control cuff with the new violet stains from Constantine's fingers, and the older, blue stains upon it. “My ultramarine paint.” Emrys had touched it—right before it had started malfunctioning strangely.

  “You make such useful tools, butterfly.”

  Behind Raphael, a resurrected Godfrey was regaining his feet with help from a minion. Raphael's gaze followed mine and turned malevolent. His hand raised, then he obliterated Godfrey and the minion against the inside of the dome.

  Overwhelming nausea bent me over. “Oh, God.”

  I couldn't hear anything outside of the dome, but I could see Dare's increased motions.

  “Vincent was so eager to play at being an Origin User. Do not rue his destruction, butterfly. He would not have rued yours. He would have tried to use you, chain you too early, and I can't let that happen now, can I? Not when you are on the edge of true potential.”

  He smiled. It was Christian's smile, so achingly familiar—but it was also the gold-tinted smile of the person I hated most.

  Months ago, I had shaped the roughened features before me into the contours of my brother's face. And Raphael had stolen the form and shaped it further. Changing the features, making them less recognizable, but keeping just enough elements to capture my attention when the facade of Emrys blinked.

  It might look like him, but it wasn't Christian standing in front of me.

  Emotion rocked me. I grabbed the anger and launched myself over Constantine's body and at Raphael. Unprepared for that response, my golem tripped backward under my weight.

  I whacked his head against the ground and tore the tube from his grip. “You bastard. You utter—” I got in one more whack before Raphael bucked me off.

  We grappled with the tube and paint squirted out of the top. I rolled into it, dragging my arm and cuff along the painted blue path. The ground started to shake.

  “Look at you,” Raphael said, eyes gleaming strangely. “Breaking free of each control cuff that is stronger than the last. And when they stop you no more? What then?”

  The golem smoothly crouched into a fighting position, familiar gold eyes shining brightly, finally shaking all other color free now that the person on the other side had taken complete control of the vessel in order to fight me.

  He called the spilled paint on the ground back into the tube, and the earth abruptly ceased its quaking motions. He capped the tube with the thumb of the same hand that held it, never taking his gaze from me. “Don't be wasteful, butterfly. We have work to do. Especially with you trying to detach one of my finest creations from draining your magic and abilities when I need them. You have chosen to repay the freedom I gave you in such a duplicitous way. I don't know whether to praise you or beat you,” he said.

  My lips pinched together. Raphael had been rifling through my soul spells when I'd entered our room to find him there after the bone beast incident at the end of last term. And his magical experience far exceeded mine. He had taken my creation and looked at the exact spells I had planned to use—the ones that matched up with the golem's physical creation—then improved it. Improved it to a point where I hadn't even recognized my own work. He had used the inherent familiarity of it—the bits of Christian I had imbued—and kept me off balance with the threat of the Department.

  None of which meant I was useless in my lesser knowledge. I smacked my painted hand to the dirt and shot a soul-separating enchantment through the roots traveling the ground between us. With the thrum of splattered paint gaining momentum inside of me—supernaturally revitalizing my entire well of magic—the full force of the spell snapped toward him.

  His eyes widened and he jumped to the side, narrowly avoiding the blast. The magic hit the dome and sizzled upward, strengthening it. I could see Dare swearing, but I was already shooting off another.

  “Butterfly, you might scar me.” Delight tinged Raphael's voice, uttered through my brother's mouth. “I had planned to use this body for something far more divine. Perhaps with a copy of your brother's soul and wearing his skin. He could have been the general of my army. Oh, the pain that would have brought you. You, who wanted the real thing and would not settle for a magnificent copy.”

  I didn't bother speaking through my sudden tears and fury, and launched another attack, twisting soul spells and blasting them forward. If Raphael was going to use my creations as bases, I would warp things back my way.

  We traded shots, ducking, diving, and rolling. But even thought I was flush with Awakening paint, Raphael had far more tactical, physical, and magical experience. He anticipated what I would do before I did it. I was shaking and running on angry fumes.

  And he was wearing the face of my brother.

  The only reason I wasn't flat on the ground was that I was delighting him. I could read it on his face, and it just made me angrier. Made me give into the anger and devise new strategies, pulling magic from the earth that would backlash and break something elsewhere, which further gave Raphael what he wanted.

  And I couldn't stop. I was so angry.

  “Those scarves are exquisite, butterfly. You rendered them able to bypass a communication shutdown by lightly leashing you to them. And all of those pieces of you, the tokens you gave to your friends...what is the difference between our beautiful box—worthy of Pandora herself—and all the tokens you've given to your allies? Is it simply a scaling concern in your mind?” he mused as he shot a bolt of cyan that would temporarily shut down my internal organs if it connected.

  “Friends,” I emphasized as I dodged, trying another soul separation spell. The dome pulsed and sang. “And I willingly gave them parts of my magic. Of me.”

  “And you willingly gave this—” A picture of the box rose in the air “—to me.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did. Don't you remember?” His voice dripped with deliberate hurt, and his golden eyes taunted me.

  “Don't play word games. And you know that I do not.” I somersaulted from the path of an almost lazily thrown bolt of electricity.

  But... “You can't recharge the box like you were able to before,” I said in stunned realization.

  His eyes narrowed.

  “It worked,” I said numbly. “Better than we planned.”

  “I will cede that you and that boy combined motivation with genius. But it matters not, now.” He smiled and blasted me off my feet.

  Unable to draw breath, I stared at the dome above me. The dome pulsing with Origin Magic.

  A thin line drew from the top of the dome into a vortexed dot of black. Detaching from the dome, the dot spiraled outward to form a black-and-white circle rotating in the air. Patterns and graphics moved and morphed as it spun. I knew what that was. It would open at any second, and the real Raphael, with his box, would be on the other side.

  The golem stepped toward me and smiled, its gaze on the destroyed gold cuff on the ground. “Your options are few. I saw Stavros looking, and I can feel his minions here. Head of the most insidious branch of the Department—he will spirit you into a dark cell and chain you there before anyone realizes you are missing.” There was something dark in his eyes, like memory. His smile twisted. “I do have plans for you to be captured there someday—the day Stavros's life will end—but I have too many moves yet to savor.

  “I have a
ccomplished what I needed to on this mountain—though your little boyfriend tried so hard to keep me from doing so. And you've learned enough on your own to be of use to me.”

  “No.”

  He smiled at me and tilted his head. “Your friend—so valiant in her sacrifice will not survive for much longer. I know you want to check on her, butterfly. Tick tock. If someone else chances upon her first, you will never see her alive again.”

  I swallowed. My fingers closed around Olivia's scarf and the magic I had gathered within it to trace her location. Helen Price's daughter would be a grand sacrifice, used by some terrorist like Godfrey...and Helen would not save her.

  I raised my free hand.

  Raphael's stolen smile turned elated.

  Someone shouted, “No!”

  Raphael's head whipped around in surprise at the sound. We had been in our own bubble this entire time—what...?

  The thought didn't complete in my mind before the dome was fracturing around us, Dare's magic splintering the surface in twenty directions. The dome shattered. The transportation circle burst.

  And Dare fell.

  Chapter Thirty-five: Reaping What You've Drawn

  The elation disappeared completely from the golem's face and a deep, underlying wrath whipped across its stolen features. Marsgrove was the one who had yelled, and he stood six feet away from me, just past where the dome's edge had been, steadily hacking toward us as he fought a group of four assailants who must have taken it upon themselves to defend their leaders. He was holding his own, and had been holding Godfrey's forces back while Dare had torn through the dome, but fighting multiple assailants required movement and Marsgrove was forced into a less desirable position for a single, crucial moment.

  Raphael whipped a sickly yellow blast at Marsgrove's side and I launched forward, over Dare, to push Marsgrove from its path. Marsgrove took a green blast to the chest and my arm went numb under a thin violet wave, but the yellow missed both of us and erupted in the crowd of assailants, piercing straight through two of them and killing them instantly.

  Marsgrove would never have survived that hit, shields or no shields. That kind of blast was the sort not often used, as it took so much magic that the user couldn't channel another blast, not even defensively, for a few seconds—a critical amount of fighting time.