by LJ Andrews
Jade sliced out the innards of a particularly fat zomok, and I covered her with my body.
From above, Sapphire breathed his molten waterfall of bristling heat. The flames shot through the dark sky like fireworks, devouring the small flecks of black of the zomoks. Each beast burst in greenish gassy puffs when Sapphire’s fiery breath swallowed them. His pyre dripped along the sanctuary. Eisha took the sparks and splashes of royal fire without a mark on her scales.
A rogue flame hit the back of my neck. I shouted out in pain, but kept my hold on Jade.
“Teagan, you must move,” she cried. “Don’t do this for me.”
The flames inched nearer, but If I moved, Jade was at risk. I stayed still, clutching her against my chest, while I caved my shoulders even more around her body. She pounded her fists against me, releasing a shriek to the trees as the molten river of Sapphire’s flames burned along the mage sanctuary, creeping ever closer.
Jade was strong—much stronger than before, as if her energy fueled her—and she shoved against me until I stumbled slightly when she freed herself from my arms.
“Jade, no!” I shouted. Bron laughed maniacally as Jade stepped closer to the river of fire. Eisha was tangled with a slew of zomoks, and the full-sized dragon bellowed for her queen to stop, rocking the trees with her cry. Jade held out her hands, her palms facing the sky.
I stood to rush after her, but she waved one palm and underground roots wrapped around my ankles, dragging me face down on the dirt. The traitorous earth obeyed the wyvern queen over my call.
“Jade, come back,” I pleaded, my stomach turned in knots. Jade had become my life, and I wouldn’t stand by and watch her risk it all to save me or anyone else. Clasping the roots, I urged them away. The earth resisted me at first but slowly obeyed. When I was free I soon stopped. Utterly stunned.
Jade’s palms trembled. She held them above the slow-moving river of fire. A gilded light beamed in her open hands. Her eyes were a striking gold, almost as though the green color had devoured bits of the fire. She faced Bron and the lindworms, pyre in her bare hands.
“You attack my people!” she raged. I gaped, glancing between her and Bron. The High Priest wasn’t laughing any longer. His icy eyes were narrowed, and the lindworms behind him snapped their jaws, desperate for a bite of the queen. “We will fight back with all our strength.”
Sapphire sank lower in the sky, wind gathered from the beat of his wings. Eisha swallowed a zomok whole, and the others flittered away like frightened field mice. Mini shrieked for Jade to stop, but she didn’t. Jade raised her hands, and Bron backed away.
“If you unleash your power against me, queen, the protections will be broken. Even the strongest mage power will not withstand the pyre. You want to risk your life, your fellow royal? Teagan’s?”
“I think it’s time to take a few risks,” she growled.
Jade flung the fire toward the hoard of lindworms. Bron tried to move in time, but a spark of the gilded flames struck his arm. He roared like a dying animal, one hand extinguishing the flames trickling up his arm. The fire engulfed the first line of lindworms. Some snakes took flight, others weren’t so lucky. The power from a royal wyvern melted their scales from their few bones. Jade gasped, holding firmly to the glowing pyre.
I rushed to her, wrapped my arms around her waist, and released all my energy.
A relieved breath rattled in her throat. She grinned weakly. “Together.”
I held her as she turned to release the final flame.
The air exploded in bright gold, blue, and green flames. Hints of rot and scorched flesh perfumed the air. Zomok pyre spilled from their corpses, killing the grass. Jade fumbled, then collapsed in my arms.
Like a layer of my armor was stripped back, the flicker of energy protecting the sanctuary faded into nothing. Tree boughs all burned with fading embers, the grass had patches of fire, and the dragon emblems went dark.
Bron positioned himself at the head of what was left of his lindworm pack. His arm was burned, though I could see black armor coating his body as a reaction to the injury. His face contorted in fury.
“You made a fatal mistake, little queen.” Bron flicked his hands and the trees cracked, dropping heavy boughs and branches along the sanctuary. A strange bridge materialized over the cracks in the earth that kept us from him.
Bron roared at the lindworms to take Jade. To slaughter Sapphire. To make them suffer.
Sapphire landed from flight in a puff of dust and ash. Mini darted from his back. Sapphire shot a new spill of flames while a lindworm spewed a toxic gas. Jade coughed, and Sapphire erupted into the sky again to avoid the smell.
“Jade, can you stand?” I checked her body for injuries while nudging her back.
“It’s the pyre,” she gagged. “I’m losing energy quickly.”
I’d been too focused on her I didn’t see the massive lindworm dragon to my side. His shiny ebony claws slashed across my arm, the armor of jade blocking any damage, but he struck Jade’s middle.
A blinding, mad rage roared inside me as Jade crumbled forward, clutching her stomach. When I whirled around on the black serpent, he straightened his neck. Towered over the trees. It didn’t matter. Without a second thought I dug into the scorched earth and beckoned for any energy left to give. My rage burst through Bron’s dark control in the soil and the ground cracked, the bedrock jutted through the surface.
The lindworm roared as I urged more jagged stones upward. The curve of its long spine met the point of a stone, and the lindworm’s scales split. The dragon backed away, puffing a stream of dark smoke toward me. I held my breath and raged more. Like a bed of spikes, dozens of jagged stones from deep in the earth burst through the soil, no less than six sliced clean through the lindworm’s soft underbelly.
The dragon hissed and gurgled until his enormous head wavered above me and flopped over, dead. Rushing back toward Jade, I ran into Eisha’s wing.
Her yellow eyes met mine and she hovered near Jade, only allowing me in after she caught sight of the dead lindworm. Jade gasped, her shirt soaked in blood. I clutched her face and lifted her shirt to inspect he wound. It was deep and already looked infected.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped, kissing her forehead. She felt warm and feverish.
“Teagan, finish this,” she said. “Eisha will care for me. You must finish this.”
“I can’t . . . I can’t beat him,” I stammered.
“You can. This is what you were born to do. I would never trust another with this fight, only you.”
My jaw clenched and my chest tightened at the thought of leaving her. She didn’t let me speak and kissed me quickly and pushed against my chest. Eisha folded her wings around her queen, separating us.
“Teagan,” Jade called out weakly. “I love you.”
Eisha scooped Jade back into the trees, surrounding her in a ring of fire the same way Sapphire had trapped Graham. Her words rang in my mind, and despite my heart’s protests, I turned away.
Bron summoned the earth’s power, warping it until it turned to spiked shadows. He flung the barbs at Sapphire. Mini charged, blocking the shadows with a blast of wind. Sapphire reeled back and clamped his jaws onto the neck of the lindworm trying to take him from behind.
“Traitor!” Mini raised her blade over her head.
The next seconds blurred. Bron rolled his hands, his fists clenched, followed by a swift hiss of air. Mini gasped and staggered to a stop.
A branch, shaped more like a spear, ran clean through her armor.
Blind fury clouded my mind. I cried out her name and ran to her side. As she fell to her knees, above a guttural shriek from Sapphire silenced the battle. He snapped his jaws and tore the skull of a lindworm from its body.
I embraced the fire surging in my veins, slammed my hands to the ground, and caused the earth to heave until the sanctuary split. As Bron had done at the house, a deep fissure divided his darkness and lindworms from Mini, from the sanctuary. The rumble of stone, the hiss of ground
separating, the crack of bark and boughs raged through the sanctuary as the divide grew.
Bron steadied himself and everything silenced.
Sapphire took a position of protection over Mini. His wings covered his mage, and he snarled toward the lindworm army.
Bron studied me. There was power wrapping around my legs. The sanctuary called to me, wanted me to take what it offered, almost as though it wanted me to uncover a secret. The same strange sensation I had the first time Mini had me fight Raffi and Dash. This place held secrets, and they were important.
“You’re in a losing race, Teagan. Look at what has happened to your friends in one night. If you want to experience true power, then come with me,” Bron said, evenly.
Mini didn’t move. I needed her. Without her Bron could destroy everything. Jade was on her back in Eisha’s ring of protection, and the lindworms eyed her hungrily. Sapphire wouldn’t leave Mini.
I was alone against the High Priest.
“Give in, Teagan. I have more power than you.”
A warmth enrobed my shoulders. The familiar power I’d felt at the willow. First, at my shoulders, coiling around my neck, into my chest, my head. I breathed deeply, then lifted my eyes to the High Priest. “I’ll never stop.”
Bron sighed dramatically. “I wished it hadn’t come to this. I truly don’t want to harm you.”
Search your heart.
A voice came so clearly in my head I had to look over my shoulder to see who’d spoken.
Bron signaled the lindworms to retreat slightly, and they obeyed. The High Priest prepared to strike. His power gathered like black water around his hands. I remained still.
Search your heart.
What was I meant to do? A pull to command the sanctuary, to surrender its secrets bloomed in my chest.
Bron raised his hands. I dropped to the ground. My eyes clenched, and beneath my palms the earth shuddered. My skin burned icy hot. Bits of soil, roots like spider webs, and thick chunks of clay peeled away in the crevice I’d created.
The High Priest gritted his teeth, his shadows weaved about the crack, as if to stitch it back together. I’d die before he crossed the gap.
Eyes closed, pressure weighed over my shoulders, nudging me into the ground.
“Teagan!” Someone called my name. Doubtless, I appeared weak, dying even. The way my limbs screamed for rest, the way my body curled over. I tasted blood. But I held to the power surging up and down my arms. Into the soil, into my blood. I cried out when a ringing shook my skull. Half the wall in the open gap peeled away.
A gleam of silver flashed over my gaze. My eyes widened in a stun for there buried beneath clay and soil of the sanctuary, the walls had peeled away enough to reveal two curved swords. A gilded leather wrapped around each hilt, the steel the color of new grass. Offered up from the earth an arm’s length away.
The High Priest paused; his silver eyes locked on the swords. Our gazes clashed, and for a few heartbeats we didn’t flinch.
All at once Bron shot a surge of dark energy at me, but I’d already made a lunge for the swords. Perhaps strange to draw a blade against a mage with dark magic, but I’d seen the longing in Bron’s eyes, the need for these blades.
The sanctuary wouldn’t have revealed them if they did not mean something.
“No!” Bron shouted when I took hold of the hilts. A wave of shadows raced toward me.
All I knew to do was cross the swords in an awkward shield over my face. The shadows struck. Air knocked from my lungs, but a hazy green glow burst from the swords. Tangled in the dark energy the swords’ magic coiled like a spiral, devouring the night.
I gasped when the shadows faded into cool mist.
“Those belong to me,” Bron snarled, breathless. “They will ruin you.”
A smile crossed my lips. I’d never handled true swords. The metal was heavy in my grip, yet the way they settled in my hands, it seemed as though they were part of me. A strange trill hummed along the blade. Strong and dangerous.
Bron snapped his fingers and an earthy bridge curved over the fracture between us. I raised the blades as a warning.
“Give them to me, Teagan. You will find their power deadly.”
“No. You won’t touch anyone again. I’ll die first.”
The youthfulness in Bron’s face twisted into an ugly snarl. “As you wish.”
From the shadows billowed around his back and from them Bron removed a blade. Made of strange bronze steel with notches in the hilt for what could be a jewel or totem.
“Powerful mages always have unique weapons,” Bron said, circling me, blade outstretched. “But your problem is—I am more powerful than you.”
He cut his sword at me. The edge swiped against one of the green swords. A jolt of ice shot up my arm, but Bron staggered back. He narrowed his eyes, then lunged again. I met him in the middle. The swords crossed overhead. His sword sliced into the space between mine. The High Priest pressed all his strength into the strike, forcing me to bend a knee. My arms shuddered under his weight.
All around the sanctuary violent gusts of wind encircled us, trapping us together, barring us from others.
“You are part of me Teagan,” he said, our faces close. “It isn’t the natural order to stand against each other.”
“There’s nothing natural about you.” I tweaked my wrist and broke the blade lock.
Bron fumbled to the side. I back peddled, resetting my grip. A glimmer of sweat topped Bron’s brow, he breathed as heavily as me. The silver of his eyes changed. Darkness soaked into the whites, until nothing but inky black remained.
With a shout, Bron swung his blade. I blocked, parried, stabbed. He returned each strike with more skill, more power. One edge of his sword caught my wrist, next my thigh. My head spun as through a fog, but the energy in the green swords kept me upright. Like a rod in my spine, I could not fall.
I sliced against the High Priest, exhausted. Desperate. He took a wide step back, ending close to the break in the soil. Bron lifted one open palm and flung more jagged shadows at me. I cut them back with the blades. Movement, footing, it all began to come simpler. Like second nature. No mistake, the magic in the blades had something to do with it.
Bron wavered on his feet and during the pause, Sapphire returned to his human form and shouted, “Command him to leave, Teagan! She says to use the swords. Command him! The swords!”
Sapphire mimed stabbing the blades in the ground, then pointed where Mini still sprawled on her back. I choked on relief. She was alive. She was aware.
Bron hissed in frustration at Sapphire’s voice and signaled to what remained of the lindworms to attack. I didn’t question and stabbed each green blade deep into the earth. The soil sparked with skeins of blue, like veins of ice.
Bron met my gaze with dark hatred. He raised a hand, aiming at me.
I sneered. “Leave bastard! Never come back!”
The High Priest curled over his knees, a screech like a wraith burst from his throat. The blackness in his eyes spread into horrid lines across his face. He bared his teeth, bloody saliva dripped over his lips. “This isn’t over, mage.”
Night devoured his skin until Bron folded into thick blackness. Lindworms hissed and spat their pyre and gas into the sky before taking flight. A dark disquiet settled over the shattered sanctuary.
It was over.
Chapter 28
I caught my breath, then spun around and hurried to Mini’s side.
Sapphire curled her head in his lap. I dropped the swords, words nothing but ash as I studied her wound.
“Mini.” My stomach turned over. Mini’s blue armor had faded to the wyvern marks, but they weren’t blue any longer. Dark blood soaked her middle, staining the swirling pattern. She grinned at me, but her eyes were glassy and distant.
“You did it.” She rasped. She rested a hand on Sapphire’s bloodied arm. He didn’t look away from her. He stroked her hair off her brow. The muscles in his jaw set, but he forced a smile when his m
age looked to him. “Don’t cry, Kon. That’d be . . . that’d be embarrassing.”
“Mini, you’ll be okay,” I choked out.
“No, I won’t,” she said with a chuckle. A bit of blood dripped over her bottom lip. “Teagan, those . . .” She winced.
Sapphire held her closer. “It’s okay Min. Stay still.”
“No, listen,” she whispered. “Those aren’t ordinary swords. The High . . . Priest. These belong to the High Priest . . . you.”
I shook my head, crushing emotion pressing against my heart. “No, I’m not, Mini. I’m not the High Priest.”
She nodded through a violent shudder. “Take care of Kon . . . for me.”
Sapphire cleared his throat and closed his eyes when Mini drew in a final breath, releasing it slowly.
I held tight to her hand, unable to accept she was gone. “Mini.” I shook her hand. “Mini, no. I can’t do this without you.”
I sounded more like a desperate little boy than a mage who had fought against the dark High Priest. Death hadn’t been a part of my life. I’d only lost imaginary parents that I’d never known. As I shook her lifeless form, Sapphire’s strong hand grip behind my neck, and he forced me against him. I was gasping, the air never really entering my lungs.
“She believed in you, Teagan,” Sapphire said in his low rumble. “We all do.”
I covered my eyes, trying desperately not to lose my control, but the burn in my head was making it harder the longer time passed. Mini was dead. Jade had almost died too.
My head shot up, the stabbing ache in my heart shifting across the crushed sanctuary. Eisha was gone, so was Jade.
“Where is she?” I shouted.
Sapphire didn’t answer right away. He placed his hand over Mini’s body, just as Jade had done to Bart. He whispered something in a language I didn’t know, and soon bright particles of light broke from her body and filtered into the sky. I watched in awe as Mini’s light absorbed into the stars.
Sapphire glanced to the ground. “When Bron was banished, Eisha took Jade away. The pyre is painfully toxic.”
“You need to get out of here,” I said quickly, seeing for the first time how pale he looked.
