Shouts filled the Silver Hall as a mass of students thundered into the wide empty space from the adjacent rooms. I raised a force wall in front of all six of us, but none of the students attacked. They only raced out and organized themselves into what looked like a pre-rehearsed formation. A groan rolled from my throat when Lance, Jessica, Darren, and Leoni took up position at the front.
“I thought you said that all the students were still at the academy,” Malcolm said without taking his eyes off the young men and women.
“They were supposed to be there,” Audrey protested.
“They’re here because I asked them to come,” Leoni called from her place on Lance’s left. Her brown eyes sparkled with satisfaction as she swept a hand to indicate the people behind them. “We were tipped off that you would be attacking the parliament building and not the academy.”
We all flicked a quick glare at Sienna. She just shot us a sharp look as if saying, what?
“So I asked our whole class to come,” Leoni continued. “And as you can see, most of them did.”
I studied their faces again. Now that she mentioned it, these weren’t just any random students. All of the young men and women across the floor looked to be around twenty years old. Sunlight shone in through the windows that covered the whole right wall, only to disappear again when another cloud drifted across the sun. It cast their faces in shifting shades and made them look even more resolute as they raised their chins and stared back at us.
“Congratulations,” Audrey said in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’ve convinced them to follow you into an early grave.” She turned towards Lance. “I can’t believe that you, of all people, are on board with this. You’ve spent enough time with us to know how this ends. The vast majority of your classmates are going to die in the next ten minutes. Is that really what you want?”
A hint of uncertainty blew across his features, and he flicked his gaze up and down the row of people standing to his left and right. Then he squared his shoulders and raised his chin. “No one is going to die, because there won’t be a fight.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“Look around you.” He threw his arms out. “All of us are one month away from graduating, which means that we are at the height of our power. And there are fifty of us, and six of you.” He nodded towards Sam. “Five, if you don’t count your healer. Do you really think that you will win if you attack us now?”
Uneasiness slithered through my chest. He had a point. Fifty people with the power levels of dark mages, who were all at the height of their powers before graduation, and they outnumbered us ten to one. It wasn’t going to be an easy win.
“Please.” There was a pleading note to Lance’s voice as he looked back at us with his big blue eyes. “Enough fighting. You can stop this right now.”
Audrey gave him an almost sad look. “You know we can’t do that.”
Lightning zapped through the white marble room. My shield was already in place, hovering at waist level, so I just yanked it up to block the strike. White lights flashed through the room as Leoni’s lightning bolt slammed into the force wall right in front of Audrey’s face.
For a moment, no one moved. I wasn’t even sure if the students were breathing. Lance and Jessica had whipped around to stare at their friend, but Leoni only glared at us as if we were demons who had crawled from the depths of hell itself. The problem was, of course, that in some ways she might actually be right about that.
“I told you that you can’t reason with them,” she said, her voice brimming with anger.
All hell broke loose.
I threw up another force wall as Darren hurled a massive wind blast towards us while a redhead to his left sent orange flames flying right on its tail.
Panic spiked through my chest as I realized that, out of the six of us, Malcolm, Sienna, and I were the only ones with magic capable of blocking attacks. Audrey, Grant, and Sam couldn’t shield. And Sienna could disappear to crazy town at any point.
Shadows rose up to support my force wall as a host of attacks crashed into it.
“Sienna!” Sam called over the noise. “Remember that we’re not fireproof.”
Dark red flames burned along her arms and played in her hair. It looked like she had been one breath away from setting the whole room on fire, but at the sound of Sam’s voice, she blinked. And then blinked again. As if she was coming back from the brink of insanity.
“Then stay out of my way,” she snapped.
I barely had time to yank my force wall aside before her flames shot across the white stone floor. Malcolm didn’t make it in time, and her fire burned off a section of his shadows. Angry cursing rolled off his tongue, but it was drowned out by battle cries from the other side of the room.
Raising another force wall, I shoved it towards the students that suddenly sprinted towards us. Wind and water magic slammed into it from the side, sending it crashing into the marble wall instead.
Audrey’s poison magic shot through the air. As did Grant’s emotion magic. Students fell as the attacks slipped through their defenses. But not enough. Not nearly enough. Once again, there were simply too many of them. And this time, they also had power levels that matched ours.
I yanked out my knife and threw it up in front of my face as Darren crashed into me with a sword. Metal clashed as the blades connected. Gritting my teeth, I shoved him backwards while shifting my grip on the knife so that I could touch my palms together.
A force blade appeared in my right hand.
Leaping sideways, I swung it towards Darren while the other students reached the rest of my companions. Sam edged farther back into the room while Audrey and Malcolm and Sienna and Grant all fought against the swarming students. Magic flashed through the air in a storm of light and darkness. Screams echoed between the walls as attacks hit home, but with the loss of range, we were at a disadvantage.
I landed on the floor again and rammed my force blade towards Darren’s other side right as a blond man appeared beside him.
My heart leaped into my throat.
Aborting the attack, I threw myself backwards as Lance Carmichael lunged towards me with gold-glittering hands. Terror seeped through my bones. One brush of his hands, and my magic would be sealed.
Wind slammed into my side as Darren hurled an attack. It sent me skidding across the floor towards the windows, and I had to throw my arms out to stay on my feet. With terrifying speed, Lance sprinted towards me with those damn gold-coated hands.
I dropped both my knife and my force blade and immediately smacked my palms together. A force wall barely managed to rise up in time for me to throw it into Lance’s chest. His hand slashed through the air a mere inch from my arm when my attack hit him and shoved him backwards. But not far enough. Darren had thrown a wind blast that cancelled out part of my attack.
My heart pounded in my chest and alarm bells clanged inside my skull as Darren shot another blast at me that I barely dodged while Lance darted towards me again. Diving sideways, I rolled across the floor to escape his hands.
Fire roared somewhere behind me, and poison magic lit up the white walls in flashes of green.
Jumping to my feet, I hurled a spinning arc towards Lance. But Darren pushed it aside with a wind blast. It smacked into the marble wall with a bang, making cracks spider across the stone. I ducked while calling up another attack. Lance was getting closer. I barely managed to shove him aside with a force wall before his fingers could reach me.
Panic pulsed through my whole body like flaming waves. I couldn’t fight back since one touch of his hands would doom me. But with Darren providing support, I also couldn’t get Lance away from me. Blood rushed in my ears. It was only a matter of time before my luck ran out.
Glass exploded across the room.
Cries of pain and alarm ripped through the air as the windows shattered, sending a storm of glass flying through the packed space. Shards slammed into my leather armor and clattered down on the floor, but I barely noticed it because intense relief washed over me.
Levi and Henry and Paige and at least twenty of Levi’s dark mages leaped in through the broken windows. The King of Metal remained standing on the windowsill, no doubt holding up whatever construction he had raised in order for them to reach the windows from outside in the garden. But the others poured into the room and began hurling attacks at the shocked students.
“You’re late,” I called to Levi, but that relieved grin still tugged at my lips.
He snorted. “We had trouble finding the right windows.” Flicking a glance behind me, he jerked his chin. “On your left.”
I threw my body sideways right before another wind blast from Darren barreled through the space I had just been standing in. The students seemed to have recovered from the shock, and attacks shot through the room again. But they were losing ground now.
With the addition of twenty-odd dark mages, the tide had turned in our favor.
Lance seemed to be the first to realize that, because he gave up on trying to seal my magic and instead dragged Darren with him towards the door on the opposite side of the room. The door leading into the Inner Chamber.
“Fall back!” he bellowed across the noise of whooshing magic and pained screams and clashing steel. “Fall back to the chamber!”
Levi at last jumped down from the windowsill and began shooting sharp sheets of metal at them. Halfway down the room, Henry and Paige worked in tandem with him attacking with blasts of wind and her defending with water walls.
I whipped my head from side to side, looking for Audrey. There were slashes along her upper arm, but other than that she looked unharmed. Poison whips snapped through the room, aiming for our retreating enemies.
By the door, Lance shoved the panicked mass of students through.
“Darren,” Leoni suddenly called when almost all of them had made it inside. “Dylan. Cassie. Sarah. Now!”
Alarm shot through me. I slapped my palms together at the same time as they did.
But they weren’t aiming for us.
A massive blast of combined wind and lightning magic crashed into the ceiling with enough force to shatter the stone.
Panic crackled through my every nerve as I threw a wide force wall straight up as a shield. Levi’s metal shot up a second later. But the ceiling was already collapsing.
White stones crashed down right on top of us.
The boom of the collision echoed through the whole building and made the shattered glass on the floor rattle. Gritting my teeth, I held the force wall up, hoping that I had everyone covered, while the cracked ceiling rained down.
Then, everything went silent.
A thick cloud of stone dust filled the whole room.
While coughing, I tilted my force wall to the right, sliding all of the broken stones towards the wall of windows. The grinding of stone against metal informed me that Levi was doing the same somewhere farther into the room.
“Audrey!” I called, blinking against the hazy air full of stone dust. “Henry!”
“I’m fine,” Audrey’s reply came from a short distance to my left.
A wind mage must have sent a gust whirling through the room, because all of the white dust that filled the air suddenly disappeared out the broken windows. I blinked at the scene before me.
By the wall on my right, a mass of broken stones lay piled on top of each other. But my and Levi’s shields hadn’t covered the whole room. Parts of the ceiling lay crumpled on the floor, along with what looked like broken metal pipes that must have run through it.
Bodies lay underneath the rubble. Some looked to be the students we had killed before Leoni dropped the ceiling on our heads, but a few of them I recognized as Levi’s people.
My gaze darted around the room. Sam was crouching on the floor behind me. Grant and Sienna were standing close by. Between them were Audrey and Malcolm. And then Levi was positioned halfway down the room.
Cold fear crawled up my throat. Where was Henry? And Paige?
“NO!” A desperate voice sliced through the air. “No, no, no, no!”
I was already running by the time my eyes landed on the source of the voice.
The terror inside me was so intense that my whole soul was drowning in it.
Henry was on his hands and knees above Paige, who was lying on her back on the floor as if he had tackled her.
A metal pipe was speared through his chest.
The panic inside my head threatened to shut my entire brain off.
“SAM!” someone bellowed. I think it might have been me.
Throwing myself down on the floor, I grabbed Henry by the shoulders and gently moved his body up so that he sat on his knees instead. Paige, shock and fear flashing in her eyes, climbed up to her knees in front of him. I barely dared to turn and look at his face. If his eyes were already glassed over, I was going to die here with him.
A wet cough sounded.
I snapped my gaze to Henry’s face.
Blood sprayed from his mouth and ran down his chin. But he had taken a breath, which meant that it wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be too late.
“Out of the way,” Sam ordered as he dropped to his knees in front of Henry. His face betrayed nothing. All he said was, “Callan, pull the pipe out.”
I scrambled around Henry’s body and wrapped my hands around the cold metal. “Fast or slow?”
“Fast. One clean yank. Do it now.”
The slight urgency in his voice at those last three words made another wave of fear crash over me. I tried my best to keep it at bay while I yanked the pipe from Henry’s chest.
A cry of pain tore from his throat. It was immediately followed by wet coughing and strangled breaths.
Turquoise blue magic lit up the space between his chest and Sam.
I was vaguely aware of the others gathering around us, and I think Audrey squeezed my shoulder, but all I could see was the blood leaking out of the hole in Henry’s back.
“What did you do?” Paige pressed out between sobs. “You shouldn’t have protected me.”
Her voice snapped me out of my trance enough that I managed to shift back into my previous position in front of Henry and slightly to the right. Paige was kneeling on Sam’s other side, tears streaming down her face.
I reached out and placed a gentle hand on Henry’s arm. He just sat there with blood dripping down his chin and his chest barely rising and falling. His normally so calm gray eyes slid in and out of focus.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re not allowed to die. Do you hear me?”
“Sor…” Henry gasped in a rattling breath and then coughed blood onto his shirt again, but his eyes slid to me. “…ry.”
“No. You do not get to be sorry. You’re going to live, and then I’m going to kick your fucking ass for this. Do you hear me? You’re going to live.” I flicked a glance towards Sam. “He’s going to live, right?”
Sam said nothing. Concentration was etched into every line of his face as he stared at the wound in Henry’s chest while his healing magic poured into it.
Dread spread through my body like acid.
“You’re going to live,” I repeated again with even more force.
Pain clouded his eyes, but I could see the doubt swirling in there too as he slid his gaze towards our silent healer.
“Hey.” Reaching up, I grabbed his chin and turned his face back to me. “You do not give up. We do not give up. How many tight scrapes have we gotten through together already? This is just one in a long line of them. And then, once Sam has fixed you all up again, we’re gonna go out and get into trouble again. And again. Together. Because that’s what family does.”
He smiled weakly and opened his mouth to respond, but another coughing fit racked his body. Blood sprayed into the air, splattering across Sam’s face. Sam didn’t so much as flinch. He just kept his hands hovering over the wound while his magic seeped into it.
My heart pounded in my chest. I didn’t care that this made me look weak in front of the other dark mages. I couldn’t lose Henry. I couldn’t. He was family to me. He had to make it.
The minutes dragged on as if they were years.
My heart was fracturing more and more with every second that passed until I felt as though one small poke at it would make the whole thing shatter like brittle glass.
He had to make it. He had to make it. He had to make it.
Suddenly, the color began returning to Henry’s face and the light to his eyes. I snapped my gaze to Sam. Our healer said nothing. Only continued working.
My pulse thrummed in my ears as I watched the wound at last begin to knit itself together. I tried to keep the hope at bay, but it fluttered in my chest like a flock of desperate birds.
After what felt like an eternity, Sam sucked in a deep breath. His turquoise blue magic faded out, and he dropped his hands in his lap.
I stared at Henry.
He only looked down at the round scar that was now all that remained of the wound. Looking up, he met Sam’s gaze. “Thank you.”
“What did I say about dying?” Sam snapped, a hint of annoyance in his voice.
Henry winced slightly. “How close was it?”
“Too close.” Drawing a hand through his mop of blond hair, he heaved another deep sigh and shook his head. “Too bloody close.”
“Thank you,” Henry repeated.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Henry even as I helped him to his feet. Disbelief still rang inside me. He was alive. This wasn’t some illusion. Henry had actually made it through that.
As soon as we were on our feet, I yanked him towards me in a hard embrace. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
His muscular arms wrapped around my back. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”
Relief washed over me like warm summer waves. I clapped Henry on the shoulder as we broke apart and then stepped back.
The moment I was gone, someone else took my spot.
My eyebrows shot up into my hairline as Paige raised her hand and slapped Henry across the face.
The slap was hard enough to snap his head to the side, and loud enough that it echoed between the white marble walls.
For a moment, we all just stared at her in shock.
Henry slowly turned his face back so that he met her gaze. The same stunned surprise shone in his eyes.
“Don’t ever do something heroic like that again,” she snapped, her voice full of steel.
Then she grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him down in a desperate kiss.
