House of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 2)

by Emma L. Adams

  “I’m taking her to the jail,” I told them. “She’s under Adair’s hypnosis. I’m gonna convince him to let her go.”

  “Not alone.” One of the liches broke away and insisted on flanking us all the way to the jail, but even the persistent chill didn’t stop Tay from fighting me with every step.

  Once we reached the jail, I wrestled Tay through the doors and shoved her into an empty cell. Then I slammed the door on her. “Sorry. I’ll let you out when I can.”

  Adair watched me through the bars of his own cell. “Had a falling-out with your friend, did you?”

  I caught my breath. “Release her from your control, Adair.”

  He snorted. “No chance.”

  “You’re only exerting control over her because the others want nothing to do with you,” I said. “I noticed they started their plan without you.”

  He snickered. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll do their part and I’ll do mine.”

  “Dammit, Adair!” I said. “What do the Family have to accomplish by supporting Hawker in his attempt to link Elysium and London of all places?”

  “Sounds like he already succeeded,” he said. “The Order is obsolete. They deserve to fall, to pave the way for something new.”

  “Innocent people died, Adair,” I said. “Those infected cantrips—where the fuck are they coming from?”

  “The only way to get rid of them is to set me free,” he said. “I’m immune to their effects, like you are. Anyone else who touches one of those cantrips dies. No exceptions.”

  “I’m not falling for that.”

  Adair laughed under his breath. “Would you stake your friend’s life on it? Do you think the Death King will spare her when he gets back—if he gets back?”

  “He’ll be back, but you’ll wish he’d killed you when I’m finished with you.” I was done with using Tay’s life as a bargaining chip. “As for Tay, she can do whatever she likes as long as you aren’t around.”

  “Tay, use your magic,” he said. “Get her over here.”

  A heartbeat passed. Then Tay was on her feet a moment later, electricity shooting from her hands and through the bars of her cell. Pain rattled my teeth in my skull, and my legs gave way. Dammit… I should have known Tay wouldn’t let herself be locked up again.

  Tay leaned out of the cell door, and the coldness of a cantrip pressed into my hands.

  “Guess what?” Adair said softly. “I lied. Those cantrips can kill us… just not permanently.”

  At once, an unbearable itching sensation spread across my palms, while tingles spread up and down my arms. Tay caught my face in her hands, her mouth twisted with emotion, but she couldn’t stop her own hands from turning me around until my gaze connected with Adair’s.

  “Get me out of here,” he said.

  My hands moved to obey even as my mind screamed at me to stop. I could no more have resisted than I could have stopped breathing. As his cell door opened, Adair shoved his way out, joining Tay, whose expression brimmed with remorse. I tried to speak, but my mouth felt as though it was superglued shut.

  Adair grinned, gesturing at the two liches who guarded the jail doors. “Burn them.”

  Flames leapt from my hands, as though of their own accord, reducing both liches to twin piles of ashes. Adair then seized my arm and dragged me out into the light. Tay walked along behind us, not speaking, as the node beside the jail came into view.

  “You can’t go through there,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “That’s the Death King’s personal node. Nobody living can use it.”

  Adair reached for the pendant around my neck. “You have a way around that, don’t you? You go first.”

  Shit. I did. The transporter spell. He grabbed the pendant and pulled me one-handedly into the node. The transporter spell flashed, and unbearable pain speared my body from within.

  I landed on my knees on hard ground, the crumbled remains of the Family’s estate nearby. My head hit the earth, my vision fading until nothing remained but darkness.

  I woke up in a cell. Or something like it. The small empty room looked more like a cave, but I saw enough to know I was back in the Family’s home.

  I slumped back into a sitting position. I was screwed. I’d already lost my chance to save Tay from Adair’s influence and stop the Family unleashing their cantrips on the city, and to add insult to injury, it turned out the infected cantrips could hurt me after all. By now though, sensation had come back into my limbs, and the rash had vanished from sight. The others who’d picked them up wouldn’t be so lucky.

  Lex walked into view, a smile on her mouth. “I have to say, you look much better than you did when Adair sent you here.”

  “Was this the ‘chaos’ you were talking about?” I spat. “Sending your assassins into London and unleashing inferno cantrips on innocent people? Setting the Houses against one another and spreading lethal cantrips through Elysium’s capital after cutting off the nodes so nobody could get out? That doesn’t look like staying out of the magical world’s business to me.”

  “Oh, most of that wasn’t our doing,” she said. “I heard you did your level best to intervene, regardless, but it’s pointless.”

  Who needed a war when they’d already killed countless people without laying a finger on them? Worse, a node linked the two realms more closely than ever before, the Order and the Houses were in disarray, and the Family would have free rein to run amok in both realms if we weren’t careful. Unless Devon had a cantrip to hand to turn off the node in Elysium’s citadel… but my friends would have to handle that alone. I wouldn’t be getting out of this cell anytime soon.

  I fixed a glare on my face to cover my panic. “Yeah, it’s always my pleasure to screw things up for you.”

  “I have to say, I was surprised your friend was the one who finally convinced you to help Adair escape,” she added. “Loyalty is hard to find, isn’t it?”

  Damn her. Tay had been fighting Adair’s control all along. That she’d managed to delay for any length of time at all had been a small miracle.

  “Bet that pissed you off,” I said. “How she stopped you from taking over the House of Fire by killing the jailor you sent to infiltrate their ranks, I mean.”

  “Clever of her,” said Lex. “Very clever, given the limited options at her disposal. If I’d known how good she was, I might have recruited her sooner.”

  “You ruined her life,” I said. “As much as you ruined mine. You must have known giving magical enhancements to a child would end in tragedy.”

  “Her family were fully complicit,” she said. “They’re more to blame than I am. They wanted a rare mage whose skills they could exploit. I suppose she never told you that. She was ashamed, I imagine.”

  “You haven’t the right to play with people’s lives like that,” I said to her. “Not you, and not Roth either. Where’s he hiding, anyway?”

  “Roth is watching the action,” she said. “Chaos is easy to unleash but harder to manipulate, and we don’t want the whole system to collapse just yet.”

  “So that’s the plan.” Bitterness laced my words. “You want the Houses of the Elements totally under your control, not awash in total anarchy.”

  “Of course we do,” she said. “We almost had them once already, before you stopped us.”

  “I’m not going to apologise for it,” I said. “I saved lives by burning this shithole to the ground. I forced you to stop your plans in their tracks.”

  But they’d resumed their strategy the instant they’d escaped and found their way back here. Of course they had. They were resourceful and cunning, traits they’d passed onto me, and which I’d need to employ if I wanted to get the hell out of here.

  “Yes, you did.” She glanced behind her. “It’s awfully quiet out here, isn’t it? That’s one thing I always noticed after the war… the silence.”

  “You lived through the war thirty years ago,” I said. “You took advantage back then, too.”

  “Of course we did,” she
said. “When the mage council had their falling-out, someone had to be there to pick up the pieces.”

  “What makes you so sure the spirit mages will win this time?” I said. “Last time, they lost. Everyone else did, too.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “They have the same advantages as before, but without the tyranny of the Council of the Elements to contend with.”

  “Didn’t they kill the Council of the Elements?” The spirit mages had done a fair job of wiping each other out, too, but I couldn’t forget they were the ones who’d built the citadels. And, presumably, the transporters, too.

  “Did you know this territory used to belong to the elves?” she said. “Before the mages forced them to leave, that is. We’re hardly the first to take the Parallel’s resources for ourselves.”

  I frowned at the change of subject. “The mages drove out the elves?”

  “Why is that hard for you to believe?” she queried.

  “It isn’t,” I said. “I’m surprised you care.”

  “You need to understand why the mages’ attempts to take power will always end in failure,” she said. “They’re a poison. Killing one another off was the best thing they could have done. This new war will have a similar result, except it will be the Houses that fall. The Houses, the Order… they’re all fatally flawed.”

  “Speak for yourself.” The Family’s motto was to let everyone else kill each other and then rise from the ashes. Yet they’d hardly stood on the side-lines in this case, considering they’d provided the enemy with the tools to wreak havoc on two worlds. “You want to take their place, do you? I thought you hated the spotlight. Unless you want to spend the rest of your miserable existence watching people die for your own amusement.”

  She smiled. “I can guarantee you’d have been much happier if you’d just stayed put and hadn’t intervened. You should have stopped asking questions. Then we wouldn’t have had to find a way to destroy you, too.”

  “That’s funny, because it was asking questions which made me realise what scumbags you were,” I said. “That you never cared for me at all.”

  As if I could ever forget what she and the others had done to me. To everyone. Even Adair was a victim of their lies, even if he’d embraced them wholeheartedly. He’d been brainwashed from the moment he could walk.

  “Then I’ll let you stay here for a while and think on your mistakes.” She took a step back from the door to my cell. “I imagine Elysium’s mages will be desperate by now. Desperate enough to accept help from anyone… even such abominations as we are.”

  She walked away, leaving me alone in my cell. Several long minutes passed before I heard footsteps. I rose to my feet, ready to face the last remaining member of my family.

  Instead, someone else altogether walked into view. I rose to my feet and leaned up against the cage bars. “Tay?”

  Tay edged up to the cell door and whispered, “I had to let them think I’m still completely under their control. Adair didn’t tell me not to come back here, so I found my way to a node as soon as he looked the other way.”

  “Damn,” I said. “Thanks for taking the risk.”

  “Also, I have help,” she added.

  The outline of a fiery humanoid figure appeared above her head. “At your service.”

  “Where’d you come from?” I asked Dex.

  “I saw that dickhead of a brother of yours haul you out of the Death King’s jail,” he said. “I tried to intercept him, but he moves fast, doesn’t he?”

  “He does.” Relief washed over me. “Can you get me out of here?”

  Tay strode up to the door, an unlocking spell at the ready. She flicked the switch on the side of the cantrip and the door sprang open. Then she pressed the pendant into my hand. With a mouthed thank you, I slid it open and found my cantrips were still inside it. I retrieved two invisibility cantrips, but when I passed one to her, she shook her head. “I’m still under Adair’s control. I can’t risk it.”

  “I’ll come back for you.” I flicked on my own cantrip, vanishing from sight. I was free, but it wouldn’t be long before they realised Tay was in here.

  I walked towards the exit, but I hadn’t gone ten steps before Lex reappeared, seeing the empty cell… and Tay. “You.”

  Tay’s hands crackled with magic, blasting Lex off her feet. Lex sprang upright with her teeth bared in a snarl, and I took the opportunity to sprint out into the corridor. Freedom beckoned, and I pelted for the door. Dex swooped out ahead of me into the night, while I followed, my heart torn in two. I didn’t want to leave Tay behind, but if I didn’t run now, I’d never make it back to Elysium in time to make sure my allies weren’t caught up in the chaos destroying the Houses.

  I’ll come back, Lex. And this time I won’t let you cage me again.

  19

  Dex and I ran over the collapsed gates to the Family’s estate and out into the wasteland, where I pinpointed the glowing shape of the node. “That way.”

  While the fire sprite flew above my head, I put on a burst of speed and left the remains of the Family’s house in the dust.

  “Evil fuckers,” said Dex. “This place is a dump, isn’t it?”

  “I bet Elysium is in a worse state,” I said. “Those infected cantrips kill anyone who touches them. Except me, and that’s if I trust what Adair told me.”

  “If you’re going to explode, give me some warning first.”

  “Ha ha.” I ran on towards the node. “We never did find where they were manufacturing those cantrips, either.”

  “Not much out here.” Dex zipped past me. “Your spirit mage friends are waiting on the other side. In Elysium. They thought that’s where you’d been taken.”

  “Shit.”

  We vanished into the node’s light, then reappeared in an alleyway. A pillar of light shone above the rooftops, indicating the citadel. My feet caught on something on the ground, a golden disc engraved with a now-familiar pattern of runes. Someone had left a cursed cantrip by the node, so that anyone unlucky enough to land on top of it would fall victim to its magic.

  “What sick bastard would put that there?” I muttered to Dex.

  Similar cantrips littered the ground like discarded coins. Valuable, if not in the monetary sense. Yet anyone who touched them would be dead within minutes.

  “Someone left them lying around on purpose,” said Dex.

  “Exactly my thinking.” I kicked dirt over the nearest cantrip, smearing it into the mud.

  Behind me, the node ignited as a figure appeared within it. I conjured fire to my palms, extinguishing it as Tay approached us.

  “How’d you shake them off?” I backed up a step, in case Lex leapt out behind her.

  “Adair wasn’t there,” she said breathlessly. “Lex, though… she’ll be back.”

  “What’s this in aid of?” I indicated the cantrips on the ground. “Someone’s been busy.”

  “We’re too late,” whispered Tay. “The assassins already spread them all over the city. That was always the plan. Nobody will know how lethal they are until it’s too late.”

  “You’re joking.” She wasn’t. There were a half-dozen cantrips on this street alone, let alone throughout the rest of Elysium.

  Tay drew in a breath. “We have to get back to the House of Fire. It’s the only—”

  Blurred movement came from the rooftop as she spoke, and her words cut off in a choked noise. Then Tay fell across me, a knife buried in her back.

  “Tay!” I lowered her to the ground, scanning the roof for her attacker—but he was gone, as though he’d never been there, leaving nothing behind but the knife jutting from Tay’s back. Her heartbeat fluttered against my fingertips as I held her, numb disbelief seeping through me.

  Blood beaded her mouth when she whispered, “The House… get to the House.”

  “Tay… no.” The words stuck in my throat like broken glass. “Tay. Stay with me.”

  Movement stirred on the rooftop nearby, and I sprang to my feet. Fire leapt to my
palms, coalescing into a whirlwind which I sent straight at the assassin above me. He crumpled to the ground, rolling over in an attempt to put out the fire, and Dex flew at him in a shower of sparks.

  I crouched beside Tay, the assassin’s death throes becoming distant as everything aside from Tay’s stifled breaths faded to white noise. “Tay. Hang on. I’m sure I can get a healing cantrip—”

  She cut me off by gripping my hand in hers, blood peppering her lips. A rattling groan escaped her, and she half pulled me down so she could whisper in my ear.

  “You’re better than they are,” she said to me. “You always were.”

  Then she breathed her last.

  Tears burned my eyes. I bowed my head over her body for a long moment, my throat raw, my vision blurred. Part of me knew I needed to get away from here in case Lex followed her out of the node, but I couldn’t bring myself to let go of her. It wasn’t until a shadow fell over me that I looked up. Miles approached, and his arms enfolded me. “Bria. Thank the Elements.”

  I held him for an instant and then got to my feet, swallowing hot tears. “She’s dead.”

  “She’s the one who took you to the Family, right?” He squeezed me tighter and I held on right back.

  “No,” I mumbled into his chest. “No… Adair did. He was controlling her using his powers, but she fought against him until the end. She helped me escape. Risked her life in the process.”

  Miles released me, scanning the alleyway. “Is that the guy who did it?”

  My gaze went to Dex, who hovered above the limp body of the assassin. “Yeah. Did you manage to get one of Devon’s cantrips to take to the citadel and turn off the node?”

  “Ryan’s taking care of it,” he said. “As soon as I realised you were gone, I came back here to look for you.”

  I looked down at Tay’s body, my heart clenching. “Tay… with her last words, she told me to go back to the House of Fire.”

  “The House of Fire?” he said. “Why?”