Poison swirled around me, turning the air into a haze of glittering green. Fighting was so much more difficult when there were four other people around me that I had to make sure I didn’t accidentally kill. It also didn’t help that Sienna’s bloody fire magic burned my poison out of the air. At least she was now on the other side.
I cast a glance over my shoulder while I shoved a cloud of poison at the three closest constables. Callan had just sent a force wall right into a woman with long brown hair before she could hit him with a blast of water. A hint of approval blew through me. At least he didn’t get in my way while fighting.
White light flashed in the corner of my eye. I snapped my gaze back towards the area ahead just in time to see a constable about to shoot lightning straight into my chest. Alarm spiked through me, but I had already hurled a snaking line of poison at him.
Indecision flickered across his face for a second. Then he dropped the lightning attack and called up what looked like the beginning of a water blast. His moment of hesitation had cost him, though.
Before he could raise it fully, my magic crashed into his face and forced its way into his body. He hit the ground with a thud.
Suddenly, the area before me was clear.
Drawing in a deep breath, I backed up a few steps while sweeping my gaze across the grass. Something moved in the corner of my eye. I flicked a glance towards it.
A jolt went through me.
One of the constables was sneaking up behind Callan. The white-haired man had ditched his noisy magic attacks and instead drawn a real knife. They were only three steps away from me. A little behind and to the left. But it felt as though I was watching it in slow motion from far away.
Callan hadn’t heard him. He was throwing a force lance in the other direction. Time seemed to stop as the constable raised his hand.
He was about to stab Callan in the neck.
Good riddance, was my first thought. After everything he had put me through, it served him right to die like that. And besides, it would leave me as the most powerful dark mage since the only ones left after Callan was dead were Sam, who didn’t fight, and the other three who had sworn a blood oath not to challenge me. Not to mention that I had been trying to kill Callan from the moment I met him. I’d had so many chances by now, and I had messed them all up. I had hesitated when I could have stabbed him in the heart while he slept, and I hadn’t bound his magic back there in Malcolm’s reception room. So maybe it was best that someone else finished the job.
Morning sunlight glinted off the blade.
Pure panic exploded through my body, tearing my soul to shreds. No. I couldn’t let him die.
But it was too late. Too late to slam my palms together, call up magic, and hurl it at the attacker. The blade would reach Callan before my poison hit.
My body moved on its own.
Before I had even finished making a decision, I threw myself towards them to shove the knife aside.
Callan whipped around.
Since I had been standing to the side, I was just outside his field of vision. He couldn’t see me, but I saw the dread that washed over his face when his gaze locked on to the blade.
Pain burned through my skin.
I sucked in a gasp as the knife sank straight through my palm. Since there was nothing to stop my momentum, I just crashed towards the grass on the other side of Callan. With the blade lodged in my hand, and my jump carrying me forward, the move wrenched the knife from the man’s grip. It made the blade twist, and another bout of agony spiked up my arm.
A cry of pain tore from my throat as I slammed down on the ground.
The white-haired constable, who had been solely focused on Callan, stared down at me, dumbfounded.
Callan rammed a force blade into his chest while I pushed myself into a sitting position. Grabbing the hilt of the knife with my other hand, I yanked it out of my palm. Another groan of agony ripped from my mouth. It felt as though my hand was on fire.
After yanking his force blade out, Callan shoved the attacker away and dropped to his knees next to me.
Blood welled up from the wound and ran down my hand, painting the skin red. I hissed in a breath.
“Audrey,” Callan said.
The dread and terror in his voice tore something loose inside my chest.
“It’s fine,” I snapped instead, and tried to push to my feet.
He planted a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down while locking furious eyes on me. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Well, excuse me for saving your worthless life. Bastard.”
“You could have gotten yourself killed!”
“Which you should be happy about.”
A snarl ripped from his chest, but he just twisted towards the doorway while calling, “Sam!”
“No!” Malcolm yelled from a short distance away where he was still battling a group of constables. “If it’s not life-threatening, we’re not risking it. You’ll have to wait until they’re all dead.”
Sam, with his worried gray eyes, looked like he was about to charge out onto the grass anyway.
“He’s right,” I called before he could move. “Stay there.” Shifting my gaze to Callan, I jerked my chin towards where the others were fighting the small group of survivors. “And you, go help them instead. You’re not a healer so you’re not doing anything useful here anyway.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he growled. “You can’t summon magic when your hand looks like that. How are you going to protect yourself if someone attacks you right now?”
Glaring back at him, I swept my uninjured hand towards the two dozen corpses around us. “Who’s going to attack? They’re all dead.”
He clenched his jaw and then pushed to his feet. Planting his boots firmly on the grass, he remained standing next to me while scanning the area for any potential attackers. “I’m not leaving.”
“Fine,” I bit out.
My hand throbbed and there was something even more painful carving its way through my chest that I didn’t want to examine, so I didn’t feel like arguing.
Warm winds blew across the landscape. They ruffled my hair and made it flutter over my shoulder. I wrapped my uninjured hand around my wrist and squeezed hard, as if that would stop the fire pulsing through my skin with every heartbeat.
Across the grass, Malcolm used his shadows to snap the necks of two blond heroes while Sienna burned another one to a crisp.
“Why did you do it?” Callan asked at last, breaking the silence that had fallen over us.
Thankfully, he was still scanning the area around us for enemies so he wasn’t looking at me, because his question threatened to drag something to the surface that I didn’t want to know. I desperately smothered the feelings while trying to figure out an answer to his question.
Forcing a sharp smile onto my lips, I looked up at him. “Because the only one who gets to kill you is me.”
He let out a surprised laugh. Amusement danced over his sharp cheekbones as he glanced down at me.
But before he could say anything, Grant’s voice echoed through the morning air.
“Not him!”
We shifted our attention to the other dark mages again. Malcolm paused right before strangling the only constable left alive.
“Come on,” Callan said in a soft voice while bending down as if to lift me up.
I slapped his arm away. “It’s my hand that’s messed up. There’s nothing wrong with my legs.”
Drawing my eyebrows down in a scowl, I masked the fact that I had to grit my teeth when I pushed to my feet. Callan watched every line on my face while I stood up. And somehow, I got the feeling that he could see right through me. I tried to push the thought out of my head while Callan and I walked over to where the others had gathered, but the constant worried glances he shot at me when he thought I wasn’t looking made it very hard.
Sam skidded to a halt next to me right as we reached the spot where Malcolm held the final survivor trapped in his shadows.
“Here, let me,” the healer mage said.
Shimmering turquoise blue magic appeared between his hands as he drew them apart. I held out my injured palm. A warm prickling sensation spread through my hand as the skin and bones and muscles began knitting themselves back together.
“There.” Sam let his magic fade out and then patted my hand before drawing back. “Good as new.”
I looked down at it. Blood still clung to my skin, but where the wound had been, only a slim scar remained. I could feel Callan’s eyes on me, but thankfully, Malcolm spoke up before he could say something to piss me off.
“How many others are coming?”
The surviving constable squirmed against the black shadows that kept him trapped.
“Answer,” Malcolm ground out.
“You will never win!” he spat back. “The whole city is being mustered for war.”
“How many?”
“Everyone! And we already have people heading for the Enhancer.”
Cold dread spread through my limbs like ice.
“And once we have that,” he practically screamed the words, “all we need is Lance, and then you damn villains won’t stand a chance!”
“Bullshit,” Callan snapped. “You don’t know where the Enhancer is.”
“Lance’s friends do. They found it in some book by a dark mage called Peter Essington.”
The six of us exchanged a panicked glance. Had Peter Essington really written down the location of the Enhancer?
“And they’re heading there right now.” His dark eyes were full of righteous anger as he raised his chin. “Don’t underestimate the lengths people will go to when they want to save their friends.” A mocking sneer curled his lips. “Though, I guess you wouldn’t know. Since you don’t have any.”
Malcolm snapped his neck.
His body hit the ground like a broken doll when the black shadows around him disappeared. Tilting his head back, Malcolm forced out a slow breath.
I did the same. Staring up at the pale blue heavens above, I raked my fingers through my hair and heaved a deep sigh.
We had only just finished our scheme and secured our power and position against the other dark mages, and I hadn’t even had a chance to celebrate that the mission was done.
Actually, screw celebrate. I hadn’t even had a chance to breathe yet. Why couldn’t we have gotten just one day to rest before the damn sky fell down on top of our heads again?
“We can’t let them get the Enhancer,” Grant said in a slow and careful voice.
“It could be a trap,” Malcolm reasoned. “A ruse.”
“Yes, it could,” Grant said. “But the only reason that the heroes waited until they had a Binder to launch a full-scale attack on us is because they don’t know that there are only six of us left. If they truly are mustering the whole city for war, and if they truly are on the way to get the Enhancer, we won’t last a single day.”
“I don’t like this,” Sienna said. “If their whole army is coming out, we could play it smart and drag the fight out until they decide that they don’t want to lose any more people and retreat instead. But if they have the Enhancer, we won’t be able to play it smart. Our range is our biggest advantage.”
“That’s what I was trying to say too,” Grant added.
Sam looked between all of us. “So what do we do?”
Malcolm pinched the bridge of his nose and blew out a breath. “We have to get to the mountain before them.”
“It’s a suicide mission,” Sam protested.
“What other choice do we have? Sienna and Grant are right. We can’t risk the heroes getting a hold of it.”
“Who would even volunteer to go on—”
“I’ll do it,” Callan interrupted.
Sheer terror washed over me. Getting to where the Enhancer was hidden was incredibly dangerous. It had been left there specifically so that people wouldn’t try to reclaim it. If Callan went on his own, there was a great risk that he would get captured. Or killed.
“I’ll go with you,” I heard myself saying.
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“Alright,” Malcolm said. “It’s decided. You will get to the mountain and retrieve the Enhancer before Lance’s hero friends can take it. In the meantime, we will…”
He kept talking, but I had no idea what he was saying.
That short little sentence that had flown out of my mouth had ripped apart the last defense inside me, and suddenly, emotions that I had tried so desperately to smother flooded my chest.
Panic clenched my heart as a truly horrifying realization dawned inside me like a red sun.
I had feelings for Callan Blackwell.
Turning my head slowly, I stared at him in disbelief.
That bastard.
He had made me fall in love with him.
Terror washed over me and mixed with the searing panic as that thought settled deep inside my heart.
I had fallen for Callan Blackwell.
And he could never know.
