“Three.” She brought the knife tip down to where his ear met his cheek.
“Two.” The point pricked his flesh.
“One—”
“Madame.” The cry from the end of the hall jerked everyone's attention to the chute. Kyle stood in the entryway.
“The Casted are freed from the underground tunnels! They're routing the Casters below!”
Tarry sucked in a sharp breath, jerking her attention to the holograms that hovered over the square of tables.
A tiny trickling sense of victory seeped into Alayne's thoughts as she, too, turned her gaze that way.
On the grounds at the foot of the spire, a flood of figures poured from the doorway to the tunnels. Elsewhere, great cracks and crevices opened in the earth, and more people crawled through. Some swung weapons in their hands, cutting down EA soldiers, some wielded elements. In the midst of the chaos stood Rachyl on top of an Alliance shuttle, hurling vines one way, felling trees another, a maelstrom of earthly fury venting from one small body.
Alayne glanced back at Kyle. A half-smile covered his lips, which quickly disappeared when Tarry yanked her attention back to him.
Relief again spiraled through Alayne. Kyle—the traitor—had switched sides.
Chapter 25
Mass confusion and noise reigned in the common room as Alayne's attention returned to the windows and the scenes below. For the first time, hope bloomed in her stomach. The Elemental Alliance was in a rout. On the ground, the EA scattered like scared rabbits, bombarded from both outside and inside, the anger of thousands of Shadow-Casted victims, both Elemental and Natural, blowing up in full fury on them.
Alayne had never really expected this to work, not with the overwhelming odds and the superior might of the Elemental Alliance. But somehow, the Last Order had carried it off.
Thanks to Manders. It had been his plan from the beginning. He had gained intelligence from his spies that the Alliance planned to use Shadow-Casted victims to fight part of the battle. It had been his idea to overtake the Casted, free them, and use them against the Alliance, but the logistics had been difficult to work out.
Alayne sheepishly remembered her fears that Marysa and Jayme would fail in the mission Manders had set them. All her fears had been overwhelming—that they would be killed, that she wouldn't be able to save them—but it had worked out, thanks to their courage and fortitude. She remembered Marysa's determined expression as she'd told her goodbye in the Hive tunnel: There are others who are willing and even want to help return the world to some semblance of order.
They'd done their part. The Alliance, caught in the middle of an angry, riotous mob, were slowly decimated. The elements still shrieked and burst below. Fire and wind whirled in an enormous flaming tornado that exploded across the ground, casting spinning pinwheels of fire after the EA as they fled.
Alayne couldn't believe the sight. Everything in her whispered that it was impossible. She turned her attention back to Tarry, who had turned as white as a sheet, her hand trembling on the knife she held.
“When did this happen? How did this happen?” she snarled.
“One of the student LO commanders, Rachyl, got access to the guards at the tunnel entrances and gained advantage over one of our Casters. The mind-link snapped the whole contingent of them, and the Casted took over,” Kyle explained, striding forward.
“Well, stop them! Send more soldiers!” Tarry screamed. “Now!”
Kyle shook his head. “We have no more soldiers to send, Madame.”
He stopped dead even with Alayne, not looking at her. She hoped desperately she hadn't misread him—that he truly had switched sides and was now playing a role to fool Tarry.
Tarry gripped her hair in her hands, closing her eyes for a brief second.
In that second, Kyle dropped the merest hint of a wink at Alayne.
“Go. You know what to do.” Tarry's command swiftly emptied the room of soldiers. Beatrice Pence left with the ranking officers, her eyes narrowed in revulsion as she passed by Alayne on her way to the chute. No one remained but Kyle, Tarry, Alayne's parents, and of course, Alayne and the invisible Daymon. Alayne glanced back and forth between Tarry and Kyle. Her nerves were frayed and about to snap as she eyed her father, who still lay beneath Tarry's ready knife.
Tarry took three deep breaths, visibly grasping for calm. “Mr. Pence, you will remove Miss Worth's knife, please,” Tarry instructed, nodding toward the black steel knife Alayne had replaced in her belt.
Kyle took another step closer to the desk, and then another, closing the distance to it. He stopped when he was an arms length from the edge, his arms hanging loosely at his sides.
“Mr. Pence. I don't have time for questions. Do as I've instructed.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, no.”
Tarry's knuckles whitened around her knife handle. Slowly she backed up, hauling Bryan, who obediently shuffled, bent double, his cheek still beneath the point of her knife. Tarry stopped near the window several yards away.
“Should I summon your mother to let her know what you've just said?” She'd chosen her words to barb Kyle at his weak point.
His lips tightened, but his answer did not waver. “You can trumpet it from the rooftops, Tarry, for all I care. Put the knife down.”
A burst of incredulous laughter escaped Tarry's lips. A second later, she whipped the knife behind her ear, and released it. It hurtled end over end in a deadly path toward Kyle's neck.
Alayne had felt this same helpless horror once before, in the moonlit woods outside of Clayborne when another knife had plunged into Jayme's stomach, and she'd lost someone important to her because she'd been too slow to react. She couldn't let that happen again.
She threw out her hand, and wind shrieked across the room, throwing the knife sideways against the wall, where it bounced off and spun across the floor.
Tarry yanked the air element from Alayne's temporarily lax grip and jerked her hands above her head. A wall of wind shattered the floor-to-ceiling windows behind Tarry that hadn't broken before when the Commander had tossed Bryce into the night. The wind shrieked into the room. Glass shards rained across Alayne's face and body, and she threw up her arm to protect her eyes.
As she pulled her arm away, she saw Tarry had opened her desk drawer and pulled out a gun, a pre-Deluge weapon. With a click, the woman chambered a bullet and raised the weapon to eye-level, her eyebrows drawn as she held her arms straight out in front of her. Her finger touched the release trigger.
Alayne tugged the fire elements, and with a scream, Tarry dropped the gun as the metal glowed molten orange in her hands. She'd pulled the trigger; a loud pop sounded, but her aim had gone askew. The bullet, also molten, shot a burning streak of light at Alayne, but lodged in the carpet at Alayne's feet instead. Alayne hurled flames in Tarry's direction, but the woman dove backward, her hands gripping Bryan Worth. Unsteadily, drunkenly, Alayne's mother tottered from her place by the desk toward Tarry, holding out her hand until Tarry held both of Alayne's parents in her grasp.
All action paused as the three visible and un-Shadow-Casted inhabitants of the room glared at each other.
Where are you, Daymon?
Alayne's question was answered a moment later as Tarry was suddenly jerked into the air, clawing at her throat, her eyes bugging.
“Just a little twist, Tarry,” Daymon's voice cut through her gasps. “That's all it takes. Give up now.”
Tarry struggled, choking and gurgling. All at once, the noises ceased, and her body went limp.
Daymon appeared, turning the woman's body in his arms, carefully inspecting her face.
“You okay, Layne?”
“Fine.”
Alayne felt like a rag doll. Her knees trembled beneath her, the room tilted sickeningly, and she sank onto the worn carpet to put her head between her knees.
“Guys.” Kyle's voice cut the silence.
“What?” Daymon asked, sti
ll eyeing Tarry suspiciously.
“If she's unconscious, Alayne's parents should be awake.”
A chill ran down Alayne's spine. It was true. But their gazes were still as blank as before.
Like a cannon, Tarry shot out of Daymon's loose grip. “Attack!” she screamed.
With a noise like thunder, soldiers poured into the room from the men's dormitories, racing toward the gathering in front of the desk near the windows.
Alayne called fire to her hands, but a glance to her left showed Daymon speeding toward her. “Alayne, the Vale. NOW!”
Before she could even think what was happening, he grabbed her by the waist, hauled her backward behind one of the trees, shielding her from Tarry's sight, from the incoming flood of Alliance soldiers, and whipped her knife from her sheath.
There was a single instant of clarity—a mind-numbing second where Alayne saw Daymon's intention. It registered in her mind and with the Vale. Sizzling electricity shot from her entire body, crackling toward Daymon—a white-hot sheet of instant, painful death, and she could do nothing to stop it.
But it didn't touch him. It shot outward in a swath on either side of him, but the Vale's elements careened fruitlessly to the side.
The Vale could not attack its Guardian.
Daymon's razor-sharp blade tore through her shirt into her side, and the pain was staggering. Alayne screamed as Daymon's fingers reached inside her and ripped the Vale free from her flesh. His hand glowed where he held the tiny thing. It was dazzling and white, smaller than Alayne had expected, hardly a glimmer, but the light it cast into the room was nearly blinding.
Daymon threw it on the carpet. Raising Alayne's black steel blade, he brought it down with all his strength into the Vale.
White light poured from it, and a deafening note, high and vibrating, flooded the room. Shouts of confusion rang out; no one understood what was happening—that Daymon had destroyed the Vale. No one could see in the brilliance. Alayne threw an arm over her eyes to shield them, the pain in her side growing and filling her. She shuddered as an overwhelming electrical impulse exploded outward from the Vale. She was thrown backward, landing against the wall several feet away.
The small army of soldiers that Tarry had called out lay flat on the carpet, motionless and senseless. Tarry slumped, stunned, against the stone wall near one of the shattered floor-to-ceiling windows.
Alayne felt her life ebbing away, like the slow drain of a bathtub.
This is it, then. She looked around for Daymon, saw him lying near her, his eyes shut, his face as white as she'd ever seen it. The world grew still. The ticking of the clock in the common room slowly counted the moments to her death.
A solitary tear escaped her eye, meandering down her cheek as she gazed at Daymon's still face.
Then there was movement. A man, somehow familiar-looking, stepped around the tables, hurrying to Daymon. His hand slapped Daymon's relaxed cheek. “Daymon. Daymon, wake up, boy.”
Daymon's eyes cracked open, and a moment later, he tensed into a crouch.
“Only you, Daymon, it's all down to you. Hurry. Time's running out.”
It's Luke, Alayne thought numbly. How did he get here? She blinked, but her eyes refused to open again. Weakness melted her joints. Her body felt as heavy as lead, sinking into the floor.
Fingers touched her open side, and distant alarm bells registered, but not enough to make her return to the surface of awareness. The fingers were moving. Then something soft pressed again and again to her side. A murmur, a deep, steady voice, and a dense weight on top of her. Vaguely, she felt her arms moved out to her sides, matching weights heavy on each wrist.
The draining feeling stopped. Her nerve sensors returned, and with them, a grinding ache in her side, and another pain in her wrists.
With an effort, she opened her eyes, faintly surprised to find Daymon's face close to her own, the weight of his body splayed across hers, his arms spread outward, his wrists pressed against hers.
She turned her head to inspect the pain in her wrists, and watched blood trickle between where his wrists touched hers.
Daymon's eyes were shut as he murmured her name. Alayne pulled a breath into her cramped lungs, and Daymon's eyes flew open.
“Alayne,” he rasped. He brought his lips down on hers, hard. His passion traveled through them into her body, heating her limbs and pulling her out of her stupor. He pulled back, his blue eyes alive. “It worked.” He buried his face in her neck, and a shudder ran through his body. “It worked.” His voice broke.
“Daymon. Quickly.” Luke leaned over them. “Our work isn't done.”
“How did you get here?” Alayne asked nonsensically, as her mind began to travel off into fantasies of sunlight and water.
Luke smiled grimly. “Through the abandoned chute, the way you got in,” he said.
Alayne could hardly hear him. For some reason, she felt as though she floated on air. She couldn't understand why her toes were so cold, but then, she didn't have toes. Or legs, even. Did she?
Daymon leaped to his feet and peeled off his shirt. Ripping it to shreds, he bandaged Alayne's wrists and then his own.
Sensation flooded back into her feet as her bleeding stopped, and with it, pain—like she'd never felt before. Always, she had healed, almost before she could blink. The Vale was gone, though, and her wounds bled freely.
The Vale was gone.
Gone!
She was free!
Luke had disappeared again. Daymon grasped Alayne's hand, his gaze meeting hers as he bent over her. For the first time since she had known him, they were free, clear, unchained from restraint. The sight of his clear smile nearly took her breath away. “Come, let's go.”
Alayne leaped to her feet. The pain in her side stabbed her, but she welcomed it. It meant the loss of the Vale. That part of her life was gone, buried. And she was alive!
“Quickly,” Daymon instructed, returning her black steel knife to her. “Tarry first. From there, we'll go down the ranks.”
Alayne took the knife and slid it into her leather sheath. She looked across the room, astonished to see the ranks of soldiers still collapsed on the floor, some moaning, most still senseless. Tarry lay in a heap behind the desk, her red dress like a flame on the worn carpet.
Luke was at the window, looking down across the masses. As Alayne skirted the desk heading toward Tarry, she gasped as she witnessed the scene outside.
It was a still life.
Thousands of bodies lay strewn across the open area and into the trees. Silence blanketed the scene. Last Orders and Alliance alike lay unconscious, swept up in the power the Vale released upon its destruction.
“I'm tired of waiting, Alayne.”
Alayne whirled, nearly choking as she saw Tarry propping up her unconscious mother. She had managed to grasp another knife from her desk, and its keen edge rested against Wynn's neck.
Tarry no longer looked put-together; her dress hung at an odd angle, smudged from the floor. Her perfectly styled hair stuck out at odd angles. A snarl twisted her smeared lipstick. “The Vale, or your mother dies.”
As she spoke, she backed toward the wall, closing the options for Luke and Daymon to circle around her.
“I'm going to count to five. One. Two. Three.”
She never reached five.
Alayne's fingers found her black steel blade. Quicker than lightning, she hurled it through the air. It whistled, clean and true, through the intervening space, thudding directly into Tarry's neck.
The woman looked surprised. Slowly, she dropped her hold on Wynn, and her blade clattered to the floor beside her. Her hand reached up to the black steel knife's hilt, and she took a step toward Alayne.
She never made it. She fell face-first on the carpet, and the blood that flowed from her neck matched her dress.
Alayne's hands shook. She sank weakly onto the desk, watching helplessly as Luke lifted Tarry and carried her to the open windows. Below, the first cries of confusion sounded.
With silent grace, Luke released Tarry's body, and it fell noiselessly through the air to the ground far, far below.
Daymon had disappeared, but no sooner than Alayne wondered where he was, she noticed a white flag replacing the Alliance symbol where it had hung outside the common room's floor-to-ceiling windows. It flapped in the night's breeze.
As the Last Order regained consciousness, a great tumult resounded across Clayborne's grounds, shouts of victory and cries of joy.
The Last Order had won.
Chapter 26
It would take much longer than Alayne wished for Clayborne to be restored to its former occupation as an Elemental training facility. However, progress was made in short order. Professor Grace, who in Alayne's second year had been ousted by the Elemental Alliance's connections, returned to her post at the school and several other teachers were brought in to replace those missing.
Despite the happy outcome of the battle, it was not without its scars.
Manders's holograph on the MIUs across Clayborne wavered in the air, and students and soldiers alike saluted whenever they passed it. Earth-Movers had returned the grounds to their natural prairie environs, but white cots dotted the landscape, each one covered by a sheet.
Alayne walked through them, sadly surveying the faces of those who had died, some familiar, some complete strangers. In the distance, Luke bent over one, his head bowed, his hand resting on a shoulder.
She approached, her eyes flooding with tears as she saw Manders's face, so often creased in a kind smile when he'd looked at her, now reposing in the still peace of death. Luke looked up as she drew close. “You were his favorite,” he murmured. “He loved you very much.”
Alayne nodded, but she couldn't see Luke behind her tears. “I know,” she whispered. “I loved him, too.” The tears didn't stop for a long time.
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