Vale bares his teeth at Malkyn, his eyes glittering dangerously. “Does your magic outrank mine, Malkyn?”
Malkyn sighs, his expression relaxing to one of bored resignation. He languidly turns away from Vale and then, whip-fast, slices his wand out.
Vale flicks his wrist and catches Malkyn’s javelin with a small strike of lightning, exploding it into a puff of snow that falls harmlessly at Vale’s feet.
“Ah,” Vale says, giving Malkyn a nod of mock encouragement. “You’re improving.” He strides toward Jules, wand out, lips moving. Black vines fly out from the wand to encircle Jules’s upper body. Jules groans in agony as the vines cinch tight.
Vale grabs Jules’s good arm and roughly hoists him up. Jules looks dazed, his eyes barely focused, his face a bloody mess.
“I know this one,” Vale states coldly. “We’ve a score to settle.” Not waiting for a response, Vale drags a shambling, half-conscious Jules off toward the woods.
“Where are you taking him?” Malkyn asks as he inspects his wand, flicking frost off the end it.
Vale doesn’t bother to turn around. “Somewhere no one will witness what I’m about to do.”
Tears roll down my face as I struggle to breathe, to summon enough air to utter a protest. I try to shake loose from Fain’s grip, thrashing my upper body, but Fain holds tight as spears of fiery magic lash against my insides.
Another orange explosion lights up the horizon. Fain, Malkyn and the Upper River girl look toward the mountains.
“I’ll need you for the shield,” Malkyn tells Fain, his voice low and level. He sets his dark gaze on me. Gasping, I still manage to send him a glare of red-hot defiance.
“Go,” Fain says to Malkyn with a flick of his chin toward the barn. “I’ll be right there.”
A scream of agony tears through the air.
Jules!
Malkyn pauses, his face taking on a fleeting look of half-lidded rapture. The Upper River girl fixes me with a hateful look before Malkyn leads her away, the two of them disappearing behind the burning barn.
Images of Jules being tortured flash through my mind, and a shuddering sob overtakes me, my chest heaving, the fire whipping my insides in relentless slashes. I throw my head from side to side, fighting against Fain, fighting to breathe, barely hearing him as he urges me to slow my breaths.
Another explosion sounds, closer this time. My lungs heave, burning, then constrict tight.
I’ve lost the ability to breathe.
Chapter 7: Affinity
Fain rips open my clothing and pushes his hands hard against my chest as I thrash my head back and forth, desperate for air, my eyes bulging out, straining. Teeth gritted, he increases the pressure and murmurs a spell. A cool current of his water magic flows through me, loosening the net of fire, briefly opening up my lungs.
I greedily breathe in what air I can, panting shallowly in desperation, wondering if Jules is still alive. Anguish rips through me at the thought of him dying, and the fiery net takes hold once more.
Fain leans in close as I fight for breath, terrified.
“What’s your name, love?”
“Tessla,” I rasp out. “Tessla Harrow.”
“Your brother,” he asks me, deadly serious. “How old is he?”
“Eight,” I mouth as my chest heaves and hot tears course down my trembling, fevered face.
“He needs you alive, hmm?” His voice is calm and controlled, his eyes locked hard on mine.
I gasp and nod, my eyes fixed on him.
“Don’t think of anything but him,” he orders. “Can you do that?”
I nod again.
Fain pushes his full weight down onto me as he hisses out the spell through clenched teeth, flowing more of his cooling water magic around my scorched lungs.
Vale runs out of the woods down toward us, his boot heels thudding hard. His expression is one of deep urgency.
I can feel his fire the minute he gets close, and my magic responds with a mind of its own. All the tendrils of power within me orient themselves toward him like a flock of birds, then rush out in a wave of heat.
I cry out as a searing pain scorches the side of my ribs closest to Vale.
Fain holds his palm out stridently. “Stay back! Your affinities match.”
Vales halts, his eyes gone wide, his gaze fixed on me. He swallows, looking rattled. “I know. I can feel it.”
Sweet Ancient One, such fire in him!
His cold visage is a lie. I’m clear now on what lies underneath it—the same molten landscape that lives under my skin.
“She’s Magedrunk,” Fain observes, shooting Vale a grave look. “I don’t know how she’s done it, but she’s layered spells. There’s a river of fire trapped in her. I’ve got to purge her. Now.”
I’m suddenly all too aware of my exposed chest, and a hot, nauseating shame washes over me. As if sensing my discomfort, Vale whips off his cloak and thrusts it toward Fain.
“You care about modesty?” Fain gapes. “Right now?”
“Get it on her,” Vale orders. “I can restrain her then, without inadvertently killing her.”
Fain pulls his hands off me, and my lungs immediately begin to heat and seize up again. I throw my head back, gasping, painfully jostled as Fain hoists me up to slide the cloak around my body. I look at him in desperation, able to pull in only a thin sliver of air, as if from an impossibly narrow straw.
“Vyyn’ys’en’ar,” Vale says, teeth clenched, pointing his wand at me.
Black vines—the same he bound Jules with—flow from his wand and cinch tight around my upper body, holding the cloak in place and restraining my numbed arms as my rearing affinity fire drives the air from my lungs. Fuzzy black circles explode chaotically in my vision as Fain settles my weight against him, pressing his wand into my limp hand, his own hand coming around mine to point the wand toward the woods.
“Scyy’yl’ar,” Fain grinds out, his cheekbone pressed tight against my shuddering face.
Sensation blasts violently through my wand arm as a torrent of flames bursts from the wand’s tip. With a turbulent roar, the fire slams into the edge of the forest, shattering the trunks of two trees, which crash to the ground with the snapping of a thousand branches.
“Sweet Ancient One’s bollocks!” Fain gasps.
Air rushes into my lungs. Steam follows the fire and chugs out of the wand like a kettle at a furious boil. I take in great gulps of air and flex my hand around Fain’s wand as the steam lessens. My vision clears for a moment, but searing heat advances on my lungs again, like a thousand small battering rams, spearing me, straining to destroy me.
Fain clasps his hand around mine and points the wand once more toward the crackling trees.
“Again?” I force out, my voice a scraping, frightened hiss.
“I’m sorry, but yes,” he replies, his voice steely. “I need to force out the rest of the trapped fire with quite a bit of water.” His voice turns grim, his head turning toward mine. “Are you ready?”
I grow afraid at the question. “It hurts,” I tell him, my mouth a trembling grimace.
Another orange explosion from the mountains shatters the air, and I recoil against Fain, a terrified whimper escaping my lips.
“Do you like chocolate?” Fain asks me, his voice gone suddenly gentle.
Vale whips his head toward us to gape at Fain, his face incredulous. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Look at me, sweetling,” Fain says, leaning to the side and locking his eyes on to mine. “I have some lovely chocolate. With cardamom and Ishkart cinnamon. I will make it for you and for your brother. We will sit under the stars and sip it. I promise you. Can you think on that and only that?”
I know how badly this is going to hurt, but I find myself noddin
g in assent. Fain smiles faintly, then grips my hand like a vise and repeats the spell.
There’s a rumbling whoosh deep in my core. Like a blockage about to be released.
The breathless moment just before an avalanche.
A flood of fire rips through me, and I scream, my body convulsing. A stream of white-hot flame explodes through the wand and ignites several more trees, destroying them. I cry out again as a thousand red-hot swords stab into me, hot knives slashing at my legs.
And then it dissipates, the heat rapidly fleeing. Cool water comes in on its heels. Then colder water. Winter cold. I start to shiver.
“I can move my other arm,” I marvel, pressing it tight against the vines, then shaking out my legs as Fain guides me up, the vines still tight around my torso. “And my legs. I can feel my legs.” I’m dazed by the throbbing echo of pain and the rising cold, hollowing me out. “But I’m getting so cold.”
Fain shoots Vale a worried look.
“Go,” Vale tells him with a glance toward the mountains. “They’ll need help reinforcing the shield.”
“Don’t touch her skin,” Fain warns Vale as he gets up. “And keep her bound. If she reaches your fire, her affinity lines will devour it and she’ll burn out from overexposure. It could kill her.”
“Thank you, Fain,” Vale snipes. “For stating the patently obvious.”
And then Vale lifts me clear off the ground and starts around the left side of the barn at a fast clip, Fain striding off in the opposite direction.
Chapter 8: Vale Gardner
Vale carries me into the shadow of the woods that bracket the fiery barn. I struggle against his firm grip, desperate to escape the Mage who hurt—possibly killed—my best friend.
“Jules saved me,” I tell him, my voice choked with grief. “That Kelt you dragged away—”
“I know he tried to help you,” Vale cuts me off sharply as he runs through the trees. His voice lowers to a whisper. “I didn’t kill him. So be quiet. I’m trying to save your life.”
Sweet Ancient One, Jules is alive!
We burst from the woods at the edge of the rocky embankment, and Vale’s boot heels skid as he tries to slow his pace. Our descent down the sharp slope to Crykes Field becomes more of a slide than a run. Vale’s feet kick up dust and send a waterfall of dry gravel toward the ground below.
When we reach the bottom, he pulls me backward and down toward the ground with him. His arms are tight around me, holding me close against his chest as he leans into the slope of the bluff. Then Vale throws out his wand, murmurs a spell and creates a tight, translucent shield over us. The wavering shield is webbed with turbulent blue lines of lightning that send sparking static buzzing through my head.
His fire leaps inside him, toward me. It suffuses my back with warmth, the fabric of his clothing and the cloak wrapped around me a barrier keeping his fire at bay. Keeping it from my skin.
My arms instinctively pull at the vines restraining me, yearning to touch him, to absorb the fire in his shield. I’m desperate to melt the block of ice that’s slowly forming in my core. What began as a mere pebble after Fain’s purge has become a large, freezing stone. I know Fain was trying to help me, but my core of fire is all but extinguished, my affinity crushed beneath his torrent of water.
Heart thumping, shivering from cold, I glance back up the embankment, toward the burning barn, and see the irregular exit hacked through its rear.
Escape.
My gaze swerves down to my far left, down the long ditch that turns like a serpent to flow across the back of Crykes Field. There’s a long, glowing shield set snug against the long bluff like a cocoon. It’s surrounded by Kelt and Urisk soldiers shooting a series of flaming arrows and glowing blue streams of geo-fire at it. Two dragons are snarling and clawing at the shield, and I can just make out the mass of black-clad Gardnerians huddled together beneath it.
A cacophony of shrieks sound from above, and I crane my neck, the back of my head sliding against Vale’s chest. A huge horde of dragons soars above us, circling over Crykes Field like a flock of death. Neat rows of mounted soldiers are assembling throughout the field for the march toward Gardneria. Torch-bearing sentries flank the rigid formations, and sapphire geo-shields appear above the company of soldiers, cast by Urisk geomancers astride hydreenas.
A flaming arrow smacks into the side of Vale’s shield and is instantly incinerated in a crackling, spitting ball of blue lightning.
“Ruus’fayn,” Vale curses in Alfsigr, one arm wrapped around my bound body, pulling me tight against the side of his chest. With the other arm he points his wand straight out, a stream of glowing blue feeding the shield.
“We’re outnumbered,” I tell him, my teeth chattering dully. My fingers and toes are starting to feel numb again. I look toward the distant Mage-shield, knowing that my brother and grandfather are likely inside it—but how long will it hold up under such a fierce attack? “They’ll kill us all.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Vale states drily.
I huff out a small sound of despair, tears stinging my dust-caked eyes.
Another arrow smashes into our shield, and I flinch back.
“How long can you maintain this shield?” I challenge him, my voice rough with tears.
“About one hour,” he replies, each word succinct and calm.
Anger rises in me. How can he be so unconcerned?
Three explosions of orange illuminate the tops of the mountains. The mammoth, circular puffs of light cast a sputtering amber glow over the entire field.
“What’s coming?” I demand roughly. “What can possibly save us from them?” I jerk my chin hard toward the Kelt-Urisk army.
“Their worst nightmare,” Vale says. He spits out a short, jaded laugh. “A force much stronger than their dragons and their demons and their flimsy arrows.”
“More Mages?” I croak out, disbelieving. We already have at least three high-level Mages trying to help our people, and yet here we are, cowering in a ditch with decaying shields.
Vale spits out an incredulous laugh. “No. Not more of us. We’re child’s play compared to her.”
Her?
He’s mad. He must be mad. There’s never been a powerful female Mage.
Despairing, I glare at him. “What do you mean, ‘her’?”
He cocks an eyebrow and sets his fierce eyes on me. His voice, when he speaks, is dangerously calm.
“You’re about to meet my mother.”
Chapter 9: The Black Witch
Alarm horns trumpet, echoing over the valley. Another round of orange explosions erupts just past the mountains, then fades to nothing.
The mountains fall eerily quiet, the sound of the alarm horns fading.
I crane my neck to look at Vale, but his eyes are fixed north.
A loud bang ruptures the air, and I flinch back against the hard length of him. Light bursts into being, the entire mountain ridge suddenly limned gold, bright as Yule candles.
The alarm horns blare again as the center of the mountain’s glow flares brighter. A thin, golden line scythes out from it, straight across the sky. It slams into an advancing dragon, exploding the beast into a churning ball of flame that writhes and plummets toward the earth.
Cries sound from the ground below the beast, and the Urisk geomancers send up streaks of sapphire, catching the hurtling creature in an intricate web. The flaming dragon hangs suspended just above a battalion of soldiers. The men scatter away in panic, a spot of budding chaos on the orderly field.
The other dragons circling overhead turn and arrow toward the north. Toward the strange glow.
Golden lines strike out again from the mountain’s center, spearing the night air in regular bursts, left to right and back again, fast as the beat of a hummingbird’s wing. Dragons
all across the sky burst into flame, and the night lights up orange.
Full-blown chaos erupts as flaming dragons rain down from the sky, one pinwheeling diagonally above us.
“Great gods,” Vale exclaims, teeth gritted, his arm extended and braced by his other hand as he forces more power into our shield.
The gargantuan dragon crashes down next to us, the ground shaking, painfully jarring my tailbone against Vale’s hip. Stones and dust and flame course over Vale’s shield, briefly casting us into foggy darkness.
When the air around us clears, I look toward the Mage-shield across the field, where my family is most likely to be. Two dragons crash to the ground near their shield, and a third rolls down the remaining bluff to collide with a group of screaming soldiers.
And then there are no more dragons in the sky.
Men yell orders, cry out and run aimlessly in all directions. There are tents on fire all over the field, everything lit up orange and yellow. Smoke rises in an amber fog, filling the valley.
The line of gold along the mountaintop constricts toward the center, the glow becoming fuzzy and muted. A black mass levitates inside the golden cloud, like a cobra raising its head, highlighted by the ethereal glow.
Tight lines of glowing orange flash from the black mass and strafe down the mountain in a series of flaming spears.
The black mass swoops higher, then down, over the avalanche of fire. As it moves ever closer, advancing straight toward us, I suddenly realize what I’m seeing.
Gardnerian soldiers in dark uniforms. On dragons. Our dragons.
Like a flock of geese, they’re arranged in a V. Fire rains down from the V’s lead point. A shield courses back from this point over the rest of the V like a flowing, golden current.
“Ancient One,” I gasp.
Order breaks down completely in the face of enemy dragons and the advancing Magefire. A young Kelt clambers up the bluff nearby, his eyes wide and terrified, his face streaked with sweat and soot. Kelt and Urisk soldiers are running south, fleeing, climbing up the bluff we slid down, scrambling for safety. Trying to escape the murderous flock now coursing over the field.
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