A Burning in the Bones (Waxways #3)

Chapter 34 Nevelyn Tin’vori

34 NEVELYN TIN’VORI

It all happened in a breathless instant.

The viceroy arrived. The crowd went quiet. Before he’d spoken more than a few words, two people had moved simultaneously. It was like watching the steps of some strange dance. Ren Monroe had glided forward with her horseshoe wand raised. The annoying girl with the bright red hair had moved the opposite way. Both of them had taken aim. Both of them had released spells at the exact same moment. Their castings were the only warnings of violence.

Nevelyn and Dahvid reacted better than most of the room. One of the few silver linings of growing up as a hunted creature. Her brother summoned his sword. Nevelyn seized Josey by the collar and nearly dragged him off his feet. They cleared the melee just as someone launched right past where the boy had been standing. Ahead, two paladins were plunging their swords into the back of a man with long, dark hair. Nevelyn tried to shield Josey from that sight, but there were violences unfolding around the entire room.

The first paladin to come for them was dissected by her brother with brutal efficiency. She’d always known he was gifted, but gods did he make killing look like art. Two flowing swipes and then he was past the falling man, engaging with the next opponent. The only problem was that enemy soldiers were everywhere. She dragged Josey clear of Dahvid’s skirmish and ran right into a new set of paladins. Four of them. They fanned out with weapons drawn. Nevelyn saw that between her and the soldiers were three of the other children. All frozen in terror. All about to die.

Dahvid is not the only one with magic.

Nevelyn pushed Josey to safety and reached for the pendant. A quick turn—from dark to light—and her beholding magic roared to life. She cast the spell at all four of her opponents. It was far more of the magic than she’d ever attempted. Normally, she focused on a single target. She thought this version might result in a weaker spell—but the soldiers went rigid at the exact same time. Their eyes swung to her. All of them wore a blank expression. She could hear Josey screaming for his friends to move! Get out of the way! Nevelyn couldn’t let that distract her. All her focus was on maintaining her grip on the magic. She gave her first command.

“Down on your knees.”

All four soldiers knelt before her. She was about to tell them to take their own weapons and slit their throats with them—but she felt the magic slip. It was like trying to hold on to a fish fresh out of the water. One of the men, on the far right, was straining. Attempting to stand.

“Dahvid!”

She did not dare take her eyes from her targets. A moment later, Dahvid glided around her. His eyes shocked wide at the sight of the four soldiers. He didn’t ask questions or second-guess what was happening. Instead, he quickly executed all of them.

The children were crying. Even Josey. Nevelyn urged them into the nearest corner, one of the only safe spaces left in the room, before spinning with Dahvid to assess the rest of the battle. It was clearly not going well. Ren, Theo, and the girl from House Shiverian were locked in a duel with Viceroy Gray. Nevelyn knew enough about Ren to know that she was a very gifted spellcaster. The girl had gone toe to toe with Landwin Brood. Add Theo and a prodigy from one of the great houses, and Nevelyn knew they made quite a formidable trio.

And yet… the viceroy was pushing them back. Unnatural power rippled out from his wand. Great strikes that hit their protective wards with enough force to reverberate through the entire room. Elsewhere, the paladins were gaining ground. Always fighting with numbers in their favor. If this had been outside, in the open, the wizards would have had a clear advantage. More than enough space for their spellwork to dominate. But in this tighter space, the paladins were quietly beginning to dispatch some of the wizards.

Her first instinct was to run. There was still time for them to save themselves. But the viceroy unleashed a spell powerful enough to knock Ren Monroe off her feet. She watched her old accomplice roll over, gritting her teeth, and unleash her own spell in return. Nevelyn knew this was not a fight they could walk away from. It would follow them wherever they went.

“Dahvid! Help them! I’ll take care of Josey.”

Her brother shot forward without hesitation, sliding around other fights with all the focus of a revenant who’d come back to life for this singular purpose. Nevelyn needed to believe that he would survive even if she turned her back and stopped watching.

“You will live. You will live. You will live.”

And then Nevelyn was moving the other way. She turned her necklace back to the darker side as she reached Josey. There were five children huddled just outside the chaos. They were all calling to a sixth who’d hidden beneath one of the tables and had tears streaming down her face. She looked too shocked to move and no wonder, there were bodies on the floor between them. Blood slowly leaking to where she was crouched. Nevelyn hissed for all of them to shut up.

“Josey, hold tight to the back of my dress. I need you all to link up. We are about to leave this place together—and you need to stay with me. Do you understand? Do not let go .”

The five of them fearfully obeyed her. Nevelyn took a deep breath, and then she cast the most powerful version of her other magic that she could. It was the first time she was demanding that the magic she’d used since childhood hide someone else besides herself. And it worked. Nevelyn felt the invisible shield stretch until it covered all of them. Confident the spell would hold, she started walking forward. Josey and the children held tight and it was a lot like towing a heavy bag through a body of water. An extra gravitational pull that she’d never had to account for before now. The door was close. They could escape without being harmed. But Nevelyn aimed them toward the panicked girl beneath the table first. The poor thing was shaking violently. Nevelyn realized that they’d all just disappeared from sight. She probably thought they’d ported away.

It wasn’t until Nevelyn grabbed the girl’s hand that she saw her. Almost as if she were parting a curtain in the magic and saying, Look here. You are allowed to witness me. It was enough to break the girl from her trance. Magic exploded overhead. More glass shattering. But now that they had the last girl, they were navigating away from the thicker madness. Toward the back hallway. Nevelyn guided them around bodies. Away from pooling blood. Once a survivor of tragedy, she knew the images of this room would haunt these children forever.

But first they had to survive.

First they had to live.

Nevelyn poured as much strength as she could into the magic. It was starting to tug on her limbs. Weigh on her shoulders. Almost enough to make her faint, but she gritted her teeth and pushed on. If Dahvid could be strong, so could she. Once her head stopped spinning, she guided them out of the nightmare. Into the waiting night. One by one, the children followed her.