The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  The men looked at their leader and edged closer together—away from Constantine.

  The leader's eyes didn't stray from the star in Constantine's hand as the man painfully pressed a button on the device at his waist. The metallic mist burst away from the leader's skin and fell to the concrete in droplets. Then the droplets gathered together and reconfigured to form a silver star once more.

  Rasping, wet breaths became measured pants, and the leader rose with great difficulty. His finger maintained contact with the device at his waist. He still had magic, but I concluded, from the wary way everyone was reacting, that unrecoverable death was a possibility with another hit like that.

  “Take the Price girl only,” the leader rasped at the man near Olivia, without turning his head. “Leave Leandred...and the other one.”

  It was an order to his men and a deal for Constantine.

  No. No! I sent a mental plea to Constantine. I knew he didn't care about Olivia. When he had said to kill her, he had meant it. He had never given me the impression that he cared about anything other than what directly interested him at any given moment, but please, please!

  The leader began to back away from us, satisfied with whatever he read in Constantine's expression.

  Constantine knelt next to me, his gaze finally meeting mine.

  Help her! Anything, I'll do anything!

  The light in his caramel eyes spiked and a smile grew, the whole effect making him look somewhat feverish.

  “Easy enough, Ren, love.” His gaze switched back to the men, watching them for movement.

  He carefully worked the metal button from the outside of his leather bag with one hand while in the other he continued to hold the silver star in a position where he could throw it, if threatened.

  He avoided touching the net covering me as he slipped the button between the strands and against the inside of my elbow. I felt the magic in the net reaching for him—spreading and stretching silken fingers.

  “Give permission to the magic of this device.” Darkness and excitement permeated his barely audible voice. “And we will stop them from taking your friend.”

  The man next to Olivia put a gloved hand on her netted back and her frozen body turned, her face and empty expression rotating toward us.

  I thrust permission to the button pressed against my skin. Magic flew into the device at my elbow and zipped past the cuff on my wrist, as if no restriction existed.

  One thread of the net around me snapped, then a second, and a third. The crackling sound continued down the silken veins, then burst free.

  Something else, a second coating of something I couldn't instantly identify and that I hadn't known had been there, broke free as well.

  Magic jumped to my will, and I could feel Constantine's exhilaration and fervency so clearly that it felt like my own. My constantly rotating pyramid was ripped from me, abruptly and shockingly. The sky groaned and magic shot through my body, out of my control, down into the ground, erupting and shooting outward in a torrent of rage.

  The blast sent everyone except the two of us sprawling. I frantically tried to regain control of my magic, but it ran free and unchecked...to Constantine. Everything in me, including my will to move, flowed into him in a pattern of choices and options that he controlled. His magic told me to stay still at his side, and I did.

  Horrified, all I could do was watch as he crouched next to me, fingers touching the metal against my skin, and eyes fiendishly watched the flashes of magic flying from me—my magic completely under his control.

  The green dome thickened to a few shades lighter than black and patterns formed and started to swirl in smoked circles of greenish black.

  Olivia rolled with the blast that freed her.

  The man near her stumbled upright, fury in his eyes as he glared at me. His intent was clearly malevolent as his arms rose.

  A violent pull of my magic lit the interior of the dome and sent the man hurtling to the ground, his head cracking hard on the pavement. An echo of the earlier unearthly groan sounded—eerily similar to the sound of the magic from Raphael's box. And the circles... I knew those circles.

  Another pull of magic stripped a nearby tree, entwining the branches over the man, pressing him against the ground, and securing him in a vicious parody of the magic net that had encompassed me.

  I frantically tried to gather back my magic. Dear God.

  Constantine's expression was one of perfect, deadly satisfaction as his eyes narrowed on the places where each new blast hit.

  Grabbing, breathing, holding... I visualized pyramids, squares, diamonds... Nothing was working. I was locked in a mental box while my magic spilled free and unchecked.

  The leader of the men grabbed a device at his waist and thrust it outward as he lunged toward the curved wall of the dome.

  Constantine ripped magic from me so hard that I lost consciousness for a moment as he threw it toward the device. When the smoke cleared from my vision, five unmoving bodies were splayed on the concrete. The dome still pulsed overhead, but now it was swirling with hunger.

  I felt another pull of magic. There was black death in the taste of it as it slithered over my tongue and through my pores. My magic was about to be used to kill someone.

  Olivia lunged toward us, her arm moving as she sent a spell that ripped Constantine's hand and the metal button away from me. The button clattered to the ground and Constantine was pushed a few feet backward—leaving a furrow in the concrete, as if a bulldozer had forced the movement.

  My magic abruptly went dormant and my cheek hit the ground as I tried to catch my breath. As I lay there panting, white stars drifted everywhere around me.

  “Now, Price. That wasn't very nice.” At Constantine's tone, a rush of adrenaline pumped through me, clearing my vision completely. Constantine's hands started to glow with power, and his expression was the same as when he'd thrown the silver star—he was about to do something especially cruel. I could feel it, as if we were still connected. He raised a hand toward Olivia.

  I scrambled to my knees and threw myself at him, grasping his arm instinctively. “No.”

  I could feel the raging power beneath his skin.

  “Please,” I begged.

  The currents beneath my hand slowed and the glow slowly faded from his fingers. Olivia's chest heaved, her bun was mussed, and locks of hair fell around her face.

  I had never seen her so visibly affected and angry.

  “As you wish,” Constantine finally said. His cheeks were flushed and his caramel eyes nearly glowed gold.

  Hate and antipathy passed between Constantine and Olivia in a festering stare.

  Olivia quickly and viciously rifled through the five assailants' pockets, pulling out containers of different sizes. Her furious gaze continuously darted back to Constantine, checking his movement and the button's distance to me.

  I sagged. The two of them were safe. I'd think about Constantine's actions later.

  Olivia ripped the remaining magic from the assailants' containers and performed a long series of motions over the men. Her gaze was piercing as she worked. Precise, deliberate magic was her forte.

  She finished her movements with a dark frown on her face, then she tore the remnants of the black box from the leader's belt. She stepped away, her face nearly as flushed with the use of illegal magic as Constantine's.

  “A containment dome?” The muscles in Olivia’s arms flexed as she gripped the shell of the broken device harder. “In the First Layer? And, there are enough regular usage containers here to give Axer Dare trouble,” she spat. Her eyes moved to the silver star and metal button Constantine had picked up from the ground. “And you? Are the checkpoints even checking anything anymore?”

  Constantine sniped back a response, but I’d stopped listening. My hands were clenching my thighs, and I had to force my muscles to relax, and my horribly obstructed anxiety, to work its way free. Thoughts of domes and containment and Origin Magic whirled through my mind.


  The dome felt familiar, but odd. Reasons for why made me clench the denim beneath my fingers even tighter.

  I had researched Origin Magic domes in my search for a good containment field last term. Ganymede Circus' dome had been one such example—a marvelous creation that Raphael Verisetti had destroyed in one blow using my stolen magic.

  My stolen magic wielded by someone capable of horrible things.

  I focused on the men splayed on the ground, and on the leader, specifically. ‘Verisetti,’ he had said while looking at the top of my head.

  Marked. I had known conceptually that Raphael had done something to me, marked me somehow—as both he and Marsgrove had separately remarked upon it. I still didn't understand what that meant, but where that mark obviously resided was very unsettling.

  Because like this man, and Marsgrove months ago, Professor Stevens had stared at the top of my head when I had first arrived at Excelsine. She had darkly examined me, then engineered a meeting in order to ask very specific questions about my loyalties.

  Professor Stevens knew Raphael. The knowledge curled bitterly in my stomach. She had become a mentor. Another mentor, perhaps using me for her own ends. Magic roiled around inside me, poking at my cuff and vainly trying to connect to the blackened tendrils of the dome.

  “Touch this again, darling,” Constantine said at my side, holding the button in the palm of his hand once more.

  “No. How dare you.” Olivia grabbed my arm, pulling me up and away. Her gaze never left Constantine. “How did you get that through the checkpoint, Leandred? How do you have one?”

  Olivia—calm, poised Olivia—was more flustered than I had ever seen her as she tried to file information that didn't fit into her perfectly constructed database. Olivia was used to verbally shredding people—holding a debate hall or courtroom in the palm of her hand. Today had severely put her off her normal game.

  Constantine smiled. “Come now, Price. You act as if you didn't sneak prohibited items through the checkpoint as well. I consider the privilege to do so a ‘get out of jail free card’ courtesy of the ones who love us the most.”

  “You aren't using that on her ever again,” she hissed.

  “You have five more minutes to change your mind, Price. You hold the remnants of the device that created the dome—a device which is useless to us now.” He reached out a hand, almost touching the dome's magic that was swirling madly in poisonous shades of green and black. He smiled strangely, curling his fingers back into his palm. “Five minutes—maybe six—before it explodes with us inside. Before the entire Department task force descends upon us. If we survive at all, what do you think will happen during questioning? What do you think will happen to your delectable roommate?”

  A cracking sound in the dome underscored his words.

  “What can you do?” I asked without emotion. I felt...removed, as if their argument was at a distance from me. I could hear the words, but the connection to any emotional response wasn't there. Delayed shock, the disconnected portion of my mind said.

  He smiled slowly, a devastating thing for most females at Excelsine. It merely registered to me in an analytical way, though. I was lifeless. Wooden. Like a tree. Like Christian in my sketch.

  A small bit of emotion broke through.

  “I can permanently set the memories that your roommate just modified,” he said. “A delicate operation that involves breaking into the Layer system and using the erasure spell that works on ordinary people, but instead directing it to mages. Delicate work, but I've been...doing a lot of research on the magic involved in the Layers lately.”

  “No,” Olivia said harshly. “I won't allow it. The enchantment will stick on its own.”

  Constantine didn't even glance her way, his gaze never leaving mine. “More importantly, the dome must be collapsed correctly, unless you want a ten-block radius destroyed along with all the people inside of that radius.”

  Memories of Ganymede Circus rent my thoughts, letting more emotion through. My head shook as I wobbled it sideways in the negative. No good options.

  Constantine's fingers touched my chin. “The Department will not be kind to any of us. Or to your ordinary family. I know what I'm doing. Trust me.”

  I stared at him. We had worked together frequently last term and I could read him pretty well most of the time. I knew exactly why he had been doing Layer research lately.

  “You need me—my magic—in order to affect the Layer system.”

  It wasn't a question. I had spent my time last term researching necromancy, not Origin Magic, since Origin Magic couldn't bring my real brother back—it could only produce a pale approximation that echoed my thoughts and wishes. But I had absorbed a few uncomfortable and familiar facts about Origin Magic and how my own magic displayed.

  And it had been obvious that Constantine had suspected things about my magic right from our first meeting.

  I didn't want to think about being the monster everyone in the magic world feared. But Kinsky's paintings had reached out to me twice now, and one had transported me through it earlier today. A pretty big red flag of doom.

  “No.” Olivia's tone was dark and final. “You aren't doing it, Ren.”

  Constantine's fingers slipped from my chin and he extended to his full height, tapping his lower lip as he finally looked at her. “That little bit of stripping magic you just performed on their minds was quite dark, Price. Cause for immediate arrest. Does Mommy Dearest know what you do when you are angry?”

  If we survived the collapse, the Department would come. They would arrest Olivia and find my house. And all of the faceless people celebrating in the ten-block radius around us would die. To join the Ganymede ghosts who already haunted my dreams. “Olivia—”

  Olivia held out her hand, her fingers shaking with anger. “Not him. I'll do it.”

  “Not a chance,” he said lazily, hand closing over the button. “You might damage Crown. I will do it or no one will.”

  I extended my hand to him, but Olivia grabbed it before Constantine could. Her face was blank and she didn't answer for a long moment as her gaze clashed with his. “You will only use it for this one task. And you will swear it.”

  His expression was one of dark satisfaction. “There's the selfish daughter of Helen Price who always looks out for number one. I will use this device today for the discussed purposes, by my magic I so do vow.”

  I could feel the thin threads of magic from one of the containers latch onto him, sealing the vow.

  Olivia had to have felt it as well, but she lifted a device she had ripped from the leader's belt and held it in a position that people in action movies used with a knife.

  “Now, now, Price. You might hurt yourself.” Constantine's voice was lazy, but his eyes were narrowly focused.

  Since vows worked on future magic, by including the word “today” in his declaration, Constantine was restricted from further use only for the next two hours before midnight. This obviously was not what Olivia had intended.

  She was nearly spitting with rage as she faced Constantine. “Do you know how long it will take someone to drag your body back to a port after they get here to investigate, and after they see ranked terrorists on the ground? Do you think you will be revived in ten minutes, should you misstep with me?”

  Exhaustion made my shoulders slump. I longed to go somewhere safe and draw and sleep and forget the craziness my world had become.

  “I'm not going to hurt her.” Constantine's words were clipped, as if he didn't want to admit them.

  “You want something from her. Everyone does.”

  He sneered. “Including you.”

  “Of course I do. That doesn't mean I'm going to let anyone else do it.”

  “Great, wonderful,” I said, just wanting to go home and not think about who wanted to use me and for what purpose. I flexed my magic, but it rebounded against my cuff again, useless. “You really know how to do this?” I asked Constantine.

  Constantine smoothly held o
ut his hand. There was something fierce in his eyes as his gaze met mine. He gave a swift nod.

  There were all sorts of things that people didn't agree with or like about Constantine Leandred. His brilliance and competence, though, had never been in question for me. And neither was my ability to take risks regardless of personal damage.

  “No killing anyone even accidentally,” I added.

  He gave another swift nod, all business now. I removed my hand from Olivia's still resistant grip and put it in his, letting the cold metal of the button rest between our palms. Upon permission, my magic immediately pulled into the metal, into Constantine, then out, spreading to the five figures in front of us. A whisper of sound blew on the breeze, and crackling resonated through the air. The dome drew slowly downward, draping each of us and changing from a deathly greenish black to a clear, colorless barrier, like Saran wrap pulled tightly over each nook and cranny of our being.

  I could see ribbon after ribbon of magic layering and adhering. The original strand slowly shifted color over the first body.

  I frowned. The engineering, design, and magic of the procedure pushed my curiosity ahead of my still horrified emotions for a moment. That didn't...seem ideal. If I were doing the repair, I would ripple the change across the section there on the right—

  A thread of magic sifted back into my control and the view zoomed closer.

  Yes, there. If the ribbons were shifted, then I would—

  The thread of magic was once more taken from me, though this time with a far gentler hand, and my thought process also suddenly sucked down the magic stream, through the button and into Constantine. The magic over the bodies moved into the thought pattern I had designated, except once again, the actuation was outside my control.

  My very thoughts were being stolen.

  Panic struck me, overriding everything else. Constantine shifted, his fingertips stroking mine, unnaturally soothing my tension, forcing a layer of reassuring calm over the panicked feelings swirling beneath.

  Everything knit together in less than a minute and the magic sunk into the men. It sunk in quickly, as if their bodies, brains, and magic were perfectly awaiting change. The magic dissipated outward a few short seconds later. The dome followed, but in a less natural way, thundering and creaking as it went.