by Jessica Gunn
But when we, in my mind’s eye, got close to the courtyard, a wall slammed down in front of us. Solid and made of impenetrable stone. It flung us out of the voyage like a stone from a sling-shot, dropping us back on the stone floor of Shadow Crest’s lair.
I opened my eyes. Blinked. Looked to Shawn. “It didn’t work.”
“What?” Nate asked. “How could it not work?”
“There was a new wall,” Shawn said, his face paling. “We’re locked out.”
My heart sank down into my stomach. “We can’t get to Alzan.”
Chapter 18
Ben
Two-by-two, Lady Azar filed us and her legion of soldiers through the portal to Alzan. It deposited us into a courtyard made from cobblestone marble, the largest flowers in colors I’d never seen before, and tall trees that towered into the sky. The trees stopped where an intricate stonework design began, made from various shades of marble, some stones much darker than the rest. From the inside, I couldn’t tell what that darker design was.
Lady Azar cackled again, lifting her hands up into the sky, rejoicing. “We have made it! This city shall be mine!”
Until it implodes beneath your feet.
Somehow, in that moment, Lady Azar went from a semi-beautiful fierce woman to a crazed person in half a second. An instantaneous metamorphosis into insanity. As if she’d already claimed Alzan for her own just by setting foot here.
A slow vibration grew beneath my feet, shaking my bones until it felt as if the entire ground inside the courtyard swayed back and forth. Tremors shuttered through me, making even the trees wobble.
“The cianza,” Rachel whispered as her fingers wrapped around my arm. “It’s going to explode.”
“Not right away.” I hoped. But based on what Jaffrin had told us not long ago, there was no way our magik and Riley’s would be enough to keep Lady Azar’s or her legion’s in check. No way at all.
“Go!” Lady Azar commanded, dropping her hand flat in front of her. “To the city and Pyramid Building! I’ll take the cianza myself.”
Her army charged, cheering and roaring as they left the center of this courtyard on a direct path toward the white marbled city in the distance. Their hands lit up with magik of all types—flames and water, pillars of earth right beside ether of different colors.
A wail cut through the chaos of the beginning of this battle. Riley’s scream.
I spun, finding my son’s tiny body frozen taut, his arms rigid at his sides. His eyes were pinched shut, his brow knitted tight.
“It is okay, my dear,” Lady Azar said as she knelt down beside him. She touched a reassuring hand to his back. “It will feel better soon.”
“It hurts,” he cried. My heart cracked in two at the sound of pain in his voice. No one should ever feel that, much less a child.
I moved to run to him, but Rachel held me back. “Don’t,” she whispered. “If we break what concentration he has, we’re as good as dead. Alzan too.”
“No more will come,” Lady Azar said to Riley. “You just need to hold on to your magik for a little while longer. Not even the great city of Alzan can hold out forever.”
“So you think,” I snapped, calling across the distance between us. A distance that’d been filled with suddenly high winds whipping Lady Azar’s hair around her face. “Even we’re not enough to hold the cianza together. Please, Riley.”
Every time I tried to reason with Riley, it seemed futile. He was so young, so irrational to begin with. Forget whatever brainwashing Lady Azar had done to him over the years. And the demonic magik now within him. I had no idea how to talk to a three-year-old, even if he was my three-year-old.
But I had to keep trying. Especially if it was the only thing I could do right now without magik or a way to take down Lady Azar myself.
“Ben,” Rachel cried, her body suddenly bending in half. She dropped to her knees, cradling her stomach.
“What—?”
Before I could finish the question, a wave of magik rammed into me. I lurched sideways, the world whirling like a gyre around me. My forehead grew slick with sweat so heavy, it was as if I’d been walking around in the summer heat for days on end, swimming in humidity. That was all the warning I had before my veins began to burn as if fire itself was coursing through them.
Lady Azar turned her attention toward us, looking between Riley, Rachel, and me with… was that concern in her eyes? “It has begun.”
What has? I wanted to ask, but I had a feeling I already knew the answer. “The cianza can’t handle everyone’s magik. Their presence alone is setting it off. We won’t be enough.” I already felt the cianza’s magik, so like my own, tearing my magik apart. Sifting through those gashes and looking for more. My magik spanned across those rips in my mind’s eye, like little blue bridges made of Neuian ether. And even then, the cianza was relentless and without care. How had the Neuians used these things as weapons when it attacked their own people?
“You will have to be enough,” Lady Azar said. She straightened the front plate of her armor and then withdrew a sword from the sheath on her back. “There is no one else coming to Alzan to save it. Even the Son and Daughter are blocked.”
Dread carved a hole in my stomach. “What do you mean?”
Though her gaze was on her army nearing the city in the distance, her words were directed in answer to me. “The magik I used to break through the walls to Alzan created a cocoon around the city, much like what the Powers did thousands of years ago. But even their magik weakens over time. I took advantage of those weaknesses. My only regret is that I was not able to make this attack sooner. The younger the person with the Power is, the stronger their magik.”
Krystin and Shawn weren’t coming.
I glanced back toward the city, to the army nearing it. A wave of Alzanian citizens and soldiers rushed Lady Azar’s front line. They were close enough to see without aid but far enough away to not hear any of the battle.
If Krystin and Shawn couldn’t make it on time, their part of the prophecy wouldn’t happen. They would not be here to save Alzan in whatever way their magik was able to.
Which meant it was up to Rachel and me. And Riley, if we could get through to him. Maybe, just maybe, the three of us at full power could neutralize the cianza, but…
I glanced again at Riley and Rachel, both of them squirming in pain at the same overwhelming sense of raw power that was also eating away at me.
The cianza.
This is what Krystin and Shawn had felt in Boston when that cianza had almost imploded. This is the same magik their magik was based on. Our Neuian magik.
We could do this. We had to.
“Riley, please,” I begged again, a renewed sense of determination clawing at my insides. “I’m your father. We’re Neuians. Our magik is older than Lady Azar’s. With your help, we can save this city, not destroy it. No one has to get hurt.”
“You hurt my mother first,” Riley said, his eyes still squeezed shut, sounding for all the world like a normal, angry child instead of a demonic kid brainwashed by the heiress of Darkness.
For a long moment, I thought he’d actually meant Sandra, his real mother. I had hurt her, a number of times before he had even been born. First by running from this responsibility and then by letting my search for Riley and being a Hunter take over my life.
But he couldn’t have meant Sandra. There was no way he’d have known those things about her and me. Riley didn’t know anything about us, his real parents.
“People are going to die, Riley.” Maybe a straight approach was better. I honestly didn’t know. “They will get hurt and they will never come back, all because you and me and your Aunt Rachel are being used. But if you work with us instead of against us, we can save these people. They’ll live the rest of their lives in happiness.” Or something close to it at least. After they rebuild from this war.
Riley turned to me, his eyes opening. “It hurts so much, Daddy.”
I tried to put on the most
neutral, reassuring expression I could for him, despite my heart tearing open from the inside out. “I know, buddy. It’s hurting me too. But we can do this. Come here.”
He stepped toward me, his blond hair falling across his deep burgundy eyes. But around the edges of his irises I saw a line of blue. His Neuian side peeking through. Hope swelled within me, a tiny spark of a wish that maybe, somehow, the Neuians could reverse the demonic transformation Lady Azar had put him through. If we all lived, maybe Riley could be changed back.
“Throw up a shield!” someone shouted over the building wind. At first, I thought it was Lady Azar, but her hands were still at her sides. Even she wasn’t willing to use magik on the cianza, although she sure as hell let her legion do so.
Three ether-shaper demons next to Lady Azar stepped in the direction of the city, their hands lit with white and yellow ether. In the distance, the first wave of Shadow Crest soldiers clashed with some Alzanians. But to our left, where the Pyramid Building sat a few miles out, barely visible in the fog shrouding it, stormed another group of Alzanians. They numbered at least thirty, though it was hard to count them from this distance and with the white ala-ether they wielded obstructing my view.
“Now,” Lady Azar commanded, and within a minute the ether-shaper demons had a shield up. It rose from their hands, sliding shut like a clam shell around us, reaching out past the immediate area to cover what appeared to be the entire opening to the courtyard. Everywhere that darkened stone design seemed to reach. When they were finished, Lady Azar drew her blade across her own hand and pressed her bleeding palm to the shield. It flashed red, the ending to some blood magik ritual from ancient times.
We’re right on top of the cianza. We must be. But raising a shield of pure ether, even if it was blood magik, wasn’t going to save the cianza. It’d just make everything worse.
“What are you doing?” I shouted at her.
“Keeping their magik away from here long enough for my people to take the city,” Lady Azar said, watching her legion now enter the city. Even from here I could tell their pace had slowed, their steps more like staggering. The Alzanian army appeared to be about the same. “Assuming you three can keep things stable.”
I looked again to Riley, whose face grew more pained by the second. “Riley, come here. We can get through this together. If we combine our magik, it might help.” At the very least, maybe I could take some of his pain, some of the burden of holding the cianza together, off of him. But for as much as Rachel’s and my Neuian magik might be doing, no one would stabilize Cianza Alzan better than Riley. As long as he didn’t take a non-Neuian magik into himself while he was here.
My son nodded at me and took another step my way, closer and less timid than before. “Okay.”
I stepped toward him too, the action pulling on my lethargic, slow limbs, spreading the ache around. One foot in front of the other, I closed the distance between me and my son. But the second I reached out to take his small hand in mine, just like I had the day he’d been born, Lady Azar swung her sword between us, narrowly missing my fingers.
She glared down at me, her sword aimed at my throat. “Do not attempt to thwart my plans, Ben Hallen. I’ve not come this far to lose everything.”
“Then why are you here? You know we’re not enough. Not to hold the cianza together if more come to fight.”
She grinned, an eyebrow cocked. “I told you the path to Alzan is blocked. No one else is coming from either side.”
Rachel roared. She grabbed Lady Azar by the middle and slammed her into the ground. Lady Azar’s sword clattered against the stonework of the courtyard. I dove for it, coming back up on shaking feet and legs. The cianza’s effects slammed harder into me with every minute we remained here. Even with the nullifying effects of our Neuian magik, the sheer size of Cianza Alzan alone was enough to send my vision into a spin.
I bit my cheek to give myself something new to focus in on, the pain now throbbing there, and stood, the sword raised before me. No magik this time, not unless Lady Azar brandished her own.
She shook Rachel off of her, which I’d expected. But when she stood, neither she nor Rachel called their magik. Instead, Lady Azar backed up a few steps and drew a hidden short sword and dagger. Rachel skittered backward, unarmed and unaccustomed to close combat. Rachel could fight, but not like Krystin or Lady Azar. Not that I’d ever really gotten the hang of a sword either.
Lady Azar lunged. I stepped around Riley and came up swinging with the sword. I blocked her first attack and pivoted out of the way of the second, but a sharp pain sliced up my arm on her third slash. I jumped back, righting the sword in my hands. Lady Azar kept swinging, closing the distance, jabbing and lunging with all the ease of breathing. This sword was too bulky to stop her, too hard to maneuver quickly.
I backed up one step, two. Four more as she swung high with the short sword and stepped in to strike with her dagger at the same time. Rachel jumped in at that moment and pulled Riley away from us, careful not to let him touch her with his bare hands. I tripped over a raised cobblestone and crashed hard onto my ass, the sword dropping beside me. The ground shook violently, bouncing me an inch off the stone.
“Enough,” Lady Azar said. “There is work to be done. Concentrate on the cianza, on your magik’s connection to it, or watch everyone around you burn.”
Fuck her. She was probably right. The increase in tremors had started right when this fight between us had. But was my magik alone really that powerful?
“Ben,” Rachel said. The way she said my name was enough to know the truth: the only thing we could do right now was keep the cianza from exploding… as much as we could, anyway.
I closed my eyes for a quick moment and reached for that place inside me where my magik resided. I called to it, calming the torrent of my thoughts as best I could. Which wasn’t very well.
But with even the smallest fraction of concentration, the shaking subsided some.
“There you go,” Lady Azar said, smiling. “There’s the control I expect out of the three of you. We may take Alzan in one piece yet.”
I gulped. Krystin, where are you?
Chapter 19
KRYSTIN
“How is that even possible?” I asked of no one in particular. Only Shawn might have had the answer, and he didn’t seem all that enlightened.
Nate stared blankly back at both of us. “You were locked out for how many years? You still have your magik, so I don’t think it’s anything on your end.”
“It wasn’t,” Shawn said as he jumped down from the dais. Avery watched him the whole time, a confused, frustrated look on his face. “There was a new wall of magik. We collided with it.”
“Maybe they added it for protection against Lady Azar,” Avery offered as he holstered his gun. “They knew she was coming.”
I glanced at Shawn. His face held all the worry and confusion that whirred in my thoughts, but my body still shook with its own problems. Even though we hadn’t actually transferred fully to Alzan, my magik reacted as if we had. “It’s her doing. It has to be. Whatever magik she was using to get to Alzan is old enough to wrap around the city, that entire plane of existence, as a shield.”
“The same magik Kinder used to block Headquarters from everyone,” Shawn said. “She must have taught her daughter how to use it.”
“I wonder how much Kinder thought of Lady Azar as her daughter, period,” Nate wondered aloud. “They seem to hate each other.”
“I don’t care,” I snapped. “I care about getting to Alzan to stop her from destroying everything. That’s all that matters, not their familial affairs.”
“Lady Azar’s ascension to the throne instead of Ammon might be something to worry about,” Avery said under his breath.
“Not if we kill her,” I growled. “Which I have every intention of doing.” Kinder too, but I kept that to myself. My kill list, short as it was, would be fulfilled. No matter how much an ally Kinder sometimes wanted herself to be.
�
��What if it has to do with the cianza?” Shawn asked me. “Lady Azar is using Riley to keep it neutral, right? What if in doing so, the cianza is somehow changing the magiks around the city? But that doesn’t mean you and I can’t still get to Alzan. There’s one spot that was protected from the cianza’s affects.”
My gaze met his golden one and I grinned. “You smart son of a bitch. Let’s try it.”
The Pyramid Building. If we couldn’t get through to Alzan there, we were out of options. But maybe, just maybe, Lady Azar’s shield was only around the cianza. Unlike the city, which sat on the outskirts of the cianza, the Pyramid Building had been built outside of it. That was part of the reason they had been able to create protection magiks for the building itself. If, and it was a large if, the shield she’d created was around only the cianza and not the entire plane of existence, we should be able to get through.
Besides, Shawn and I were the Son and Daughter of Alzan. There was nothing Lady Azar could do that would keep us out forever.
Although there was still every chance this trip might be my last. Shawn’s heavy gaze reminded me of that. “Are you sure you’re good for this?”
I nodded. I feared death just like any other sane person would. But if it was my life over so many others’, I’d be foolish and selfish to run away from this fight. “Yeah. Let’s just get it over with.”
“We’ll try one more time,” Shawn said, addressing the group. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to think of a new plan.”
Yeah, like hide under a desk.
Shawn turned to me and held out a hand. “Ready?”
“Sure,” I said, though I was anything but. I gave him my hand anyway and closed my eyes, once again searching for the connection to Alzan while everyone else joined hands. We must have looked ridiculous standing there amongst bodies of demons and the remnants of their world.
