For the last time, I feel John’s hands on my shoulders. “Just hold on. I’m coming,” he says.
Then he cuts out. Because I can no longer maintain the spell.
I snap back into my real body, and as I do, I lose my disguise.
It just drops away from me in a hail of sparks.
I’m back in my leather jacket and torn jeans, back in my shitty shoes. Back in my ordinary old face.
It takes me a few seconds to shake off my confusion, and that’s all the time the guy needs to sweep behind me, slash his pike at the back of my knees, and collect my legs.
I jolt forward, unable to stand. But rather than allow him to pounce on my back, I push into a roll, jump up, and jerk to the side.
He’s ferocious.
I’ve never fought anyone like him. He seems to be the embodiment of war itself.
Every time I figure out what he’s doing, he changes direction, leaps to the side, and slashes at me from a new place.
Though the fight is truly frenetic, I’m starting to learn his style. It becomes easier and easier to stay out of his way.
Then the last thing imaginable occurs.
I thought I was the only one who could do a body-splitting spell, but apparently I’m wrong. The guy jumps back and slashes protectively in front of himself with the pike, a magical arc of light forming in front of him like a barrier. Then he spreads his hand to the side.
I feel what he’s doing an instant before it occurs.
Sparks start to split up his stomach, charging from the tips of his toes all the way to the tip of his head.
I jerk forward, hoping I’ll be able to distract him in time, but I’m not quick enough.
With a crack that sounds like thunder pealing over the horizon, the guy splits in half.
Now there’s two of him.
Oh great.
They don’t give me any quarter. They come at me like two blurs.
I leap backward, then leap again as two spikes slice right past my face.
It’s time to fight.
Since this battle began, I’ve just been on the defensive. Now that’s going to change.
I pulse both my hands to the side, concentrating on my palms and fingers as I finally allow my swords to appear in them.
There’s such a rush of release as I feel the smooth metal clunk against my fingers.
It’s enough to finally see me charge forward.
But the two men don’t jerk back.
It’s as if they were expecting this.
Rather than slash toward me with the pikes, they do some kind of combined attack, pressing their backs against each other as they slam their pikes into the ground.
I have no idea what they’re doing.
Which costs me. Because, a second later, the ground pitches. It’s as if the room has been picked up by a great set of hands and rattled.
Before I know what’s happening, I stagger backward.
I manage to right myself just in time, but a strand of my hair travels past the darkened doorway.
And that would be when I activate some kind of magnetic spell.
It’s as if invisible hands spring out through the darkness and latch around me.
I’ve never felt something more powerful.
Wait. I have. They remind me exactly of those invisible ropes that locked me to John’s throne.
This has something to do with the gameboard.
And I’ve already pointed this out on so many occasions – while I have almost unchecked power, there’s nothing I can do against those thrones.
I jerk my mouth open, and a scream splits out.
That’s it, though. That’s the sum total of my defenses as those magical ropes wrap harder and harder around my gut and drag me backward.
I see the two gaunt men exchanged smiles. They’re just as terrifying and fanatical as the rest of those bastards’ expressions. Except this time, they’re satisfied, too.
It’s clear they think they’ve won.
I still have my swords in my hands, but I can barely move them. I feel so weighed down, it’s as if someone has opened my mouth and poured concrete down my gullet.
I can move my eyes, though, focus them, too. It’s exactly what I do as the two gaunt men leap, reaching high with their pikes.
My eyes blast wide. A can see the magical tips of their pikes as they slice through the semidarkness.
I swear it’s the last thing I’m going to see.
But before they can skewer me through, they both flip their pikes around in their hands until they’re pointing the handles at me. They land. And in one smooth coordinated attack, they plow forward, slamming the handles of their pikes into my shoulders.
There’s nothing I can do. Even if I tried to hold onto every scrap of magic I ever had, it wouldn’t be enough. Because all they have to do is push me back a mere millimeter, and the white magical ropes of the gameboard will do the rest.
I have time for just one more scream. It splits and echoes out of my throat as if it’ll be the last thing I’ll ever say.
Then I’m pulled backward into the darkness.
Chapter 9
I HIT THE GROUND AND roll.
My swords fall from my hands and clatter beside me, no longer floating.
Because I have no magic at all.
My tired body is confused by the darkness, by the room, by that single flicker of candlelight behind me.
I come to a stop, face first on the ground. It takes so damn long for me to open a single eyelid. And then it takes me even longer – excruciatingly long – to figure out what I’m staring at.
The room’s no longer dark. Something’s filling it with light. And that thing is me. I can see this... strange kind of luminescence pulse out from me and spread through the floor beneath me.
It doesn’t take long to see the pattern on the floor. That specific black and white square board.
In a pulse, I recognize where I am. I feel it. It’s the gameboard. The last time I saw the ancient gameboard, I did so from the mezzanine level, not down, face first against it.
Now there’s no denying the sense of it.
I know I’ll never feel anything like this as long as I live. It’s too raw, too fundamental. It seems to stretch my mind back to the beginning of reality itself. And in floods all of the power of the cosmos.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have to tell you that my small twisted little mind isn’t big enough to allow the power of the goddamn cosmos to fill it up.
Blood starts to trickle out of my nose. I feel it as this wet slick that spreads across my lips, down my chin, and onto the floor.
And the gameboard seems to love that. At the mere touch of a single droplet of my blood, more light spreads across the board. It blasts out in this dance of illumination that lights up half of the board.
I groan.
The sound’s picked up by the massive arched ceilings above and echoes out, making me feel as if I’m in a sound chamber of my own agony.
I try to shift.
I can manage to move my face a little to the side, and that’s enough to pick up the location of one of my swords. It’s several meters away, just out of my reach.
It feels like something’s sapped me of magic, and I don’t need to look far to figure out what that is. I’m lighting up the board, giving it life somehow. It’s taking magic from me, and as it does, I have barely enough energy to think, let alone shift, call on my swords, and defend myself.
Because the two gaunt men haven’t stopped.
I can hear chuckles. They’re still outside the doorway, but with two grating footsteps, one of them enters the room.
More light spills across the gameboard. It’s different. Seems to signify something else.
... The game’s about to begin, isn’t it?
And I can’t even move.
Goddammit. How stupid was I? I thought I could come down here and face any number of Rogers’ men. But I can’t even face two of them.
Fear blasts
through me, shakes through my chest, sends tears slipping down my cheeks.
It doesn’t matter, though.
It doesn’t give me a sudden blast of magic. It just reinforces one fact – I’m dead.
... Or maybe I’m not. John said he was coming, right? He just told me to hold on.
That thought actually lifts me up. Gives me wings before I realize it’s a double-edged sword. Yeah, John Rowley may save me, but this time, he’s not going to let me go.
But Rowley is better than Rogers.
There’s no denying that.
I hear footsteps right behind me now. I swear I can feel a charge of magic developing, too. Don’t ask me how, but I know that the guy is getting ready for a final attack – one that won’t kill me, but one that will knock me out until Rogers can rush to my side.
It’s all over.
My eyes half close.
I wait.
I hear the footsteps, swear I can even feel the guy smiling even though my face is still smooshed into the gameboard.
And time... kind of slows down. I’ve experienced this before. Soldiers call it bullet time, right? When the adrenaline of the moment seems to stretch your perception of time to allow you to do what you need to. To save yourself, to make some critical decision.
And the critical decision I have to make is simple.
To surrender or to never stop fighting, no matter what it costs me.
I could tell myself that the gameboard has already cost me everything, and I have no more magic left to give, but that’s a lie. Because my magic is still being bled out of me to feed the gameboard. Which means there’s more to give, right?
And if there’s more to give, then I just have to find some way of taking it back.
One last step behind me. I hear the swoosh of metal as somebody raises a weapon above their head.
Seconds.
Seconds!
Come on.
I have to do this.
I bragged about taking back my destiny before I came down here. But this isn’t taking back my destiny. It’s handing it to Rogers on a silver platter.
Come on.
I feel the pike slash down toward me.
And my senses align.
From my desperation to my hope, everything just kind of clicks together.
I’ve never had a moment of such pure clarity.
And it counts.
Because for the first time since I was pushed into this room, I connect to more than the gameboard. To the earth beneath, to the sky above, to the rock, to the animals, to everything. The world that exists beyond the game.
I’ve never thought of this, but the game and all the destructive magic it entails seems so abhorrent, against the natural world and the order of life.
It’s a twisted form of creation, one that shouldn’t belong.
And as I connect to the world, to all of those energies, and, more than anything, to the force that guided me since the beginning, it momentarily breaks the control the gameboard has on me.
And it’s just in time.
The pike sails down toward my face.
I roll. Using everything. Every scrap of coordination I’ve managed to scrounge back, and, more importantly, every single gram of power that exists within my body and mind and soul.
I roll toward my sword, shifting right over the top of it, managing to latch a hand around the handle.
I catch sight of the gaunt man who attacked me.
He looks different now. He’s no longer wearing a suit – and now he’s in some kind of uniform. I wonder if it’s because he strayed onto the gameboard.
He’s got some kind of pointy hat on, and instantly, it reminds me of a bishop.
Like I’ve said so many times before, I don’t know that much about chess, but I can appreciate this strange, awful world has some kind of loose attachment to it. So maybe this guy’s a bishop, or maybe he isn’t, but that’s what sticks in my head.
The bishop’s eyes blast wide as I dodge at the last moment, and it’s damn clear he didn’t expect me to be able to shift.
He pivots quickly, landing and slashing at me with the electrified, glowing bright red end of his pike.
I roll off my sword and bring it around, parrying the move.
There’s no magic pulsing through my sword. And though, on an ordinary day, I know I’d be able to slash right through that guy’s pike with all my magic, the point is I barely have enough magic to breathe. So my sword is little more than metal now. It’s tough, though, and as I put all of my strength behind it, I manage to shove the pike to the side easily.
I don’t throw the bishop all the way back, but he does stagger a meter or two. It gives me all the time I need to pitch backward, roll, and press to my feet.
That’s when I notice the other bishop.
He’s been hanging back outside of the door, obviously reluctant to join the game. As I finally defend myself, I guess his mind is made up for him. I see his lips pare back in a snarl that doesn’t make him look particularly pleased. He shoves forward and enters the game. As soon as his feet slam onto the gameboard, light spreads out from the move. It doesn’t just spread over the checkered board – it spreads up his legs.
Though I should really be paying attention to the bishop who’s closer to me, I have just enough focus to appreciate that as the light climbs up his legs, it seems to lock him in place.
No wonder he was so reluctant to join the game. Though I have no right to know this, I get the feeling that until I win or they win decisively, the game won’t end.
There’ll be no tapping out.
There’ll just be action.
And boy is there action as both the bishops share a single glance then leap at me. They practically defy gravity, and leap with all the height and grace of grasshoppers.
I jerk my head back, sweat slicking my brow and forcing my fringe to stick to my temples. I see them in the half light of the room right above me, their pikes crossed over each other.
I have a single second to appreciate they’re doing some kind of move, then I feel the magic rush toward them.
I bring my sword up in a defensive position over my face, crouching down low, bolstering my stance.
They attack. A blast of red magic directed like a goddamn laser slams into my sword.
If it weren’t for the sword, I would be half dead, but the sword seems to be designed to absorb magic.
It can’t absorb everything, though, and great blasts of crackling fire are reflected off the blade in every direction.
They burn my skin, and where they touch my leather jacket, I smell the unmistakable scent of burnt hide.
But I hold on, my teeth clenched.
Finally, the attack ends. There are two coordinated thumps as the bishops land.
They pause, obviously reassessing their next move, then they do it again. They leap up, cross pikes, and attack.
This time I have zero intention of just standing there and absorbing the blow.
Just at the last moment, I twist around, slam the tip of my sword into the gameboard, and use it like a long jumping pole as I flip several meters to the side.
My move is just in time, and rather than change the direction of their attack, they can’t, and it blasts into the spot where I was.
Though there’s so much damn magic that I’m certain that it would be enough to tear through most of a 20-story block, it doesn’t even mark the board. Seriously, not a single scratch. Not a scuff mark, not a singe mark, not anything.
That’s the power of the board.
That thought strikes me right in the center of my head.
And though I know I have to concentrate on the fight, it burrows through my frontal lobe, taking more and more of my attention.
Because it reminds me of one fact. John looked into my eyes and told me that out of all of the pieces, the queen is the only person who can destroy a board.
... How?
I barely have the strength to fight these two off, and yet
their top attack can’t even mark this thing.
Both the bishops land again, but this time they don’t instantly launch up and attack again.
They take several steps back, obviously reassessing me.
Now I’m on the run, darting from square to square, I’m trying to save my magic. To do that, I have to try to focus on the world outside, pulling every scrap of my attention from the gameboard. But as you can probably appreciate, that’s pretty damn hard. Because I’m down here, on the gameboard, and every time I jerk my head to the side or open my eyes wide, I can see it, right beneath me.
And the pull of it? It’s so alluring. It’s almost more alluring than the connection that holds me to the kings.
Hell, in a moment of clarity, I wonder if they both come from the same place.
So far, I’ve only got one of my swords in my hand. The other is on the opposite side of the room. I angle toward it now.
Though I still don’t have enough strength to pulse magic into my swords, I know two, academically, is always better than one.
But the bishops obviously appreciate what I’m doing. For the first time since they both entered the board, they split up.
I think I hear some kind of clicking. It echoes out from the gameboard below me. I wonder if it signifies a change in the game.
I still don’t know enough about this stupid world to appreciate how exactly I’m stuck in a match with these two bishops without the presence of a king. I thought a gameboard could only activate when at least one king was present.
Shows how much I know.
Both the bishops seem to try to pin me in from either side. As I dart my gaze from left to right, still narrowing in on my sword, I see them keep pace beside me.
I’m several meters away from my sword now, and I duck down, press to my knees, skid toward it, and reach a hand out wide for the handle.
It’s right there. Just several centimeters away.
But I don’t get the chance to grab it up.
One of the bishops puts on an almighty blast of speed and reaches me before I can jerk away.
He slashes his pike right at my throat. I tilt my head just to the side, but the tip of the pike still slices across my throat. The magic cuts the skin so easily, it’s like a hot knife through butter. My blood blasts out in an arc and soon splashes against the white and black squares of the gameboard.
The Last Queen Book Three Page 13
