The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  Marsgrove seemed to understand at least something of what had just happened, because he rolled with my airborne tackle, his arm moving past his chest, fixing whatever had been done to him and healing my arm at the same time. The same arm flew out as we continued to rotate and sent out a concussive blast at the remaining men—most of whom, due to Raphael's magic, had been blown off their feet—then let me fall in a tumbling roll to the ground, as he somehow landed on his feet, whipping around to face the golem.

  Marsgrove didn't bother to go through the mental arithmetic or verbal questions that I had. He seemed to instantly understand who he was facing.

  “A cockroach really does always know how to hide.” He fired off a spell at the same time as he uttered the last word.

  Raphael smiled darkly as they began fighting. “So disappointing. Your attention has been so far away, yet all along...”

  All along he had been right under his nose.

  I pulled myself along the ground toward Dare—unwilling to consider that his dismantling of the dome and my magic had irreparably harmed him—as spells meant to maim and kill flew and shuddered in the air between the two men, like a deadly dance they had learned and practiced a long time ago.

  When we had first met, Will had said that Dare had beaten Marsgrove the previous year and that that had been a feat. I could see why.

  Raphael controlling a golem body wasn't quite as fast as Raphael in person. Controlling the vessel from a distance would require a lot more mental processing than him fighting on his own. And the vessel didn't have my box of doom to make up for the lagged deficit.

  Marsgrove's blade slid through the golem's left hand. An answering pain snagged me, and I rubbed my own.

  Dare's eyes opened a moment before I reached him and he shot a spell over my head that impacted one aimed our way. “Didn't die this time. Progress,” he said, as he threw an extra shield around both of us.

  “Progress,” I echoed vacantly.

  Hands tipped my head back and examined my eyes and rubbed the space behind my ears, checking for some injury. “Just a little longer, Ren. Hold on.”

  He tossed another shield over me and one to Constantine, then took out the remaining enemy combatants surrounding us, leaving Marsgrove and Raphael to battle alone. I numbly crawled back to Constantine—who was barely breathing, but alive—and put his head in my lap, trying to heal him as I joined our Dare-gifted shields together. I watched Marsgrove and Raphael fight while Dare brutally kept any of the remaining terrorists—or bloodthirsty students—from interfering.

  Magic flew from fingers, foreheads, and every pore. And it became quite, quite, obvious from the tossed out taunts that Raphael and Marsgrove were more than simple enemies.

  Then Raphael was in the wrong position, both arms hanging uselessly at his sides, and with the magic of the vessel depleted. “But I have what I came for and also what I need, don't I?” Raphael said, smiling at me. Olivia. “Delivered to my door.”

  Marsgrove pulled his arm back. The vessel was going to die.

  “Alas, that your glorious construction comes to an end all the same.” The light left the golem's eyes a split-second before Marsgrove's blast hit. The empty vessel fell to the ground.

  Pain and emptiness ran through me, then the connection to the vessel terminated completely, leaving me with another kind of emptiness.

  I held onto Constantine.

  Marsgrove's piercing gaze stayed on the vessel for a long moment before turning to me. “Where is Olivia?”

  Agony.

  “I don't know,” I whispered. “But I will.”

  Anger burned in his eyes during the first three words, but Marsgrove's expression turned unreadable at the last three. “You do not realize what you've started.”

  I didn't care what I'd started. I only cared that I would end it. “Raphael is not dead.”

  “No. Cockroaches don't so easily die.” He pushed the golem over with his foot. “Yours?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  Fire rushed forward and burned the body with instant, scorching flames. I watched my creation burn in five scant seconds, as if it was a piece of lined paper caught by gas flame.

  “Never leave anything behind,” Marsgrove said, his eyes narrowed at me, rightfully accusing. “We will discuss this after I get these crasseetars off our campus. Speak to no one.” He strode away.

  I looked up to see a paper phoenix diving from the sky, eating magic as it went, following behind its master as he swept the grounds. The magic that I had given Dare was probably going to come back to haunt me as well.

  I could feel the campus magic pulsing, Administration Magic sweeping through, the Muses doing crazy magic on Top Circle, the Midlands rhythmically breathing, one breath, at a time.

  Marsgrove, Dare, and the others wiped the scattering troops away.

  I looked back at the ashes flying free from the disintegrated body of my golem and saw the gleam of white. Lifting my hand, I called it to me. The magic of the object knew me and the tube flew easily into my hand. I curled my fingers around the half-empty tube of paint.

  I squeezed out a single ultramarine drop and wiped it across Constantine's forehead, then concentrated. The blue glowed for a moment, then seeped into his skin. I numbly put the tube in my pocket.

  Dare blitzed back into view a second later. His expression was hard to read as he looked down at his roommate, but he touched my shoulder before he lifted Constantine.

  Chapter Thirty-six: Never a Sacrifice

  Protection of friends tally: Devastating

  The earth was scorched. But it would be fixed. Just like last term. Many things were fixable with magic.

  But not everything...not always.

  Asafa and Patrick drew closer with Will, Neph, Delia, Mike, Kita, Lifen, Dagfinn and the others. They closed ranks around me on Top Circle, where everyone on the mountain had been called by Administrative Magic to gather. We looked down at the scarf I held.

  “Self-sacrifice in a Price?” Delia's expression was unreadable, but there was a tightness to her voice, and a resolution to action.

  Asafa and Patrick exchanged looks, communicating in their quick, nonverbal way. Patrick nodded, and there was a strange glint in his eye.

  Farther off, I felt Dare watching us even while his head was bent to speak with his uncle. He would have seen everything that happened up until the ports blew open—I had programmed the journal magic to stop and throw everything to him as soon as communications reopened. I pressed my fingers against the pulsing, ultramarine thread connected to my chest. He was going to ask a thousand penetrating questions, and I was going to have to figure out how I was going to answer.

  Roald Bailey and Bellacia were talking rapidly, and magic steadily lifted into the air behind them as if on airwaves.

  In the background, Helen Price and Constantine's dad and all of the heads of the Department—including the man they'd called Stavros—joined a dozen other authorities demanding answers in loud, commanding voices.

  I wondered what Marsgrove would tell them. For this small moment of truce, I didn't think he would try to get around the contract restriction in order to out me. But he might not even have to make the effort.

  Voices clamored.

  “Where is my daughter?”

  “My son is barely alive!”

  “Where are the students who are responsible for the massacre at the battle fields?”

  “Who blew the ports? I want to know that right now.”

  “—was completely obliterated. The Fourth Layer is demanding answers.”

  “Where is that girl? The one Godfrey was talking to when the transmission cut out?”

  “—General Telgent and the Troop? Where is Emrys Norr?”

  I didn't care to answer the questions being asked or to hear the answers being given. I didn't even know if I was still a student at this school.

  “Where is my daughter?”

  I gripped Olivia’s scarf. Raphael would be waiting for m
e, wherever she was.

  There was one thing I was sure about, though, and it was the only thing that mattered.

  I would get her back.

  Notes

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