My heart pattered nervously in my chest as I scanned the street outside the window again. One of David’s spies had returned a while ago with confirmation that Levi was indeed holding court with all of his guards in Old Square, while the other spy remained there to make sure that they stayed where they were. That had finally prompted the advisor to send word to Trevor Gale that everything was clear. But Callan still hadn’t returned. Had something gone horribly wrong?
Wood creaked.
Magic flared to life across the whole room as everyone whirled towards the window on the opposite side of the building, ready to fight off an attack.
Callan blinked at the mass of lethal attacks now pointed towards him as he hopped down on the floor after climbing in through the window.
Relief crashed over me, and I let out a shuddering breath. He was alright.
“Sorry about the delay,” he said as he straightened and started towards us.
The guards in the room looked to David, and only extinguished their magic when he gave them a nod.
“I ran into some people who recognized me.” His gaze slid to me, and I knew that he was referring to Johnson and his vengeful gang of idiots. “So I had to take the long way back.”
“And you managed to lose them?” David asked, displeasure evident on his face.
“Obviously. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” He dragged a hand through his messy black hair. “But I’ve confirmed that Levi and his guards are in Old Square holding—”
“We know,” David interrupted. Lifting a hand, he flicked imaginary dirt off his shoulder. “I had you followed, and my people have already informed me of that.”
A very convincing look of surprise and anger blew across his features. “Oh really?”
“Yes. In fact, Mr. Gale should be here any—”
“Sir,” a man said from where he stood by the window. “He’s here.”
After raking my gaze up and down Callan’s body again, to make sure that he was unharmed, I returned to the window and peered out. A man who looked to be in his early fifties, with pale blue eyes and brown hair that had turned a bit gray at the temples, was walking down the street with a cluster of guards in formation around him. His gray suit was impeccable, and he walked with the confidence of someone who was used to people obeying his every order.
Anticipation crackled through my veins. Trevor Gale. He looked exactly like the drawing that Levi had shown us, down to the arrogant tilt of his chin as he swept his sharp eyes over the street. I suppressed an evil smile. It was finally time to end this once and for all. My gaze flicked back to the guards around us. We just needed to get close enough to actually kill him.
Callan drifted over to stand next to me while Gale closed the final distance to the door. I glanced up at my force mage. He brushed a discreet hand over my arm and gave me an almost imperceptible nod, reassuring me that everything was fine.
Out on the street, Gale and the ten guards who flanked him had reached the door to the safe house. My pulse thrummed in my ears. David had told us that we would wait here until they had gone inside, but this plan wouldn’t work unless we were actually in the same location as the stone mage.
One of his guards moved over to stand right in front of the door and then placed his hand against the lock. I squinted towards him, but I couldn’t tell what kind of magic he was using. After about fifteen seconds, he stepped back and nodded to Trevor Gale.
Callan frowned at me in silent question since he hadn’t been here to hear David’s order to remain in the building while Gale went inside. I shook my head in reply, but impatience flickered through me. We needed to get in there before it was too late.
Drumming my fingers against my thigh, I watched while Gale and his guards slowly snuck inside. My heart pattered in my chest. The two-story building was large, but it wouldn’t take him too long to figure out that this wasn’t the real safe house. We needed to go. Now.
“Alright,” David said at last. “Let’s move out.”
I had to resist the urge to sprint across the street. Settling for a brisk walk, I strode after David with Callan beside me.
By the time we finally crossed the threshold, I could barely hear the faint shuffling of feet behind me over the furious thumping of my heart. But everything was quiet when we reached the wide hallway inside. I flicked my gaze around the room.
The pale wooden floorboards were spotless, and only a thin side table along one of the walls took up space in the room. Other than that, the hallway was empty. No paintings decorated the wooden walls either.
There were doors into other rooms farther down the hall, but my eyes focused on the staircase. Two of Gale’s guards were still walking up the steps, which meant that the stone mage would have just reached the second floor a few seconds ago. My heart slammed against my ribs. Our ruse would soon be up.
Behind us, the fifty or so mages that David had brought were still sneaking in through the door, and the corridor was becoming increasingly packed.
David raised his arm and flashed a couple of hand signals. The stream of guards moved towards the staircase with quick steps, following Gale to the upper floor. When only about five of them remained, he spun his hand in the air again. The guards began spreading out across the ground floor.
“Spread out,” David whispered to us.
Callan and I exchanged a glance, but at that point we couldn’t do anything other than what he said so we drifted down the hall.
Upstairs remained silent. Too silent. Had they not started checking the rooms yet? I flexed my hand. Shit. We really needed—
“Ambush!” someone bellowed above.
My heart leaped into my throat.
Magic whooshed upstairs and clothes rustled as everyone on our floor whipped towards the staircase.
“What?” someone else yelled. “No. Wait. Who are—”
A wham echoed through the building, strong enough to make the wooden walls rattle.
“Defensive positions!”
“Form up!”
“They’re in here too!”
“Regroup to me!”
Voices clamored over each other upstairs while the sounds of several different kinds of magic split the air.
Fire roared to life right in front of us as David summoned his red flames. His brown eyes were flashing with rage. “You led us into an ambush?”
“No!” Callan protested, while calling up a force wall. “We didn’t know that—”
“He’s here!” someone screamed from a room just a few steps down the hall.
Mere seconds later, wind magic whirled down the corridor while white lightning flashed in its wake. I barely had time to shove Callan aside before the bolt zapped through where his chest had been. Even while stumbling to the side, he had still managed to throw the force wall. It smacked into the wind blast with a boom that almost shattered my eardrums.
“Attack!” a male voice bellowed.
All hell broke loose.
People popped out of every doorway in the corridor, screaming battle cries and hurling magic. I barely managed to dive sideways before a pair of throwing knives sped through the air where I had been standing. David snapped orders from a few steps behind me while throwing red flames at a brown-haired man who stuck his head through the door to shoot a blast of water at us.
While rolling to my feet, I slapped my palms together and called up a whipping tendril of poison right as two familiar faces became visible at the end of the hall.
Johnson. And Kane.
The vengeful idiots had come to crash the party and take their revenge.
I shot the tendril of poison at them before calling up another one. Glittering green magic sped through the air, but Johnson burned it away with his fire before it could hit. A few steps to my left, Callan was trying desperately to block all the attacks that were aimed at him from different sides of the corridor. Spinning around, I focused on the ones behind his back, trying to take them out while their eyes were fixed on him.
David, who had realized that the attackers were trying to kill us too and thus weren’t with us, hurled crackling fireballs at the men and women who ducked in and out of the doorways. His guards had formed up around him and were defending and striking back with practiced efficiency. But there were a lot of attackers.
As I leaped aside to avoid a stray lightning bolt from Kane while I also shot a cloud of poison towards the room on my left, I tried to count the number of people who were attacking us. It was difficult to know for certain since most of them only popped their heads out to shoot magic, but as far as I could tell, there had to be somewhere close to twenty people. Which meant that there couldn’t be that many of them fighting upstairs.
However, based on the amount of noise that echoed from the second floor, there had to be a lot of them up there too. Last time I had seen Johnson, he’d only had eight people with him. How the hell had he managed to find this many people on such short notice?
Though, as I watched the fury on his face as he threw fireball after fireball at Callan, I had to admit that he was indeed highly motivated.
Touching my palms together in rapid succession, I shot a hail of poison tendrils towards the people in the doorways. I could only use targeted strikes since there were so many others blocking the way. While I had no love for David and his guards, the fact of the matter was that right now we needed them to help fight off these people. Otherwise, Callan and I would quickly be overwhelmed. So I couldn’t just poison everyone. Regrettably.
Metal glinted in the roaring firelight.
I jumped back on instinct, narrowly avoiding the sword that would have split my stomach open. Disbelief pulsed through me as Jens Carlsen lunged at me again. Yanking out the knife strapped to my thigh, I managed to redirect his strike so that the blade whooshed down a mere inch from my side.
With the knife in one hand, I couldn’t touch my palms together fast enough to throw poison at him. But I also couldn’t release the blade because it was the only defense I had against his sword. Fury danced in his eyes as he swung it towards me again.
Why the hell was he wielding a sword? Why wasn’t he using magic like everyone else?
Metallic clashing filled the air as I blocked his lunge.
And that’s when I realized it. Jens Carlsen belonged to the younger generation in Malgrave. The ones who hadn’t been able to complete the ceremony to connect themselves to the Great Current before Levi destroyed the Blade of Equilibrium. Jens wasn’t using magic because he didn’t have any.
But his skills with the sword more than made up for it right now. Which was really fucking unfortunate for me because my skills with a blade were mediocre at best.
Pain burned through my skin as I only managed to partially block his next hit. The sharp edge sliced through my shirt, leaving a thin cut along the side of my forearm. I hissed in a breath between my teeth. Leaping back, I tried to buy myself enough time and space to get my palms together. But Jens wasn’t giving an inch.
With blood dripping down my arm, I threw my knife up in a desperate move to block his next assault.
Two deafening explosions shuddered through the building.
And then the ceiling collapsed.
