The door creaked as I pushed it open and strolled into what had once been Viktor Benson’s throne room. Now, someone else occupied his high-backed chair. Amusement flickered over Callan’s face as he watched me from where he lounged on the grand piece of furniture.
“No,” Lance blurted out as his suddenly panicked gaze landed on me. “I’m trying. I swear I’m trying.”
“It has been four days, Lance,” I pointed out while moving towards the table opposite his. “So I figured you could use a bit of extra motivation.”
Dread washed over his features as he looked at the three people trailing after me. Jessica, Leoni, and Darren were all wearing the handcuffs that they had originally brought to use on us. In my opinion, they looked much better around their own wrists.
Wood scraped against stone as I pulled out a chair and dropped into it. My three prisoners hovered uncertainly next to me. I snapped my fingers and pointed towards the floor a few strides away from Lance.
“Sit,” I commanded.
After exchanging a worried glance with the Binder, they shuffled over to the indicated spot and lowered themselves to their knees. From where he still lounged on the throne a short distance behind Lance’s back, Callan watched the events unfold while an approving smile played over his lips.
It had been four days since we won the battle outside the cave. Immediately afterwards, we had handed Lance the Enhancer and ordered him to dismantle it. However, it quickly became clear that the Binder had no idea how to actually accomplish that. We didn’t want to stay in the cave, but we didn’t want to risk going down the mountain with something as dangerous as a working Enhancer either, so we had made our way back to Viktor Benson’s house on the top level.
The dead stone mage and the rest of his equally deceased household had been hauled out of the building, and another mage had claimed it as his own. He was one of the people who had come in to see the aftermath of our slaughter earlier, so when we strode across the threshold and told him to get out, he had made the very wise decision to follow our orders.
I had to admit that resting up and recovering in a house with actual beds and readily available food had been just what I had needed after both the journey here and everything that had happened inside the mountain. But after four days with no progress from Lance, I was starting to get impatient. Hence the presence of our new prisoners.
“Hey,” Paige called from where she and Henry were sitting farther down the table. “No blood, okay?”
A smile pulled at my lips as I slid my gaze to them. They were sitting opposite each other while a chessboard rested on the table between them. By the looks of it, Paige appeared to be mopping the floor with Henry.
“No blood,” I confirmed. “I’ll just be using my poison on them.”
“Good,” Paige replied before returning her attention to the board.
She was getting used to our way of life surprisingly quickly. And I think Henry helped a lot with that. Especially since he wasn’t a dark mage either and therefore added a bit more normality to our otherwise overwhelmingly lethal and violent lifestyle.
“Please,” Lance begged again. “I’m trying. I really am.”
I slid my gaze back to the Binder. “Then I suggest you try harder.”
After kicking out the chair next to me, I swung my legs up on it and crossed my ankles. Lance cast a desperate look at his kneeling friends before returning his attention to the Enhancer.
The metal glove looked exactly like it had when we first snatched it from the chamber in the mountain. Gold-colored and made up of slim metal rods, plates, and thin chains. According to all the sources, a Binder was supposed to be able to dismantle it, but Lance still hadn’t figured out how. And until it had been dismantled, it was impossible to destroy.
When two days had passed and Lance still hadn’t made any progress, we had asked Henry and Paige to summon fire magic and try to melt it anyway. All we had accomplished with that was to destroy a perfectly good table. So Lance had gotten back to work. But my patience was running out.
Touching my palms together, I called up a cloud of poison and shot it at Lance’s friends. They choked in strangled breaths as my magic forced its way down their throats.
Lance flicked another panicked glance towards them before he briefly met my gaze.
I cocked my head. “Tick tock.”
From his position atop the throne, Callan huffed out a dark laugh.
While Lance renewed his efforts with the glove, I let the green mist dissipate. My three prisoners sucked in deep breaths.
“It’s okay, Lance,” Jessica pressed out between coughs. Love and understanding swirled in her blue eyes as she looked up at him. “Don’t worry about us.”
A wicked smile stretched my lips as I looked over at the Binder. “Oh, I really would worry, if I were you.”
“Why are you doing this?” Leoni snapped. “He said he’s trying!”
During these past few days, I had come to understand that she was the boldest and most outspoken of them all. I cocked my head as I slid my gaze to her. “And I said I’m running out of patience.”
“That still won’t make him solve this any faster.”
“Leoni,” Darren warned while shaking his head.
“No! I’m so sick of these people. Why can’t you just be normal? Is living a peaceful and happy life really such a terrible fate for you?”
“You are the ones who attacked us,” I pointed out. “Not the other way around.”
“Only because you kidnapped our best friend!”
“I meant before that. You and Chancellor Quill and all the constables, you are the ones who keep attacking us. We do not go into Eldar to attack you. You come out to the hills to attack us.”
“We’re not attacking you! We’re trying to bring you to justice.”
“Because we refused to share our magic?”
“Yes!” She was practically screaming at this point. “And because you enslave and murder people.”
“We don’t enslave people. And the only people we kill are those who have chosen a dark mage path knowing full well that it’s a kill-or-be-killed kind of life. And of course idiots like you who seek us out with the sole purpose of attacking us. So your argument doesn’t really hold up.”
“What about the waiter you murdered at the ball?”
“I didn’t go into Eldar just because I wanted to kill a random waiter. He had to die because we needed to stop you from launching a full-scale attack on us.”
“By the Current, are you really that dense? How can you think that kind of reason excuses your vile actions?”
The smile on my face sharpened. Touching my hands together, I called up a snapping tendril of magic.
Fear flashed across Jessica’s face and she immediately shifted her position on the floor so that she was blocking Leoni’s body with her own. “She didn’t mean that. Please. She didn’t mean it.”
I was forced to admit that I did respect their loyalty to one another, so I let the poison snake up my arm instead while saying, “Then make sure she keeps her tongue in check.”
“She will,” Jessica promised.
“Did you know,” Callan began, speaking for the first time since I’d returned with our prisoners, “that you could have stopped this all before it even began?”
They all swung around to stare at him. Even Lance looked up from his work. But after Callan raised one expectant eyebrow at him, he snapped his head back around and continued studying the glove intently.
“What do you mean?” Darren asked carefully.
“At the ball.” Mocking amusement danced across Callan’s mouth as he returned his attention to them. “You three were sitting around a table with your masks off, boasting about how you were friends with the great Lance Carmichael. I was standing right next to you then. If only you had been a little more observant, you could have caught us before we took your precious friend.”
Shock, as well as intense guilt and regret, descended on their features. After staring at Callan’s smirking face for another few seconds, they all turned towards Lance. The Binder only kept working.
While their attention was otherwise occupied, I met Callan’s gaze from across the room and gave him an approving nod. What a wickedly clever way to break their spirit by making them feel like they had failed their friend. No matter how much I tried to pretend otherwise, Callan really was an intelligent one.
“Watch it!” Henry suddenly snapped from the back of the room.
Callan and I whipped our gazes towards Lance.
Both of us were on our feet in a second, with magic attacks ready in our hands.
The Binder had started to put on the glove. Since he needed to be able to use his magic in order to dismantle the Enhancer, we had removed his handcuffs. But that also meant that if he put the glove on, he would be able to bind our powers by throwing his own magic across the room.
When he noticed our reaction, he immediately dropped the Enhancer again and raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I’ve tried everything else. I think I need to put it on in order to dismantle it.”
Callan and I exchanged a long look. I had a feeling that Lance was right, and apparently so did Callan, because he gave me a small nod. After releasing the spinning arc he had summoned, he called up a force blade instead while striding over to where Lance was sitting. I moved my poison cloud so that it hovered right in front of Lance’s friends.
While positioning himself behind Lance’s back, Callan leveled the vibrating sword at his neck until it looked like the point was brushing his skin. “Alright, do it. But if you try anything, Audrey kills your friends while I kill you.”
“I know,” Lance growled back in a very frustrated voice before he seemed to remember himself. With a wince, he glanced between his friends and me. “I mean, I know. I won’t try anything.”
Moving very carefully, he picked up the Enhancer and then put it on.
My heart rate sped up. If he did try anything, we would have to be very quick.
A golden glow shone around both the glove and Lance’s whole hand as he touched his palms together.
I shifted the poison closer to his friends.
Metallic clanking echoed through the room.
Raising my eyebrows, I looked at the worn wooden tabletop in front of the Binder.
All the slim metal rods, as well as the two plates and the chain, had just fallen apart as if someone had severed all the joints holding them together. Two of the rods rolled across the table on their way to the edge. Lance slowly moved his now bare hand to stop them before looking up at me with eyes that held both anger and pleas.
“There,” he said. “It’s done.”
“Let’s give it another shot then,” Callan said. Letting the force blade fade out, he leaned over Lance’s shoulder and picked up all of the broken pieces before looking towards the back of the room. “Henry. Paige. Wanna give us a hand?”
“Of course!” Paige said. With a mischievous grin on her lips, she winked at her chess partner. “Henry already lost fifteen moves ago anyway.”
“Then why didn’t you say that earlier,” he muttered while the two of them made their way towards us.
“Because I like watching the way you scrunch up your eyebrows when you’re thinking hard.”
A hint of color crept into Henry’s cheeks. Callan chuckled and flashed his friend a wicked grin while placing the remnants of the Enhancer on the ground. At the sound of it, Henry dragged his gaze to Callan and narrowed his eyes in an expression that seemed to promise revenge.
From their respective places a short distance away, Lance’s friends watched as the rest of us gathered around the small pile of metal.
“Whenever you’re ready,” I said.
Paige and Henry exchanged a look before touching their hands together. Fire sprang to life and licked their palms. After a nod from me and Callan, they shot two columns of yellow flames straight at the broken glove on the floor.
Hissing filled the room as the fire poured onto the metal and the stone underneath. A few seconds later, the golden rods and plates started to melt.
Relief washed over me as I watched the Enhancer be reduced to a bubbling puddle on the now blackened stone floor.
Once not a single part of it remained intact, Paige and Henry let the flames die out. Looking up, I studied the expressions on our captives’ faces.
Lance was clenching his jaw and staring resolutely at the empty wall behind us. His girlfriend, on the other hand, looked to be on the verge of tears. Next to her, Leoni was glaring at us with brown eyes full of righteous anger, while Darren’s shoulders slumped as he heaved a dejected sigh.
I drew in a deep breath through my nose.
“Do you smell that?”
They all glanced over at me. I let a villainous grin drift over my lips as I looked from face to face, meeting each of their gazes in turn.
“That’s the scent of your hopes and dreams burnt to ash.”
