by Jessica Gunn
Jaffrin turned, but it was too late. Krystin had settled herself between Kinder and the Ether Head Circle escort as a human shield. They froze, unwilling to attack the Daughter of Alzan with the prophecy seeming to be so close to coming true.
My heart thundered in my chest and behind my ears, my lungs racing to catch up to the oxygen they so desperately needed.
“Stop protecting the Betrayer!” one of the Ether Circle representatives ordered.
“I…” Krystin’s gaze jumped between them, then landed on me. “Ben—”
“Move now or you’ll be taken down as well,” the representative continued.
“Jaffrin, she’s under Kinder’s control,” I told him. “Tell them to stand down. She can’t control herself or her magik right now.”
“See?” Kinder said, her voice cutting through despite the orders being barked around. She turned her head slightly toward Krystin. “It’s so easy to turn Hunter against Hunter. Here you are, thinking they’ll never turn against you, but when it’s clear you’re not in your right mind, when it’s obvious you’re too powerful for them to control, too special, they lock you out. They isolate you and push you away. The Hunter Circles turn on you unless they can use you as a weapon. And you’re too good for that, Krystin. You’re just like me. Too unable to be tamed. Too wild to keep around, despite your prophesized destiny.”
She moved in front of Krystin, forcing the Ether Circle escort to raise their magik-hands and weapons, but they didn’t fire.
“So,” Kinder said, “I think I’ll exact revenge for both of us tonight.”
Kinder’s eyes glowed as lightning built around her, a whole swarm of it so powerful that the hairs on my arms stood on end. Electricity scattered into the air, sparks bouncing off of every surface. The storm built and built, humidity growing thick in the air, abilities I hadn’t even known were possible with this power, until it was too much. I couldn’t breathe. The air seemed to squeeze in around me, suffocating me.
Kinder lobbed the lightning at the Ether Circle escort, burning them with magik. Then a figure appeared—Nate.
He used teleportante to bring himself right before Kinder and he shouted, “Asanak!” The soul-slicing ether whip appeared in his hand and he brought it down on Kinder’s back before she could turn to block the move.
The ether-shaper magik slammed into her and she screamed, her eyes glowing bright white, as she fell to the ground, clutching her middle. The lightning storm died around her.
Krystin cried out, as if the word-magik had hit her, too.
“No,” Kinder whispered. “It will not end like this.”
Nate drew his knife and moved to shove it into Kinder’s back, but she said, “Teleportante,” and disappeared. Right out of the damn building.
“No,” Nate said. “No, no, no.”
I ran to the spot where she’d been but sensed no teleportante trail. “Jaffrin?”
The floor gave out beneath us and we all tumbled to the first floor of the building. I landed hard on my side, shielding my face.
“Out!” someone shouted over the noise, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Hands grabbed on to me and someone else yelled out, “Teleportante.”
We landed inside of Fire Circle Headquarters, Jaffrin and me, Nate and Krystin, and the Ether Circle escort too. They’d surrounded Krystin, who convulsed on the floor, rays of magik flying out of her.
Nate rushed to her side and encased her in a shield of ether magik. “I can try to hold her, but I don’t know for how long.”
One of the escort members rushed forward, pushing the others aside. “Let me.” He must have been an ether-shaper, too, because he reached through the ether shield Nate had created and touched his hands to Krystin’s seizing body.
I watched as they tried to bend her magik into submission, but Kinder had done a number on her. Rachel and Shawn appeared at my side. I wrapped an arm around Rachel as we watched them work, my heart caught in my throat. Ether and elemental magik mixed around Krystin, only stable because of the Alzanian power inside of her.
“The only reason this is happening is because her magik is good,” I whispered. “How fucking absurd.” Giyano and Kinder, they’d both abused that. This was the only thing that made her more of a target than Shawn. The anger of it hurt every part of me, enraged me so fully that even Rachel backed away.
“I can try to even it out,” Shawn said. “Try to heal her like I did before. Our shared magik—it’s there, just seems dormant unless it’s about keeping us alive. I don’t really understand, but—”
“Do it,” Jaffrin said. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, looking utterly helpless. “How did things go this far?”
I glared up at him. “Because you forced her to work in the city. To be on our team. To put Giyano’s targets together and place us in Lady Azar’s way.”
It wasn’t entirely his fault. He knew that and so did I. But Jaffrin didn’t respond. This was not the time.
Shawn stepped forward and leaned in past Nate. “Let me try to help her. The Alzan magik healed her before.”
Nate shot him a look. “You tried in there, too, and it didn’t work.”
“With you guys shielding her, it might this time,” Shawn said. “Please.”
Nate looked at him for a moment longer and then inched to the side, making room for Shawn. He knelt down and Nate made a hole in the shield for Shawn to reach through.
Shawn touched Krystin’s middle and closed his eyes. Nothing happened for long, agonizing moments. “Come on,” Shawn whispered to himself. “I know you’re in there.”
Finally, a light white glow started around his fingertips, a glow that reached into Krystin and encased her entire body. Over the course of many moments, her body stopped convulsing, settling down, though she remained unconscious. Rays of ether magik, differing in color, seemed to lift up like clouds, out of the ether shield and up into the air, before dissipating.
It was over.
I looked to Jaffrin. “Kinder did this to her. She didn’t have a choice.”
Jaffrin nodded. “I know, Ben. Don’t worry, I—”
“Back away from her,” the other ether-shaper said. He was staring down Nate and Shawn with glaring eyes. “She’s coming with us now that she’s stable.”
“What?” Shawn asked. “She’s still hurt.”
“We’ll take care of her,” another of the Ether Circle’s entourage said.
The others gathered around Krystin and lifted her from the floor. The ether-shaper produced manacles from ether and slapped them on Krystin’s wrists.
Jaffrin stepped forward as if he had something to say, but he kept his mouth shut, his jaw clenching.
“Are you serious?” I asked him. “You’re just going to let them take her? After all of that?”
He looked at me but said nothing, as if that gave me all the answers.
“You idiot,” I growled at him. “You’re too scared to act against them? She’s innocent.”
The ether-shaper sent a shock my way, the ether slamming against my head like a mental attack. “Enough. She’s colluded with two of the Fire Circle’s most-wanted criminals, enabling Kinder to attack and then get away. She’s responsible for the deaths that occurred tonight and the interference in a Hydron operation. She will stand trial.”
“She wasn’t colluding with anyone,” Shawn raged. “You weren’t fucking there. Instead of showing up like you promised, you assholes waited until the last damn second.”
Shawn lunged for the closest Ether Circle Hunter, but Jaffrin tugged him back. The ether-shaper shot a block of ether at Shawn, pinning him to the wall.
I balled my fists to keep from suffering the same fate, but anger raged inside me. “Yes, she worked with Giyano to make her magik more stable, but—”
Jaffrin turned to me. “Ben, don’t.”
“Don’t what?” I sputtered. “I’m not happy about it either, but it doesn’t mean she’s fucking traitor!”
>
The ether-shaper sent a pulse of magik through the room, freezing us all. “It is done,” he said. “She will stand trial. This conversation can happen then.”
They collected themselves, joined hands, and used teleportante to take themselves and Krystin out of Fire Circle Headquarters. Leaving the rest of us standing there, speechless.
Rachel was the first to move, swinging around to face Jaffrin. “Are you kidding me? Krystin risked everything to join our team on your orders and you just let them take her?”
Her eyes swam with anger and this time, I reached out to calm her down. “It’s not worth it. Clearly, Jaffrin’s loyalties aren’t with his own Circle.”
“That’s treason you’re spouting, Ben,” Jaffrin spat. “This is happening because that building collapsed. The human police are convinced it was a gas leak turned explosion. Our illusionary magik users are trying their best to cover it all up. Our PR department is doing what they can. But this is the largest near-revealing of magik in decades, Ben. This has had more repercussions than you know.”
“Then talk to Hydron; it’s their fault!”
Jaffrin’s body went rigid. “All of you are dismissed. Go to the Infirmary and rest. We will get Krystin back.”
“Not from a trial,” I said. “Not if Ether is the one holding it. Looks like they’ve already signed her sentence.”
Shawn shook his head. “They can’t do that. Because of the prophecy alone, she needs to be free. They can’t kill or imprison her if they expect to stop Lady Azar from going after Cianza Alzan.”
Jaffrin’s eyes narrowed. “Lady Azar can’t get there without Riley to channel the magik, and Riley is safe in Canada. For now, Alzan is also safe. There is nothing I can do.”
“Bull-fucking shit,” I spat, staring Jaffrin down. Lightning curled around my fingers, signaling its return from my body after Kinder’s attack. I could end Jaffrin right now. I wanted to for this injustice.
But he was right. And that’s what killed me.
Krystin had colluded with Giyano regarding Kinder. And Krystin, even under Kinder’s magikal control, had killed Hunters. She had to stand trial for at least one of those crimes, especially because they’d led to deaths.
But not like this.
I stalked down the hall alone rather than attack the Leader of the Fire Circle. Three pairs of footsteps echoed after me, my team forever the only people on my side.
We’d get Krystin back. But I wasn’t sure how, or when, or if we’d all still be Fire Circle Hunters when it was all said and done.
Chapter 22
Krystin
My head pounded. My feet were being dragged beneath me, not carrying my weight. It was the scraping of my boots against the ground that’d woken me. Pain spliced up my leg from my injured ankle, radiating upward thanks to the way I was carelessly being dragged along the floor.
I opened my eyes and found two men pulling me along. They wore the yellow robes favored by the Ether Head Circle, though these were shorter. More practical. Manacles made from strong ether held my hands behind my back. I couldn’t see them, but I felt the ether slamming against my back.
Jail cells passed me by, people inside sneering at me. No, not people. Demons. Hunters, too.
“Help us escape,” one said, eyes wide, then he barked a laugh. “Even the Daughter landed in here. We are all doomed!” He laughed maniacally.
Wait a minute… Oh, god. No.
Kinder. The magik she’d shoved into me. The amount of power. The people I’d killed. The building collapsing.
Ether Circle Prison.
I gulped. Fear coursed through me. No one escaped this prison alive. No one even went here without committing the worst of crimes. Only the most dangerous, most powerful criminals got locked up here, demon and Hunter alike.
The guards carrying me stopped at an empty cell and threw me inside. I landed on the cement floor, my knees knocking the hard surfaces with biting pain, and remained kneeling. Gasping for breath. Confused. Unable to process anything but the pain in my ankle and in my heart.
Jaffrin had thrown me in jail. Maybe Ben too. Ben locked you in Ether Circle Prison. Because of Giyano and Kinder.
Something red caught my eye, a glowing on my hand… from Giyano’s mark. He was looking for me even now. Did he know what had happened back in Boston? Did he know where I was now?
My breathing slowed and my pulse evened out. Giyano is coming. It shouldn’t reassure me but it did. Because I wasn’t sure if all the torture and death rumors were true about Ether Circle Prison, and I sure as hell didn’t want to find out. Especially not when I was innocent.
But Giyano wouldn’t let me rot in here. He’d come for me. He needed me to keep Alzan neutral. To keep Riley with Ben. To keep Lady Azar from destroying everything in existence.
Kinder’s words echoed in my head: Giyano always had a thing for gifted witches.
Giyano is coming.
He’d save me. I just needed to hold out until then.
Until my father’s killer came to rescue me from the people who were supposed to be my allies.
The Changed
Book Three
Chapter 1
KRYSTIN
Cold stone. Hot magik. These were my constants.
My magik flared, my very blood changing along with it. Twisting and writhing, my blood transforming until the guards finally let me fall to the stone floor of my prison cell, tugging off my T-shirt to reveal the tank top underneath. Refuge, at last.
My bare shoulders slid along the ground as I laid on my back. I spread my arms and legs as wide as I could, searching for as much contact with the stone as possible without having to strip naked.
Cold stone. Hot magik.
Illusions of rescue wrapped in rainbows of colors flying around me.
I walked in a forest like this once, taunted by a dancing ether flame. By all the elements. Twirls of wind and torrents of water zipping around me like dragons.
What was reality?
“Two months!” a guard screamed in my face. “How much longer do you think you can hold out?”
I clamped my mouth shut. Instead of answering the middle-aged Ether Circle Prison guard, I glanced him over. A tiny vein protruded from his forehead near his receding hairline, pulsing with every moment that passed without an answer from me.
The longer I gazed at it, the more that vein looked like a worm caught beneath the surface of his skin—one that shone with bright rainbow colors, all different shades of magik. I smiled. Those shades had been welcome friends, painting the world with color when they weren’t tearing my magik—my body—apart.
The guard slammed his fist on the table, the sound like a gong ringing in a tiny space. The reverb caught in my ear, growing until the world muffled. “Do you even realize what you did, witch? Or are you totally lost to your magikal insanity?”
Witch.
I met the guard’s gaze through hazy, clouded vision. “I’m perfectly sane. You, on the other hand…” I made a show of squinting my eyes, of focusing on that wriggling vein on the guard’s forehead.
Silence. Not a single thought.
This drop of loneliness fell into a giant abyss and there I was, adrift in darkness.
The guard swallowed hard, dropping his pointed finger. “Stop trying to read my mind, witch.” He shoved both hands behind his back and readjusted his gaze to right above my head. “Where is Kinder now?”
Ha. Joke’s on you. I didn’t know where Kinder was. I didn’t care where she’d run to.
All I cared about was when Giyano was getting here to save me.
The guard banged on the table again before rounding it. He stopped at my side, yanked back the chair I was sitting in, and turned it to face him. Dizziness rolled my empty stomach. I sucked in a deep breath, blinking slowly.
“Tell me where the Betrayer of Darkness is!” he screamed, spittle flying from his lips and landing on my face. “You worked for her. You must know.”
The room spun,
my vision splicing into technicolor slices of light. Blue for the water-elemental magik I’d housed, pink for the ether. Twisting and turning, transmuting my magik into an abomination. Like Kinder. Like Riley. Like anyone with both magik types housed within them.
And yet, the light of reality, the sharp clarity with which the weight of the guard’s spittle landed on my lips, a droplet so heavy, I felt it despite the insanity around me… I was alive. For better or worse, I was alive.
And I was innocent.
A sharp pain bloomed across my cheekbone and blazed a trail up the side of my face. The thwack of the impact came next, flooding my ears and shifting the kaleidoscope around me. The guard pulled his fist back, knuckles red.
I blinked at him. “Seems shitty to punch the person responsible for saving Alzan.”
He reeled back once more and the impact of this punch rocked the chair, sending me teetering to the ground. Metal scraped against metal and my head slammed against the stone. I smiled as steam rose around my aching head.
Cold stone, hot magik.
A bubbling sensation rose in my throat and I giggled. “Cold stone, hot magik,” I sang. Only reprieve. Only refuge.
“Crazy witch,” the guard spat as he bent down, grabbed me by the shoulders, and righted the chair. My hand glowed red, like a beacon in the night, requesting the guard halt all motion now. “Fucking crazy.”
“Not crazy,” I replied. “You’re the crazy one.”
A burning smell of charred flesh wafted into my nostrils. The guard screamed, backpedaling away from me. The kaleidoscope around me spun faster and faster, a dizzying array of shapes and colors.
“You burned me!” the guard shouted. “How the hell—”
His words cut off as flames engulfed the room.
