Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Fiona took the light with her.
Joan’s eyes were half closed when it happened, slumped sideways in her chair. She had been immobilized. She wanted to sneeze. She couldn’t move a single limb.
Fiona left in a rush, and she took the light with her.
Underground, there was nothing left. No hint of anything, just total, complete darkness stealing the sight from Joan’s open eyes.
This was, maybe, the worst thing Fiona had done to her.
Darkness was no friend to Joan Greenwood. It was textureless and utterly dead here. She longed for something living, a plant to draw in air, confirm she was still alive, that this wasn’t the afterlife, not yet.
I don’t want to die. I changed my mind.
Tears dripped off her face.
Please, I want to live.
Fiona’s last spell had done something to the necklace, which was growing hotter by the second. It’d scald her soon, even through her clothes. Burn a circle in her chest, right through to her heart.
Astoria was coming, that was what Fiona had said. Astoria was close, and Fiona had booby-trapped the room. Joan. Left her unable to warn anyone.
Her ears rang in the darkness, her thoughts locked in an ebb and flow and ebb of noise, building with a million voices.
I’m going to kill her, Joan thought. No, she wasn’t a killer.
But for Fiona Ganon, maybe I am.
The necklace warmed further. Where would Fiona go next? And with what, a successful spell to amplify her own abilities? The potential cure or balm to magic poisoning to go with it? Joan had to warn—someone. Anyone. But she couldn’t move.
Then she saw magic.
It glimmered faintly in the air, making its own light.
The room was still silent save for the far drip, drip of some leaky ceiling, but magic moved.
It shifted in the direction of where Joan thought the train tracks might be, behind the bend of the wall, opposite to where Fiona had exited.
And where it flowed, it took on a silvery hue.
Joan knew that hue.
Hope was a violent thing inside her, sawing her organs in half. She was saved; they had found her.
The necklace burned.
They had found her, and Fiona had done something she’d seemed convinced Joan would never wake from. Joan was going to have to watch, paralyzed.
Astoria was too good at this to make noise, so Joan’s only warning that the other woman was in the room was the area lighting up, and by then, it was far too late.
By then, through the building scream in her throat, Joan could only watch as Astoria came into view, her sword out and magic flared around her in a protective air-based barrier, with Wren at her shoulder similarly armed with an array of knives, her fae eyes surely allowing her to peer through the dark tunnels.
When their gazes landed on Joan after a quick, practiced look around the room to confirm no one else was there, the horror was evident on Wren’s face.
“Oh, Joan,” she breathed.
Astoria promptly sheathed her sword down her back, face a flickering storm, but there was no pity on it, at least. Joan, dazed, her eyes so dry that they were blurring over with tears, appreciated that deeply as Astoria walked over swiftly.
No, turn back.
“I’ll free her, Fiona can’t be far. See if you can pick up a lead in the tunnel, but don’t engage her.”
“I can handle myself, you worrywart,” Wren replied, but she moved to comply, setting off at a cautious jog.
“We don’t know what she can do,” Astoria called, gaze lingering on Wren’s disappearing back. “See if there’s a trail, do not engage, and don’t wander too far.”
“First priority is getting Joan to help, I know!” Wren called faintly, and she was gone.
The necklace was burning and Joan couldn’t so much as wince.
Please don’t come closer. She’d give anything for them to hear her thoughts, anything at all on this earth. She reached to channel and was met with a flash of pain she flinched away from. No, no, focus, Joan.
Astoria reached the brushed-away remains of the chalk circle Fiona had drawn on the floor, and the necklace’s heat hit Joan’s skin.
Astoria knelt in front of her. “Why aren’t you moving?” she murmured. “Paralytic?”
GO AFTER WREN, ASTORIA.
She was frowning, with a perfect little crease between her eyebrows and her braids tucked neatly back up into themselves.
Beyond the edge of the long-sleeve she wore under a sturdy-looking vest, hand-drawn tattoos peeked out, and Joan remembered what Wren had said about specializing in supplemental ink magic.
Astoria was quick on her feet, Joan knew that, dreaded that, because she cast a counterspell on the fly and Joan’s limbs went loose.
Astoria’s hand came to rest on Joan’s knee.
The necklace reached a fever pitch.
The word burst out of Joan’s mouth in a strangled cry: “RUN!”
Astoria’s eyes widened, her lips moving in the beginnings of a spell.
The necklace shattered wholesale with a sound like a gong, and with it, magic burst into the air.
If Joan had unwittingly stumbled upon it, she’d have been eviscerated by the blast, but Astoria caught the worst in her shield and was thrown clear across the room to smash into the wall with a sickening crunch, cracking the grimy tiles before falling to the floor.
Magic fractured into shards of light, and one speared Astoria through the shoulder, narrowly missing her heart, her head.
The tattoos vanished from her skin, used up.
Joan was—oh no, oh no, no, no. Astoria hadn’t been casting over herself, she’d cast over Joan, and a thin, half-formed shield spell that burned with fire magic kept her alive through the initial blast.
But it wasn’t over, whatever Fiona’s spell was hadn’t finished yet; the magic swirled into a compact ball, and time went breathless.
Joan could see the spell’s next move, it would burst again, a double shot, and Astoria was only barely leveraging herself back up, her shields obliterated. This time, it’d kill her.
It would kill her, and Joan, and it would be Joan’s fault for getting snatched in the first place. She’d never live with that; she wasn’t going to die taking Astoria Wardwell down with her.
In the infinite void between seconds, Joan breathed in.