Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MARCELLA
Marcella’s feet pound against the quay as she advances.
She throws a palm out, sending two thick vines racing toward the wielder’s ankles.
They slither around the lip of her stained boots like living snakes, and Marcella yanks her arm back, sending the Rogue plummeting to her back and sliding across the stone.
Then, Marcella waits as the woman reorients herself.
Waits until the woman realizes it was Marcella who forced her to the cold stone.
As anticipated, the rogue wielder is furious. “You dirty bitch.”
“Dirty?” Marcella pretends to be offended. “This coming from the one covered in actual filth?” She makes her words ooze with condescension.
The woman’s face stains a near-tinted purple from her rage.
She scrambles to her feet, barely balanced before she is making a fluid motion, dragging loose hands from where the gulf surrounds them and toward the quay stretching between them.
Sharp streams of twisting water shoot for Marcella, and she drops down, slamming her palms into the ground.
Winding branches curl and twirl over themselves, forming an arched wall which covers her.
The water slams into the creaking branches, leaving only tiny droplets to splash against Marcella’s cheeks.
She lifts her palms and rises, dropping the wall. The woman glares at her with a curled lip and twisted features, rearing back, preparing for her next strike. Marcella frowns at her for only a second.
Then she turns on her heels and runs in the opposite direction.
The woman seems too stunned by the gesture to chase after her at first, but it isn’t long until Marcella hears stomping footsteps and angry shouts echoing after her. “Coward! Fight me like a real woman would. What—can only get your blows in when the person isn’t paying attention to you? Hey! HEY!”
Marcella doesn’t slow to glance over her shoulder or call back to the enraged Rogue. No. She only stops once she reaches the tiny, glowing red flower carved into the stone, so utterly missable, a person would really have to be looking for it. Or simply already know it’s there, like Marcella does.
She halts right atop of it, and the flower sizzles and flares beneath her feet before disappearing.
A serene portrait is painted behind her of placid water glittering beneath the peculiar sky, bleeding red and gold while still cradling blue hues.
It’s odd, but in a way, it reminds her of the sunrises she would watch as a small child back home in the Anatolé Kingdom—so, to an extent, its strangeness is also comforting.
The water-wielder halts a few paces in front of the scene, panting for breath. “Nowhere to run now, Coward.”
Marcella mocks a cool shrug. “Guess you’ll have to try to hit me with one of those pathetic water attacks you wield so poorly.”
The Rogue’s brows slam together and she jerks her head back, like she can’t believe what she’s just heard. “You want to say that again… Coward?”
Marcella tugs at her lips, her smile sickeningly sweet. “I think once was enough, actually.”
The small wielder’s mark on the Rogue’s wrist—a curling three wing design branching from a central circle—glows blue.
She bends her knees and outstretches her arms, performing a series of fluid movements that, under any other circumstance, Marcella would actually find quite pretty.
Given the intricacy and precision of them, actually, it’s clear this girl has been trained—and by somebody good, no less.
Interesting.
The Rogue sends a spiraling torrent of water at Marcella, the thick, crystal-hued streams pelting her with a fierceness capable of cracking stone.
And the attacks do not stop coming. No—the Rogue is pissed and her frayed nerves are clearly burning with a personal vendetta from Marcella’s taunts and actions.
So she continues sending one roaring stream after the other, annihilating Marcella with all she has.
Eventually, the Rogue hunches over her knees and heaves in gasping breaths.
Beads of sweat form along her dark brow, and she swipes them away with the back of her hand.
A smug smirk curls the corner of her lips when she sees Marcella’s body strewn across the stone ground.
A smirk that quickly twitches before fading altogether as the sky flickers. Once. Twice.
The illusion Gray weaved over the area fades, taking the image he conjured of Marcella with it, revealing instead an incinerated sailboat whose flames have now been entirely doused by the woman’s water magic.
Marcella steps out from around the stack of crates and barrels lining the quay’s ledge—positioned just perfectly to where the woman can’t see her but Gray can—and she smirks at the Rogue, her hand braced—albeit a bit smugly—on her hip.
The Rogue’s face pales, and she shakes her head as she tries to make sense of what the hell she is seeing.
“But… but you were just—just there.” She points at the blackened ship, burnt probably to the point of irreparability.
Marcella mocks a perplexed expression, her lips falling into a confused frown. “Now how could I be where that ship is if I’m standing right here? I don’t know of any magic that allows a wielder to duplicate themselves. Do you?”
The woman’s mouth flounders like a fish. “But…but…”
The sound of metal clasping together clinks in the salty air as Kiran snaps the magic-inhibiting manacles on the Rogue’s wrist, catching her entirely off guard. “Well played,” he drawls wryly, glancing at Marcella with an amused yet proud smile splitting his lips.
She shrugs, feigning indifference. “It was Gray’s idea.”
He huffs a laugh. “So it was.” He guides the girl over to the seated circle of formally captured criminals, shoving her down next to another woman with an admirable amount of gentleness.
Nuri, Klytis, and the new girl who introduced herself as Rhea stride toward her.
It looks like all the rogue wielders have been apprehended, and a quick scan over her fellow teammates’ bodies reveals a few cuts and bruises, but nothing to be concerned about.
She whips her eyes back to the smoking ship, searching. Yet she is unable to find Gray.
She knows he had positioned himself near the bow of the sailboat, claiming it would help him cast a more believable illusion if he were actually central to the image.
Naturally, Gray cast the illusion over the area itself, so Marcella was seeing what the Rogue was, but she swore she caught glimpses of his blurry figure once or twice.
Or maybe she was imagining it, just desperate to know he was okay.
As she stares on, tapping her foot, the townspeople slowly trickle out from their hiding places, crowding around to catch glimpses of the aftermath.
Most everyone appears tentative—hesitant.
Like they are treading on ice, and at any given moment, the smooth surface might crack and plunge them somewhere they don’t want to be trapped within.
A woman’s shrill voice pierces through the quiet. “Edmund! Guinevere!” She sprints through the crowd, her movements frantic and without a lick of grace. Marcella steps out to meet the hysterical woman, yet she pays her no mind, attempting to barrel through her instead.
A whoosh of wind pushes past Marcella’s lips from the impact. Yet she grips the woman by the elbows and attempts to steady her flailing—alongside her own loss of balance.
“Let me go!” The woman demands. “My children are in there! My children!”
Marcella’s stomach sours. “What?” she asks, her brows furrowing as disbelief, confusion—perhaps even denial—send a chill down her spine. “Where? Your children are where?”
“There!” She points at the charcoaled sailboat, ash flakes wafting through the air, punctuating the destruction with a false sense of calm.
“My son, Edmund, was teaching his younger sister how to work the sails and steer the ship today. He is twelve, and she is eight. I—I tried to get to them,” she explains.
Her hands tremble. “But I am a seamstress and was out on a delivery. The family whose home I was in boarded their doors at the announcement of the Rogues, and I…” She stops, physical pain coating her features.
“I couldn’t get out. Couldn’t…couldn’t get to them.
” Tears well in her eyes, but the mother steels her voice in lieu of letting emotion rattle it.
“Edmund!” she shouts again. “Guinevere!”
A splintering crack splits the air, and the slow groan of breaking wood echoes cruelly.
Marcella turns her chin over shoulder, the move shaky.
Disbelieving. She still can’t find Gray anywhere on the ship, but she does find the burnt mass collapsing, crashing forward and obliterating the entire front of the boat—loud cracks and creaks booming as profoundly as a thunderclap.
The ship caves in on itself, and Marcella loses her grip on the mother entirely, her body going slack as splintered wood pieces soar through the air while the sailboat caves in on itself from the impact, water immediately flooding the remaining small cradle, weighing it down, down, down as the gulf officially claims the marred boat as its own.
The world pulses then freezes. Her heart skips through its beats, then she swears it just stops trying altogether. She sees no movement. No bodies.
Had Gray been hurt somehow by the Rogue’s attacks? No. No. There is no way he would have been foolish enough to be hit by an attack he knew was coming. Yet…
Where the hell is he? Why can’t she find him?
Against every defiant fiber in her body, she sees crimson-stained lips and fading eyes. Feels a growing cold in her palms as words swirl softly in her mind like a lament.
Be happy, Marcella.
She runs her hands through her braided hair. How the hell is she supposed to be happy when misfortune keeps befalling everyone she dares to actually give a shit about?