Blood sprayed through the air as the constable lost his head. It rolled off his shoulders and fell to the trampled grass while his body crumpled down next to it. The force scythe I had thrown faded out a couple of steps behind. I continued sneaking forward.
Behind the tent on my right, faint green light shone as Audrey no doubt shot her poison magic towards other unwitting soldiers. On my other side, black shadows whipped through the air as Malcolm did the same.
The golden afternoon sun glinted in a steel sword up ahead. I ducked behind a large brown tent. Leaning forward, I glanced around the edge.
Two constables were standing a short distance ahead. They were facing each other, and their mouths moved as if they were speaking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I drew back again. The one on the right was standing at an angle which would make it possible for her to see me. Drumming my fingers against the blade strapped to my thigh, I swept my gaze over the area behind me.
Sienna had almost reached this area now. I glanced from side to side. The brief hints of Audrey and Malcolm’s magic that I had spotted before were now nowhere to be seen, which meant that they had already continued on ahead. I couldn’t linger here too long.
Since Sienna was the only one who possessed enough destructive power to actually destroy an entire tent full of steel weapons, she was the one who needed to get there. However, she wasn’t exactly the stealthy kind. If she just started blasting her flames for everyone to see, we would have Quill’s whole army descending on us in no time. And we couldn’t afford that. Which was why Audrey, Malcolm, and I were in charge of clearing a path for Sienna so that she could just walk right up to the tent, while Henry, Paige, and Grant protected Sam and also guarded the rear.
I cast a quick glance around the tent again. What I needed was to divert their attention for a few seconds, so that my attack could take their heads off before they could see it and sound the alarm.
Shifting position, I brushed my palms together and called up a small force blast while calculating the trajectory. I blew out a soft breath. Then I shot the small blast right into a tent a short distance ahead and to the left.
It slammed into the fabric wall, making the whole structure shudder.
The two constables turned towards it in surprise.
That was all I needed.
The moment the force blast left my hand, I summoned a spinning arc and hurled it towards the constables. Since the woman on the right was staring towards the trembling tent, the attack was outside her field of vision. And the other one had never been in a position to see it, so it shot towards them unnoticed.
A wicked grin spread across my mouth as their severed heads bounced down on the grass, leaving red stains on the otherwise green and brown surface. I darted forward again.
Casting a quick look over my shoulder, I found that Sienna had almost caught up with me now. I lengthened my stride to widen the gap between us again. That damn fire mage was one of the most impatient people I had ever met, and she might start throwing her fire everywhere if we didn’t clear the path for her fast enough.
When the weapons tent that Paige had marked at last became visible, I had to suppress the urge to heave a deep sigh of relief. My heart was slamming against my ribs. Not from fear. No, my heart was racing from the stress of trying to complete this mission before Sienna flew off the handle and accidentally turned us all into ash.
While blowing out that sigh I had tried to stifle, I stopped behind the nearest tent and glanced from side to side. Audrey had come to a halt behind a tent directly to my right, while Malcolm was waiting behind one on the left. Both of them gave me a nod when I made eye contact.
Relief fluttered through my chest. So far so good.
There was an open patch of grass separating the large tent used for weapons storage and the smaller ones we were currently hiding behind. Based on Audrey and Malcolm’s nods, all the people on their sides were dead. Just like the ones in my path. Moving out into the open would invite unnecessary risk, so we remained where we were until the others caught up.
“Any issues?” Henry asked as he and the other three at last reached my location.
“No,” I replied. My gaze slid to Sienna. “Remember what we talked about? When you go into…”
I trailed off and raised my eyebrows because that damn fire mage just kept striding right past me and towards the tent without stopping. A low groan rumbled from my throat. Before she could move past entirely, my hand shot out and wrapped around her arm, yanking her back.
“Did you—” I began.
“What?” she interrupted, while trying to pull her arm out of my grip.
I didn’t let her. “Remember what we said about keeping the fire small?”
“Callan Blackwell.” Her voice was suddenly silky smooth. It made my skin prickle with a sudden alarming sense of danger. “If you don’t take that hand off my arm in the next five seconds, I will melt it all the way to your elbow.”
The problem was that I was pretty sure that she would do it, so I quickly released my grip on her arm and let my hand drop back down. It shocked me how fast her moods changed sometimes. Henry had once joked that maybe Sienna had more than one personality. I wasn’t sure if that was true. But whatever it was, it made her unpredictable. And dangerous.
I opened my mouth to try to find another way to remind her that she couldn’t just blast the whole tent to smithereens, but before I could, a deep and steady voice floated through the air.
“Sienna,” Henry began. He locked eyes with her, and to my surprise, she kept her attention on him. “If you set a big fire, it will draw everyone here and we’ll be outnumbered and captured. But your tiny fires have such incredible destructive power bundled into such small forms, which makes them incredibly beautiful, doesn’t it?”
Her eyes took on a faraway look for a few seconds. Then she smiled. “Yes, it does.”
Without another word, she turned around and sauntered towards the big weapons tent. A couple of steps behind us, Paige studied Henry while amusement danced across her features. Sam had a similar expression on his face, while Grant just massaged his brows in exasperation.
After scanning the area between us and the tent for enemies again, I flicked a glance towards Henry and raised my eyebrows. “Since when did you become the Sienna whisperer?”
He let out something between a snort and a chuckle. “Trust me, boss, it was a matter of necessity. A week into our stay at Grant’s mansion, she was going so stir crazy that she almost set the whole building on fire. It was either figure out a way to talk her down or we’d all become ashes in the wind.”
Grant shuddered, as if in horror from the memory.
I gave Henry an appraising look before shifting my attention to Sienna again. She had almost reached the tent flap now.
“You really—”
“Ambu—” Sienna’s voice cut me off, but her shout of warning was drowned out.
The moment she had opened her mouth, I had slapped my palms together and hurled a force wall towards the tent flap that she had barely managed to push open. A boom reverberated through the air as part of my wall slammed into a massive water blast. But it hadn’t made it fully in time.
Half of the water blast crashed straight into Sienna’s chest, sending her flying through the air as if she weighed no more than a child’s doll.
“Ambush!” I bellowed, finishing Sienna’s warning, while all hell broke loose.
Constables poured out of the weapons tent in incredible numbers while a wave of them surged out of the other tents behind it as well. My heart lurched into my throat. Summoning another force wall, I shot it towards the opening in an effort to stem the tide.
Halfway between me and Audrey, Sienna’s body crashed into an empty tent, making the whole structure collapse around her.
“Sam,” I called.
“On it,” he replied while sprinting towards her.
“Paige.”
She was already moving too. “Got it!”
Bringing her to shield Sam really had been a good call, because we would need everyone else in order to survive this.
Water and lightning and shadows and poison exploded around me as the soldiers threw everything they had at us while we desperately tried to block and form up an organized defense.
Henry and I quickly fell into our usual rhythm of him focusing on blocking the attacks while I shot my most lethal arcs and scythes at the enemies. Wood snapped and fabric tore as he used his wind magic to redirect a blast of water into the nearest tent. I hurled a wide arc towards the constables. Half of them managed to duck. Some blocked. The rest screamed as the vibrating force carved through flesh and bone.
Glittering green mist exploded across the grass, and people dropped like flies.
“Charge!” someone screamed from the back of the ranks.
A battle cry split the air as the soldiers surged forward. Feet pounded against the ground and magic crackled as they shot attacks while thundering towards us.
Panic pulsed through me. They were going to force us into a close-range battle. I whipped my head towards Audrey. She was backing up step after step while throwing clouds of poison towards her attackers. Walls of water and wind shoved her green mist aside.
“Henry,” I snapped. “Get to Audrey.”
“No way,” he growled while pushing aside two lightning bolts with a blast of wind. “I’m not leaving—”
“Please.”
His gray eyes flicked to me. I could only spare a quick glance back at him between shots and shields of force magic, but he must have seen the fear that flooded my soul and wrapped around my throat like a noose. I could handle close combat. Audrey couldn’t.
“Alright,” Henry said. Spinning around, he took off across the grass while calling over his shoulder, “But you’d better still be standing at the end of this battle, or I’ll come drag you back from hell myself.”
A crack sounded as I threw up a force wall to block another lightning strike right before it could hit me in the chest. I dropped it immediately and summoned a spinning arc that I hurled towards the charging soldiers. Two of them were split down the middle by it, but the rest managed to block. They kept coming.
From somewhere to my left, I was vaguely aware of Malcolm’s black shadows and Grant’s violet emotion magic, but I had no idea what they were doing. I only managed to steal one more glance towards Audrey. Henry was sprinting across the grass, his long legs eating up the distance as he tried to make it to her before the constables did.
Then the first wave of soldiers slammed into me.
Drawing my knife, I rammed it into the first man’s throat while I kept my force shield up with my left hand. Blood sprayed through the air as I yanked the blade out after severing his artery. His pale eyes were wide with shock and pain as he tried to get a hand up to his throat to stop the bleeding. He collapsed to the ground before he could.
Steel flashed in the corner of my eye. I twisted away on instinct right before another enemy could bury a sword in the side of my ribs. Using my force shield, I shoved two constables aside while I slashed my knife through the air, cutting the throat of the guy who had tried to stab me.
Another one immediately took his place.
My pulse thrummed in my ears.
Expanding my shield, I tried to keep half of them at bay while I swiped towards the others. Metal clashed as they blocked my knife with their swords. I shoved my shield outwards. The left half of them stumbled backwards. It barely gave me enough space to leap out of the way as three more swords flashed through the air right in front of my chest.
My only saving grace was that none of these people could use their magic without the risk of hitting each other, which meant that they were forced to rely solely on blades for this part. But they had all obviously been trained in swordplay, and I could feel my control of the situation slipping through my fingers.
Air exploded from my lungs as a great weight slammed into me from behind and to the right.
Completely unprepared for the attack, I crashed down on the ground as a massive soldier tackled me. My mind screamed at me to move, and I barely managed to jerk my head sideways before a sword flashed down and buried itself in the ground where my neck had just been. Yanking up my arm, I slashed blindly at the man trying to pin me down.
A howl tore from his throat as my knife carved a deep rut across his collarbone. Warm blood ran down from the wound and dripped in my face as he struggled to get his weight into position over my chest.
Dread crackled through my veins as hands suddenly appeared on my ankles as well when some of the other soldiers tried to help him.
I had lost the grip on my force shield when he tackled me, so I had to drag my other hand towards my knife hand while also slashing wildly at the guy’s face. It made him jerk back enough that I could touch my palms together.
Four people had already gotten a grip on my legs, keeping them trapped against the ground.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
Shoving my palm forward, I planted it on my attacker’s chest.
And then I released the force wall.
Half-translucent gray magic shot out with enough force to send the bulky man flying off my body and crashing into the people behind him. I sucked in a desperate breath as his weight disappeared from my chest. A second later, the hands on my legs were gone too as the man slammed into his companions and knocked them down.
Rolling to the side, I tried to get back up to my feet before they could get close enough to grab me again.
“Down!” a female voice screamed loud enough to shatter the veil to hell.
Not hesitating a second, I dropped to my stomach and wrapped my arms over the back of my head.
A second later, dark red flames tore through the air above me.
