City of Spells

by Alexandra Christo

  And then he clapped.

  Not slow and tense, but loud and erratic, bubbling with laughter as he did so. His shoulders shook with glee.

  “Bravo, Wesley,” Ashwood said, delighted. “You really are a wonder. So many great plans inside of that head. It’s a shame that you waste it all.”

  “He has a lot of potential,” Zekia agreed.

  Karam didn’t like the way she stared between Wesley and Tavia.

  “Your armies will fall,” Karam said.

  When she spoke, Zekia’s eyes shot to her, taking her attention from Tavia.

  Ashwood shook his head. “Every soldier I have can be replaced,” he said. “Can you say the same?”

  Karam couldn’t.

  Each loss she had felt was a blow, and Asees’s death had nearly been the thing to kill her spirit. If she lost someone else—if she lost Tavia to that awful future she had seen—then Karam would never forgive herself for it.

  “I don’t need an army to deal with you four,” Ashwood said. “You’re just children who must be disciplined.”

  “Why don’t you quit talking and try to kill us?” Wesley asked. “And then I can take back my sister.”

  Karam could see Zekia’s lips shaking and how her hand flinched to move forward, as though to reach out, maybe, and grab on to Wesley, like a child clinging to her favorite toy.

  Or, Karam supposed, a little girl clinging to her big brother.

  But it was too late for that now. It was too late for Zekia.

  Ashwood inclined to face Wesley, his shadows shifting to reveal the point of a smile on his narrow face.

  “She was never yours,” he said. “She was always mine.”

  Zekia brought a hand to the back of her neck, like she was rubbing away old strings.

  “Don’t forget, kid. You get to choose,” Wesley said to her. “I trust you.”

  Zekia sighed.

  At him. At herself.

  She looked at him with those same graveyard eyes that Wesley had, took in a breath, and said—

  “That’s dangerous.”

  No sooner did the words float from her lips than a burst of lightning exploded from the sky and snapped at Tavia’s feet. Without thinking, Karam shoved her out of the way and the two of them toppled to the ground in a heap.

  Ashwood clapped his hands again, applauding Tavia’s near death.

  Karam scrambled to her feet and pulled Tavia up with her, but Zekia was already sending another shot of lightning her way. Karam pushed Tavia again, but the busker’s ankle caught and when she crashed to the ground for a second time, Tavia’s head bounced against the pavement.

  There was blood in her mouth.

  She’s going to kill her, Karam thought.

  This was the moment she and Arjun had seen in that vision.

  This was the bridge that Tavia was going to die on.

  “Yes,” Ashwood cheered. “My little warrior, you are a wonder.”

  Karam half-expected Saxony’s sister to be laughing maniacally beside him, but Zekia stood still, with an odd crease in the center of her tiny brows. She did not look happy to see Tavia’s blood painted across the bridge.

  Wesley and Saxony ran over and while Wesley lifted Tavia from the ground, Saxony cast a wall of protection in front of them.

  Karam pulled out her knives.

  She wouldn’t let this happen.

  “Don’t do this,” Wesley said. “Don’t turn your back on your family.”

  “I’m not,” Zekia said. “I know who my real family is.”

  Whatever side Zekia was on, she would have family. Ashwood had plagued her thoughts and twisted her mind so that she saw him as a father she would gladly choose over her sister and her brother.

  “Gods damn it, kid,” Wesley said. “Don’t be an idiot!”

  “Wesley,” Ashwood said.

  His voice filled with something close to love.

  “Don’t be rude. You’re standing in the way of our new world.”

  “A new world,” Zekia repeated.

  Her voice was smaller than Karam remembered.

  “I’ve seen the world and—”

  “I have seen things too,” Karam said. “And unlike you, I will not let them come to pass.”

  She threw her knife at Zekia.

  It sailed past Ashwood, nearly clipping his shadow ear as it twisted into the air and landed straight in Zekia’s shoulder.

  She fell back and Ashwood yelled with such force that the beams of the bridge clanged and shook.

  Saxony started to run toward her sister, and Karam realized at the last minute that it wasn’t to help Zekia to her feet, but to keep her perpetually on her ass.

  Magic against magic.

  Tavia fell into Karam, who just barely held her footing, as the bridge shook with Ashwood’s anger. But Wesley seemed unmoved, unfazed, as though even the possibility of the bridge crumbling could not shake him.

  Karam twisted her extra knives in her hands.

  “You two take Ashwood,” she said. “Saxony and I will handle Zekia.”

  Anything she could do to keep the girl occupied.

  “Karam,” Tavia said.

  She could see the fear on her friend’s face.

  “I will handle it,” Karam told her. I will keep you safe, she thought. “Just finish what we started.”

  Wesley and Tavia nodded, and Karam wasted no time in running toward Saxony and her sister, who were flinging magic at each other.

  “Saxony!” Karam called out in warning.

  Zekia lifted up a hand and a cable from the bridge snapped, flicking toward Saxony in a whip. It missed her somehow, but the bridge teetered with the force of it, dropping closer to the waters below.

  Karam gritted her teeth and tackled Zekia to the ground.

  She pressed a knife to the young girl’s throat.

  Saxony would never forgive her if she did this.

  Tavia wouldn’t survive if she didn’t.

  “You can’t do that!” Zekia said.

  She flung her hand out and Karam was lifted off of her and thrown backward.

  “You don’t understand,” Zekia said, pushing herself up. “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  She tried to walk toward them, but Saxony thrust her hand out, her entire palm engulfed in bright yellow flame.

  “Get back!” she said. “I mean it, Zekia. Don’t make me do this.”

  Saxony’s voice splintered on her plea and it broke Karam’s heart to hear it.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Zekia said. “We’re not going to do this.”

  “Yes, we are,” Karam told her.

  She stood and adopted her fighting stance, steadying any doubt in her bones.

  “I’m doing what I have to,” Zekia said.

  “So am I,” Karam said.

  Karam was supposed to be a protector, she was supposed to be honoring her family’s legacy.

  And she couldn’t do that if Zekia lived.

  35

  TAVIA

  There he was, finally.

  Dante Ashwood, standing in front of Tavia and Wesley.

  The man who had poisoned the poorest people in Creije with his dirty elixir long before this war, creating the magic sickness in a bid to be all-powerful.

  The man who had destroyed Tavia’s home.

  The man who had made her into an orphan.

  Don’t cry, ciolo, the memory of her mother’s voice whispered.

  “Two against one,” Tavia said. “I don’t hate those odds.”

  Ashwood’s shadows shook with his laughter. “Just like a busker to be so cocky. I wonder if you’d feel the same if my boy came back to my side?”

  Wesley straightened beside Tavia and she hated, truly hated, how the Kingpin’s words still had such a hold on him.

  I know who you are, she thought, hoping that somehow he could hear. I love you and nothing can change it.

  Then, miraculously, as though Wesley really could read her mind, he squee
zed Tavia’s hand in his and she felt her heartbeat steady.

  “You’re not going to make me into your little lapdog again,” Wesley said.

  “You were never my lapdog,” Ashwood told him. “You were my family.”

  Wesley’s jaw tightened, but it was only for a second, and then the rigidness was replaced by a smile, so quick that Tavia was sure only she had caught it.

  It was one of her greatest talents—seeing the parts of Wesley that nobody else could.

  “I already have a family,” Wesley said.

  He threw his hand out and black smoke curled from his fingertips, just like it had back in the forest. The flames were fast, sliding across the bridge and toward the Kingpin without mercy.

  Hope shot into Tavia’s heart.

  She had seen Wesley use those flames to decimate a tornado.

  She knew the power he had and maybe, just maybe—

  Ashwood held up his hand as if to say stop and a barrier of light slid in front of him.

  Wesley’s flames hissed against it, like it had burned them. They retreated and then faded into smoke.

  His magic couldn’t get through.

  Wesley tried again, slinging both arms forward and hurling a tunnel of images toward the Kingpin.

  Tavia recognized the magic.

  It was the same magic Zekia had used back on Ashwood’s island to try and attack her sister.

  The magic Wesley had jumped in front of to save her, weakening him enough for Zekia to take him away.

  Wesley had learned a few tricks.

  He pressed harder and the cyclone of illusions raced toward Ashwood, only to rebound off his shield like they had been hit. The images splintered across the bridge, breaking apart and fading into the cement.

  Ashwood only laughed.

  Nothing Wesley threw at him could penetrate the old man’s magic.

  Dante Ashwood had been alive for more than a century, and years spent with dark, stolen magic had morphed him into something that wasn’t quite human anymore.

  Something that might not have been killable.

  Tavia turned.

  Across the way, Zekia dodged Karam’s knife and then lifted her into the air, slinging her back into Saxony. The two slid across the bridge, but then Zekia clenched her fists and they stopped just short of slamming into the metal beams.

  Tavia saw the young girl wince.

  She looked nothing like the ruthless assassin Tavia remembered, willing to do whatever it took and kill whoever it took to please Ashwood.

  She was holding back.

  Why was she holding back?

  It didn’t matter.

  Ashwood was their priority now and Tavia would deal with Zekia when it came to it.

  “You can’t beat me, boy.”

  “Watch me,” Wesley said.

  His arms were wide as he gathered a sphere of magic, bright enough to look like a Crafter moon, and then threw it toward Ashwood.

  It cracked as soon as it hit the shield, the ball splintering across the bridge into shiny moonlight shards.

  And then Tavia saw it.

  The gap in Ashwood’s defense.

  Zekia was supposed to be taking care of Saxony and Karam, and the Kingpin was staring straight at Wesley, so why would he need to watch his back?

  Rookie mistake, Tavia thought.

  She slid her knife slowly out of her pocket and inched forward.

  She could do this.

  Dante Ashwood was not going to kill her. Karam had seen the future and Tavia knew how she died. It wasn’t by his hand.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, Tavia ran forward, faster than she had ever run. She saw the moment Ashwood caught her out of the corner of his eye, but by then it was too late. She was close enough. She twisted behind him, lifted her arm high in the air, and brought the knife down into his back.

  Ashwood grunted and turned slowly to face her.

  He reached up, lips thin, and pulled the knife from his back.

  And then threw it over the bridge.

  No, Tavia thought, watching it tumble. No, no, no.

  Ashwood’s smile stretched across his face and he moved his finger from side to side, admonishingly.

  It wasn’t a mistake.

  Ashwood hadn’t left a gap in his shield because he’d slipped up; he’d done it because he didn’t care who tried to hurt him. He wasn’t afraid of them.

  Wesley’s magic still pressed against his shield.

  “Tavia!” Wesley yelled. “Run!”

  She stumbled backward.

  Her mother’s face flashed in her mind.

  Don’t be scared. It’ll all be okay.

  Tavia couldn’t remember if those were the last words she had spoken before she died—before Ashwood’s dirty magic had driven her to death—but they were one of the few she could remember and they still haunted her.

  Ashwood tapped his cane on the bridge and the sound reverberated into the wind.

  Wesley made to move for Tavia, but Ashwood was quicker than him and he flung his hand out, knocking Wesley backward, far enough that Tavia lost sight of him.

  His bone gun landed on the bridge where he had been just moments before.

  The smoke poured from Dante Ashwood like it was water, pooling around his feet and winding in and out of his mouth, through his eyes, between his long fingertips.

  “Coralina’s little girl, ready to take me on once more,” he said.

  He raised his hand and Tavia lurched backward.

  Through the air, through the wind.

  It felt like she was being pulled from the inside out, her every organ tugged backward, her skin threatening to tear from her bones if she didn’t follow.

  Tavia hit the side of the bridge, hard.

  She fell against the metal column with a clang and then slumped onto the ground. She knew she needed to get up, but when she tried to lean on her palm to push herself off the ground, her arm collapsed beneath her.

  It hurt like the fire-gates.

  Still, Tavia pushed herself to standing, ignoring the blinding pain up her arm.

  She slumped against the bridge beam, cold metal pressing onto her skin and through the tears in her clothing.

  Ashwood’s lips quirked.

  “Such hunger to live.” He stepped closer and the breeze blew by in a deathly croon. “I’ll enjoy taking you apart, piece by piece.”

  He won’t kill me, Tavia thought again. It’s Zekia who kills me. It’s Zekia. It’s Zekia.

  The mirror doll hitched in the back of her trousers called to her, begging for blood.

  Tavia cursed at her knife, sinking slowly to the bottom of the waters where Ashwood had thrown it.

  Still, she had one last dagger left.

  She pulled it from her sleeve and flung it at Ashwood, but the knife caught midair and with a flick of the Kingpin’s wrist it sailed back toward her.

  Tavia ducked in barely enough time.

  She couldn’t kill Ashwood. She could only delay him.

  And if that was all she could do, then she’d do it well.

  She reached for her belt loop and pulled out the first marble she felt.

  Cutting charm.

  She threw it toward Ashwood and it split into a thousand pieces in the air, glistening daggers of glass heading straight for his cloaked face.

  Ashwood waved a hand. Bored, almost lazy.

  The shards fell to dust before her eyes.

  “So much potential,” he said. “All of it wasted.”

  Ashwood crossed the gap between them in a blink and grabbed Tavia by the shoulders.

  His nails dug into her like knives of his own.

  “At the very least, your mother died without a fuss,” he said.

  Tavia spat on the floor by his feet.

  “After I kill you, nothing will stop my boy from coming back to me.”

  Tavia looked at Wesley’s bone gun on the bridge floor and steeled herself.

  Ashwood was close enough to whisper in
her ear, cold breath making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  “Wesley and I will create a new world together.”

  Tavia flung her head forward.

  The tip of her skull cracked against a part of Ashwood’s face that wasn’t made from shadow and magic.

  He growled and stumbled backward and Tavia propelled herself forward, moving past him and skidding across the rough concrete of the bridge.

  It burned against her skin, so much so that she felt like she’d grazed herself to the bone.

  She grabbed Wesley’s gun, felt the familiar weight of it in her hands. The comfort it had brought for those weeks when she didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

  She aimed. Dante Ashwood’s bloodred lips tilted upward.

  “I like the old world just fine,” Tavia said.

  And then she pulled the trigger.

  36

  WESLEY

  The bullet went through Ashwood’s neck and hit the bridge column behind him with a loud clang.

  Wesley winced and stood, rubbing his head as Ashwood gurgled and clutched at his neck, letting out a strangled kind of cry.

  Wesley ran for Tavia.

  It wasn’t enough. That couldn’t kill him.

  Wesley needed to get to her before Ashwood did.

  Ashwood swiped his hand through the air again.

  Wesley flew backward. Tavia flew backward.

  They tumbled through the air together with frightening speed and Wesley caught a glimpse of Tavia crashing against the barrier before his head hit the beam and he catapulted over the side railing.

  Wesley had just enough time to gather his magic and stop himself from falling into the watery depths.

  He floated below the bridge, his magic jutting in and out as the pain in his head started to throb. He felt dizzy with it, the realms blurring and then struggling to refocus again.

  He’d hit the beam hard enough that he could feel blood on him, but he couldn’t tell which part of his face it was coming from. Everywhere hurt, like thousands of tiny needles puncturing his cheeks and the cracks in his lips.

  Wesley reached up a shaking hand and grabbed the railing.

  The moment his fingers curled around it, his magic let out a sigh of relief as though it thought that meant it could rest for a moment.

  Wesley sucked in a breath as he dangled from the bridge, one hand gripping the railing and the other floundering in the air.