I could tell from the way he took his time that this was his strongest composition, the battle-winning one. And something in his eyes told me it was coming for me. Like the snow blossom he had uprooted months ago, I had no further purpose, and he would have no qualms about discarding me. I was depleted enough that if his attack had enough force it would break through my shield. I cast a desperate look around the room. Did I drop the other shields and focus all my remaining energy on my own? But the other assassins still fought on, their swords flashing, held back only by my power.
One of them had ripped up stones from the floor and walls and even ceiling, setting them to batter away at my shields. Sweat dripped down my forehead, my breathing ragged despite my lack of physical exertion.
Lucas could hold his own with his sword, and he must have shields in his small, stolen store. I met his eyes across the distance and read permission in them.
“End Lucas,” I whispered, almost silently.
But would it be enough? Should I drop my other shields as well? Dariela drew her sword, and I stared at her, my confused and exhausted brain struggling to decide.
The tearing of Walden’s parchment seemed to echo despite the sounds of battle. I had taken too long. My imagination told me I could physically see his power rushing toward me.
A battle cry rang out above it all as a flying figure leaped in front of me, taking the full brunt of deadly power Walden had unleashed.
I screamed and dropped to my knees beside Lucas’s prone body. The shield we had raided from the Kallorwegians across the border had failed, and he lay there, exposed and still. My own shield stretched to cover him.
Looking up, my gaze focused on Walden. Lucas’s sacrifice had brought clarity to my foggy mind. I had to end this, and I had to do it fast. But Walden stood comfortably behind a strong shield, and my energy was dangerously depleted. For a moment anger flashed in his eyes at Lucas’s intervention, but satisfaction replaced the emotion as he examined Lucas’s body.
Dariela dropped to her knees beside me. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She murmured it over and over again, her usual strength broken by everything that had happened.
Across from us Walden pulled out a parchment. What new horror did he mean to unleash? But instead of ripping it, he pulled out a pen, and crouched down to rest it on the ground, oblivious to the battle raging around him.
Cold surged through me. His shield and my weakness bought him the chance to use the one advantage that was usually mine. He could shape his working to the situation, giving it finesse and targeted strength. And Walden might not be able to wield a sword, but I didn’t doubt the sophistication of his composition skills. We couldn’t allow him to unleash whatever horror he was writing out on that page.
Every second I weakened further, and there was only so much I could do at once. Lucas’s words from Kallorway sprang into my mind. He had said a time of desperation might come when my own compositions wouldn’t be enough.
I kept my eye on Walden who was taking his time. And why not? The longer he waited, the weaker I became. I had to find another way to stop whatever battle-winning composition he was concocting.
“Dariela,” I hissed. “Take off Lucas’s boot.”
To her credit, when issued a direct instruction—even a strange one—she didn’t hesitate.
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. Both. There’s a composition in one of them.”
She crawled around his body, gripping the closest boot and yanking hard. I took a deep breath and summoned the words I needed in my mind’s eye in order.
“I’m going to put everything I have into breaking their shields,” I said. “If I drop my shields, can you replace them around you and Saffron and the servants? You shouldn’t need to hold for long.”
She nodded, pausing in her efforts to remove Lucas’s second boot to withdraw two small slips of parchment and rip them. They looked short, and I doubted they would last long. She resumed her efforts on the boot as I whispered, “End.”
All of my shields dropped. I gave myself a single second of sweet relief, and then I said, “Attack.”
All of the Kallorwegians, as well as Walden, looked up, but my force focused on the closest black robe, battering at the assassin’s shield. The room whirled around me as the last of my power drained away. But I had been focused on defense for some time, and none of them had renewed their shields. I held on, clinging to my consciousness with every ounce of willpower in me.
I felt the mage’s shield crack as I held onto the image of a final five letters.
“Drain.” The word fell from my lips, more breath than spoken word.
As this final burst of power left me, I slumped forward to lie beside Lucas. But I was still half-conscious as it found its mark, energy pouring back across the room and into my depleted body. Sight returned and sound. I pushed myself back into a sitting position as the mage I drained managed to activate another shield, cutting me off.
But I hadn’t limited my composition, and it had already found another mark, filling me with even more energy until that source was also cut off. But with each fresh burst of energy, I was able to strengthen my attack, breaking through again and again in a cycle that left me a little stronger with each passing moment.
Walden looked worried now and began to write faster, his shields the only ones that hadn’t broken.
Dariela’s shielding efforts wouldn’t last much longer either.
I worked another assault composition, using my regained energy to pour power at all of them, but focusing on Walden. Two of their shields dropped, and I sucked up more energy. I felt Walden’s protection falter, fear flickering in his eyes for the first time.
His pen paused, and his other hand reached for an already completed composition. I held out my hand to Dariela, sure she must have found Lucas’s sealing composition by now. The second Walden’s shield cracked, I would unleash it, throwing everything I had left into a shield that would enclose me in a bubble with Walden and the servants. Someone at least might still benefit from my desperate act.
I just hoped the shield would hold long enough to keep everyone else safe. Surely by the time the sealing blocked my power—thus cutting off my shield—it would be too late for it to seal them too?
But nothing was placed into my fingers. Turning my head, I saw Dariela finish reading the words on the paper in her hand. She looked up at me, comprehension on her face. She made no move to hand it over.
“No,” I said, as she gripped it in both hands and began to tear. It was too late to intervene. All I had time to do was shout out my prepared shielding composition, adjusting the layers in my mind to change slightly who I protected.
All of Walden’s accomplices now lay prone around him, too drained to respond to the new threat. As Walden’s shield fell, I poured every remaining drop of their energy into holding the shield around Dariela, Walden, and the servants. I only wished I could shield Dariela from the sealing as well. Did she know the sacrifice required of the mage who worked a sealing composition?
Power flared as the sealing composition was unleashed, drawn from Dariela as well as the parchment she held. But even as I felt it, safely contained within my shield, I realized my mistake. When Walden lost his ability to access power, the power he had already unleashed into his unfinished composition would rebound—just as it had once done for Clarence in our composition class. Walden would inadvertently destroy those within my shield at the very least—if he didn’t bring half the building down as well.
“Dampen!” I yelled, dropping the now unnecessary shield to pour power into my new composition.
An explosion of light and noise emerged from the parchment in front of Walden, expanding upward for at least a foot before suddenly reversing and sucking back into itself.
It was over.
Chapter 25
Walden’s scream cut through the breathless silence. His hands and lower arms had been too near the parchment and had been
mostly destroyed by the contained explosion—blackened and burned almost past recognition.
Now that it was safe to do so, Saffron urged the servants down the stairs and into the entrance hall. Several of them hung back, clearly terrified and traumatized, but Damon boldly led the way. I hadn’t seen him in the crowd before, and I managed the ghost of a smile. I was glad he had been one of those present.
“Gather their compositions,” Saffron said to him. “I don’t want any nasty surprises catching us from behind if one of them wakes up.”
She turned to me, her face stricken as her eyes lingered on Lucas’s body. I shook my head at her.
“Coralie and Finnian. We left them in Lorcan’s office with Thornton. I don’t know…”
She didn’t need me to finish, sprinting off down the corridor while Damon rallied a couple of the other servants to his task. I didn’t bother to warn them about not looking at the words. They would find out soon enough that they no longer posed a risk to themselves or anyone else.
But I knew that I was only delaying the inevitable moment. Forcing myself to confront reality, I looked down at Lucas, lying next to where I knelt. His body was unmarked, but he lay still, half rolled away from me.
Tears blinded me as I reached out trembling hands to turn him onto his back. I could see no signs of life, but I had to at least try.
Dragging a rough arm across my eyes, I tried to say the beginning of the binding words that would allow me to compose a diagnostic working. Perhaps life still lingered inside him, although his chest no longer moved up and down.
“No!” Dariela pulled at my arm, breaking my concentration before I could gather any power to begin. “It’s too late. You’ll only kill yourself trying. I’m so sorry, Elena. It should have been me.”
I needed to tell her that I didn’t care what it cost me—that I had endured too much to forever be separated from him now. But I couldn’t seem to find any words. I knew, though, that I couldn’t live with myself unless I tried. I would gladly give up every last drop of my power to bring him back.
The thought lodged in my brain, calling up an image of Declan’s lopsided eyebrows. But it was his words that made me jerk into motion.
We can work any healing, almost without limits, he had said. And then he had given me a gift. I had even noted that he felt tired as he handed it over.
I pulled out the silk pouch, my fumbling fingers almost dropping it in my haste. I had forgotten all about it in the frantic hours that had passed since I received it. Ripping it open, my fingers found the smooth surface of a piece of parchment.
I pulled it out and read the words as fast as my eyes could go. My fingers began tearing it before my eyes had even reached the bottom, ripping all the way through a mere second later. I flicked my fingertips in Lucas’s direction.
Just as Declan had promised, the rush that it released felt like energy rather than power. A small piece of him—far more powerful than any healing composition fueled by power, settled over Lucas, sinking in along his long frame.
If there was any lingering remnant of life in Lucas, any hope of resuscitation, Declan’s healing could retrieve him. My own heartbeat thundered in my ears, drowning out the sounds around me. One beat. Two. Three.
He sucked in a violent breath, his body spasming. Another breath, and another. Then he was moving, surging to his feet before I could prevent him. I jumped up beside him, searching his face in disbelief.
He looked around wildly. “What’s going on? What happened?” He took in the servants, still stripping our enemies of their compositions, and Walden’s slumped body lying where he had passed out—from pain or shock, I didn’t know.
“Where are my family?”
I had been too terrified for him to think of them, and even now, I couldn’t pull my mind away from the miracle of his recovery. Tears streamed down my cheeks.
He looked back at me, his attention caught by my appearance. Alarm sprang into his face, and he gripped both of my arms.
“What is it? What’s the matter? Are you injured?”
“You’re alive! I can’t…I can’t believe it.”
He frowned. “I remember jumping in front of you, but then everything is blank.”
“Declan saved you.” I couldn’t seem to stop smiling at him.
He stared back at me in confusion before sweeping the room with his eyes as if looking for the Kallorwegian, and I remembered that in the midst of everything I hadn’t yet told him Declan’s news.
“Finnian!” Still looking around the room, Lucas was the first to see the new arrivals limping down the corridor.
Finnian had a heavy gash in one leg, and one of his arms hung at a strange angle. His pale face was half covered in blood from a wound that must have been healed because I could see no trace of it now.
Saffron supported him under one shoulder, and Coralie the other. We rushed forward to meet them half way, helping them to lower Finnian to the ground. He made only a strangled groan, but he swayed, his pale face suggesting he was close to passing out.
Coralie’s energy felt low, and I guessed she had written compositions on the spot to save him from whatever wounds had caused all that blood. I turned to Saffron instead, and she offered before I could even ask.
“Take as much energy as you need to heal him.” Her worried eyes stayed trained on her cousin.
I did so without argument, healing him while the others all watched on. When I finished, he smiled up at me.
“You know, you’re a handy friend to have around, Elena.”
I laughed out my relief.
“How about you boys see if you can minimize this nearly dying thing next time?” I suggested.
“Next time?” Finnian shook his head. “I promise to be ever ever so good if only you can please make sure there’s never a next time.”
He tried to smile but was too exhausted to quite pull it off.
The door to the dining hall shrieked as it opened, attracting all of our attention as Lorcan exited first, surveying the mess and chaos of the entrance hall. His eyes eventually latched onto us, and he called something over his shoulder.
Several guards appeared next, compositions and swords still gripped in their hands. It was galling to see them so fresh, but I knew why they had stayed as a last defense.
Princess Lucienne preceded her parents into the entry, but Queen Verena saw us first. She called for her son, and he hurried across to her, weaving his way past bodies and gaping holes in the floor.
I looked back at Coralie before glancing down the corridor behind her.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “They got past us and realized the royals weren’t there. Dariela went after them, and I should have come too, but…” She looked at Finnian who had regained his feet.
He said nothing, his arms snaking around her stomach and tucking her back in against his chest, leaving her still facing me, guilt on her face.
“You did the only thing you could do,” I said. “I understand.” I looked down the corridor. “But what of Thornton? Is he in need of…” My voice trailed away at the stricken look in her eyes.
“He did everything he could. I wish you could have seen him fight. But there were five of them, and they had so many compositions.”
My tears welled again, and I pushed them down. Thornton had done so much to keep his trainees alive over the years, and now he had been the one to pay the ultimate price himself. But I knew he would have been pleased with me. I had saved as many as I could, and that would have to be enough.
Together we all crossed back into the center of the room. Dariela stood there, her eyes fastened on two torn pieces of parchment still in her hands.
“Why did you do it?” I whispered to her. “Didn’t you know it would block your access to power too?” I could feel the shadow over her energy, and it felt unutterably strange on someone I knew and had trained beside.
“I knew,” she said. “All of the Mage Council knew about the delegation’s discovery, and Lorc
an told Walden…” She looked up at me. “But it had to be me. This was my mess, not yours.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Elena!” Lorcan called my name, pulling me from the moment. He stood over Walden’s unconscious body, staring down at him with shadowed eyes.
I picked my way across to him.
“Lucas tells me you’re responsible for all of this.” He gestured at the bodies that littered the floor around us.
“Well, not all of it,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “And now he tells us that he thinks you’ll be able to use sheer force to single-handedly batter down the protections that are still raised around this Academy. In fact, he seems to think you limitless.”
I bit my lip. “There might be something I never told you.”
“Evidently.” He paused. “But now is hardly the moment for recriminations. I understand you’ll need some energy?”
It turned out the servants Saffron had been gathering from the top floors weren’t the only ones still trapped in the Academy. Araminta had the rest of them hiding in the gardens after the protections failed to let them through like the trainees and instructors. Something I would need to have a word with Lorcan about in the future.
It turned out to be fortunate, however, since I had to drain more than half the energy of every person left standing to create enough power to smash the protections with the single strong blow required. They cracked at my onslaught, coming down in a sudden rush. Thaddeus had the gates pulled open before any of us could move, and squads of royal guards poured in to form a protective circle around Lucas and his family.
The jostling guards tried to pull Lucas away from me, but he kept a firm hold, refusing to let us be parted. They gave in, sweeping me into the bubble of stillness they had created. Tired, dirty, strained, and with a tear-stained face, I found myself face-to-face with Lucas’s parents. King Stellan and Queen Verena.
“That was an…interesting display,” the queen said.
I didn’t like the concern flickering behind her royal mask.
Voice of Life (The Spoken Mage Book 4) Page 30
