I rushed forward, trying to see how the combination lined up. The bronze stopped on the sign for Libra, which was two parallel lines running together. The top line had a small hump in it. Next, the roman numeral stopped on…
“Zinnia!”
I tilted my head to the side. “Tuck?”
His voice sounded like he was yelling through water. “Wake up, we need you.”
Need me? No, they couldn’t. I had to get two more numbers. I glanced over toward Alataris as the numbers ticked by one by one. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven…I sucked in a breath. Twenty-eight?
Before I could see it stop, my whole body was jerked sideways, and my head rolled around on my shoulders. Drops of water smacked into my face, and I peeked open my eyes, even though I didn’t remember closing them. Tucker had his hands on my shoulders. The heat from his body pressed into me, and I shook my head. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. Your eyes went full black, and you just stopped moving.” His eye were round with concern, and he looked me up and down. “Are you okay? Did you get the combo?”
Combo? Boom! I snapped to attention. The haze I was in was all but forgotten. “Right, the combo.” I shrugged out of his grip and moved to stand at the very edge of the roof where I remembered Alataris standing. At my feet was a small arrow that was only about an inch big. We never would’ve found it at night in the middle of a storm had I not seen it for myself. The wind whipped round me, and I stood with my legs apart, trying to keep my balance. My hair flew across my face.
I raised my fist over my head and slammed it down on top of the air. The rings groaned as they slowly started to spin. I pointed to the bronze ring, which was furthest away from me. “Nova, stop it at Libra.”
“Stop it?” Her eyes widened, but she ran forward. “How?”
In my vision, Alataris used a spell, but I didn’t think it would work for us. “Blast it.”
She held her hands out in front of her, and purple sparks shot from her fingers. She shoved it down into the first ring. The top one grinded to a halt at the Libra sign. Next was the Roman numeral. I didn’t know what he stopped the number on, only that is was close to the twenty-eighth. “Okay, Gray, stop it on twenty-eight.”
“I’m no magical unicorn. How do you expect me to stop it?”
I knew he was right. “Fine, I’ll do it.” I reached out my hand toward the silver spinning ring and shoved my magic into it. When I tried to stop it on the twenty-eight ,it spun even fast. Damn it! Wrong guess.
“I can’t hold this much longer, Zin.” Nova’s whole body quaked from head to toe.
“Okay!” Get it together Zin. I focused all my attention on the silver ring and stopped it on the twenty-ninth. With my magic holding it, it grinded to a halt. As long as I kept my magic flowing through it, I knew it wouldn’t move.
“One more, Zin,” Tucker called out. When he met my wide eyes, he must’ve seen I had no idea. He pressed his lips together. “What’s the year?”
“What?”
“You’ve got September twenty-ninth. For what year?” He called to me as he straddled the golden ring.
The center of the door burst open, and hands shot through it. Grayson and Ashryn hunched over, holding the door in place. Gray cursed. “Now! This needs to happen now!”
“2002.” Exactly sixteen years ago…
Tuck pulled his phone from his pocket and started typing. I couldn’t believe it. “We don’t have time for texting Niche.”
He summoned his sword from the palm of his hands, then spun it around and stabbed it thought the metal, stopping the ring from moving on the last quarter moon. The gears in the roof began to click and move. “How did you know it was the quarter moon?”
He held his phone up. “Google.”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously?”
“What else were we going to do?”
Before I could answer, the needlepoint slowly began to lower back into the building. The tip was nearly completely down when it stopped, and the side of the Needle peeled back like a flower opening to the sun. The key floated in a light pink beam of light.
I looked around at our group. “Who’s going to grab it?”
“I don’t care who grabs it.” Grayson pulled one of his throwing stars from his pocket and slashed out at the grabbing hands. “Do it now. This door is going to go.”
“Go, Tuck!” I pointed toward the key.
Tucker turned on his heels and ran headlong at the key. The gears below the roof began to quake and clink together.
“Hurry up.”
He dove forward with his hand extended out. The second he wrapped his fingers around the chain, the needlepoint snapped shut, closing a millimeter way from the bottom of the key. He skidded to a halt on the other side of the roof just as the door to the roof shot wide open, sending Ashryn and Grayson stumbling back. Thralls flooded out toward us. I summoned my magic to the palms of my hands.
The gears below the roof clicked once more, and a tick started. The silver, gold and bronze rings vibrated below my feet. I locked gazes with Tucker a second before the rings all spiraled in opposite directions like a top. Ashryn, Grayson and Nova flew off the roof like rag dolls. I couldn’t hold myself any longer. My body was jerked to the side, and my feet went flying up over my head. I reached out and tried to grab on to anything to stop me from flying off the roof.
The last thing I saw was Tucker reaching out for me. “Zinnia!”
Chapter 29
Zinnia
I extended my hands out to try and meet Tucker’s outstretched fingers. He leapt over the side of the building and dove for me. The ground rushed up toward me. I didn’t know if he was going to make it. I called upon my magic once more, praying that it’d work. Thralls all spilled over the edge of the roof, falling like dominoes towards us. I couldn’t see the others and didn’t know what happened to them. I sent silvery swirls of magic shooting all around me, latching on to everyone. I pictured the next point on the map in my head. “By the grace of lady moon, this trip I take very soon. Return us now to that which we seek, the sacred piece of the dragon to keep.”
A bright light opened in the ground and I closed my eyes, bracing for the painful impact I knew would come. Instead, I felt myself falling through it. My heart-stopping drop turned to a slow drift. I was in a sea of blue light, floating the way I did in the ocean. The others floated into view, all of them looking as shocked as I was. Time slowed. For a moment, there were no Thralls and we all weren’t falling to our deaths. Sure, Tuck might’ve been able to save me, but what about the others? My arms and legs pinwheeled in slow motion, and my hair drifted around my face. The frantic pounding of my heart relaxed and felt like I was swimming in a warm bath.
Then everything sped back up as I crashed through the other side of the blue area. I landed flat on my back on soft, deep sand. The smell of food, horses and manure made me wrinkle my nose. When I gazed up at the sky, I realized I wasn’t looking at the sky at all. Above was a dome with industrial steel beams running across it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our princess,” the announcer boomed over the loudspeaker.
The crowd erupted into fits of cheers. What the heck is going on? I rolled to my side and groaned. I ached all over, and I could feel the threads of exhaustion making my eyelids heavy. Did I use too much magic?
A blinding spotlight shined down on me, and I held my hand up, trying to block it out. A horse trampled so close to me I nearly fell over. The crowd cheered and laughed. My feet felt sluggish as I dragged them through the thick sand. When I looked up into the crowd, I noticed each area was split up by color. A flag with an emblem on it hung over each section. People sat all around with paper crowns on to match their part as well as small flags. And then it hit me…medieval times…nooooo.
I spun in a circle, looking out at everyone cheering and waving. Where is Tucker and the rest of them? Did the spell I used go so wrong that we’re all separated now? When I looked down at mysel
f, I groan for a whole new reason. Pink satin and lace draped loosely from my body all the way down to the floor. Pink? Really? What the hell kind of trick was this? Another horse came so close to me I stumbled back. Before I hit the ground, two strong hands caught me and righted me.
“Careful.”
I spun on my heels and smiled. “Tucker, thank god.”
“I wouldn’t thank anyone yet.” He stood before me dressed in an old knight costume.
I arched my eyebrow at him. “A knight? How appropriate.”
“Have you looked at yourself…queen?” He plucked at something on my head. “Nice tiara.”
I reached up to the top of my head. There was indeed a tiara. “What happened?”
“Best I figure is whatever spell you cast sent us to where the vault is but at the same time we ended up in.” He swallowed and sighed. “In costume.”
“Where are the others?” I turned to look for them. To my right, two pretend knights were engaged in a fake battle. To my left, two others were waving to the crowd and smiling, all the while tossing carnations into the audience.
“I don’t know, but we have to go.” He grabbed my hand and began dragging me toward the tunnel when everything went completely silent. I froze with my heart thundering in my chest.
My hand shook in Tucker’s grasp. “Why are they all looking at us?”
“I don’t know. Keep moving.” He tugged me once more. The crowd rose to their feet as one. Like soldiers, they marched out of the rows and up the aisles without speaking a word. Their feet pounded—boom, boom, boom—like a rhythmic drum. Even the fake knights mounted their horses and made their way out of the arena.
A slow clapping came from the other side of the room, followed by a lifeless giggle. A chill went down my spine. I knew that laugh. Sometimes I heard it in my nightmares. I looked up toward where the clapping came from…Ophelia.
Alataris’ daughter was the stuff nightmares were made of. She was cold, calculating and unfeeling. Two long black braids hung down on either side of her pale face. Her eyes were black as night, and when she looked at me, I felt as though winter was upon me. She walked down two steps. “Did you think you’d get the key and think this would be a piece of cake?”
I threw my arms up and shrugged. “Yeah, well, kind of.”
Ophelia canted her head to the side. “Interesting.” She lifted her hand and snapped her fingers. Thralls ran down each of the aisles. We were completely surrounded, and I didn’t know where we were going to go or what we were going to do.
Tuck summoned his swords to his hands. His flames danced all the way down from his shoulder to the tips of the blades. “Stay close.”
I pressed my back to his and held my hands out, envisioning the dual blades he’d made just for me. With two little white flashes of light, they appeared in my palms. I wrapped my fingers around them and held them up.
Behind me, Tuck froze. “How’d you do that?”
I shrugged. “You do it.”
“It’s old phoenix shifter magic. It’s not common.”
Why was he bringing this up now? “Um, do you think we can focus here for a second?”
“Oh, right.” Tucker threw his sword out at the first line of Thralls as they approach. One after another, they disappeared into dust. The sword spun and embedded itself into the stone stairs. Tuck held his hand out, and the sword disappeared into thin air then reappeared in his hand.
“Move with me, move in time, dance alone to the desires in my mind,” Ophelia yelled from high above us. All at once the Thralls flooded onto the arena floor. I threw my blade out and watched it spiral through the crowd of Thralls. Each one bellowed and crumbled into nothingness. Tucker too was doing the same thing, yet they seemed to be closing in on us.
I was out of breath and exhausted. The muscles in my arms burned with exertion each time I threw my blades and caught them it hurt a little more. “This isn’t working.”
“I know.” He took off running circles around me in a blur of fire. Flames circled around us, holding the Thralls back just enough for us to move. And then it hit me.
“I have an idea.” I dropped my blades down and called my powers to my hands.
“Tell me.”
“Can you make the ring of fire go higher? Like, make it a wall?” I spun around to face him.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t move. He was beautiful and deadly with his flaming swords, wild hair and molten honey eyes. Large rips marred his shirt, and I could see his tan skin underneath. The flames shot straight up twenty feet around us.
We each took a step toward each other, and then another and another. We stood so close not even a blade would come between us. “You ready?”
“Always.” He nodded.
I threw my hands out, sending my magic out. The sand rose up off the floor. I could feel every grain of it, and one by one, I forced them to clump together just enough, then shoved them through the wall of fire. The fire alarms went off, and the sprinkler system that ran across the ceiling kicked to life. Perfect.
With the rest of my magic, I forced the falling water to cyclone just outside the fire. Three layers of elements protected us from Ophelia and her Thralls. But it wasn’t enough to only be protected. We had to make it out of here with the dragon heart scale. I threw the sand right through the fire, where it melted together into molten glass. Then I shot it through the water. Shards of razor-sharp glass exploded out like shrapnel. It flew in all directions, taking down Thrall after Thrall until the arena was emptied of them all. I dropped the water down, then Tucker let his fire wall fall.
I turned, ready to face off against Ophelia, but she’d disappeared. The only people left were Tucker and me. I sucked in deep panting breaths. Tucker hunched over and sucked in deep breaths. “Wow.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“That was…just damn.” He shook his head, then wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to his chest.
“We just have to find the vault now.” I pressed my face into him and closed my eyes.
“Um, Zinnia?”
“Yeah?”
He ran his fingers through my hair. “You’re standing on it.”
Chapter 30
Zinnia
I dropped my hold on him and took a step back while looking down at my feet. “The vault is the whole floor? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
At the center of the arena, the floor met in a deep seem. Two half-moons lined up against the seam, creating a circle with a key hole in the middle of it. I extended my hand out to him and wiggled my fingers. “Key please?
He whipped the key from his neck and handed it over. “Do the honors.”
I squatted down on one knee and shoved the key into the lock and turned it to the right. The clanking gears ground under our feet, and the floor opened at the seam and slid back underneath the seating. I peeked over the edge into a room that glowed yellow from the mounds of gold and treasures. It was the size of a football field.
My jaw dropped, and I couldn’t stop staring. “How are we going to find it in all this before more Thralls get here? What if Ophelia comes back? What if —?”
He held up a finger, and his lips tilted up in that half-smirk he gave me every time he was thinking something naughty. He pulled his phone from his pocket, hit the screen a couple of times, then held it to his ear. “Beckett, we need transport.” He glanced around at the treasure. “How big? Let’s just say massive. Yeah, I’ll ping you my location and you get us back to the school. Okay?” He nodded, then ended the call.
“You can’t take all of this back to the school. It’s not possible.”
His chest rumbled with a chuckle. “Watch me.”
Chapter 31
Tucker
“Explain to me why you decided to smash my fountain again?” Matteaus crossed his arms while he stood on top of a pile of gold that’d fallen into the middle of Evermore Academy. The fountain was somewhere under that pile…smashed to pieces.
“It w
asn’t that I meant to smash it. It just kind of happened.” I held my hands up in a what could I do motion. Though the city was under more than six feet of snow, the courtyard only had a thin coating. Well, before we dropped Alataris’ entire treasure into it. I toed a ruby the size of my fist. It rolled down a small mound, sending golden coins skittering in all directions and making them clank together.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “My school is not a bank!”
“And I didn’t mean to make it one.” I bent over and scooped an emerald off the ground. “We couldn’t stay very long. Ophelia was there, and who knew when Alataris would show up? And how were we going to sift through all this stuff to find the dragon heart scale? And once we did find it, what were we going—?”
Matteaus held his hand up, cutting off my words. “Enough. Just… just clean up the mess, kid.”
“But I thought you might want to use it.” I hedged, hoping he would tell me exactly how to get rid of it all. Even back in my home kingdom of Cindelore I wasn’t allowed to be in the treasury. This was years of saving, stealing and working toward an unmasked fortune. Who knew what untold secrets lie within the mound of gold coins Alataris has collected?
“This is chump change.” Matteaus turned and began striding away. The tips of his huge black wings dragged on the ground behind him. Black feathers fluttered to ground, sticking out against the white snow and golden coins. “Clean up…now.”
Wicked Magic (The Royals: Witch Court Book 2) Page 16
