Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
They snuffed out like a set of birthday candles, extinguished all around the Greenwood estate. Joan saw the magical haze normally present on the walls vanish.
The panic was instantaneous.
This was not a room full of warriors; it was a room full of sniveling rich people. Someone screamed as they felt the magic disappear, and several raised their arms as if they might cast something but were unsure what.
Astoria had her sword out, facing the door, head on a swivel, Wren next to her, having manifested a knife.
“Stay behind us,” Astoria murmured, and Joan reached back to find Mik already reaching for her.
Valeria was a thundercloud of wrath; she raised her arms, and magic shot to her like a meteor, amassing faster than Joan had ever seen, faster than she herself had ever managed to make it. The wards went back up an instant later.
“Too late,” Valeria murmured to Merlin, who was partially behind Selene, like the stupid-ass coward he was. “They’re on the property. Whoever this is, I’ve never seen magic like it.”
George flickered into being in front of them. “Mr. Greenwood,” he said rapidly. “There’s a woman here. Based on the description Miss Joan gave Miss Molly in the car, I believe it may be Fiona Ganon, and she’s being bolstered by some immense magic.”
In the car?
In the car, yesterday?
George hadn’t been in the car.
Joan turned to Molly.
Had he?
Molly reached out as if to throttle George, but her hands passed through his incorporeal form. “You were eavesdropping on us?”
The front doors, heavy and wooden and so old, splintered into a million pieces.
Valeria stepped in before they could pulverize anyone, pulling out her signature time magic to slow the trajectory of the wood, then tossing all the pieces to the side. “Enough!” she shouted, and strode forward. “Your dramatics bore me, Fiona.”
Fiona ascended the front steps of the house and crossed the threshold like a biblical plague, all rage and horror. The wards blipped out again, the magic sucked directly into her body. She was channeling an unbelievable amount, her hair whipping around her face.
“Valeria Greenwood,” Fiona announced, stepping into the house, her foot hitting the floor and causing the hardwood to fracture. “I invoke Scales Law.”
Valeria’s face was a masterclass in wrath. No one had dared challenge a Greenwood witch to a formal duel in two hundred years. No one did it unless they thought they could actually win.
Another step, more fractures in the floor.
Fiona was venting magic like it was nothing, cycling it back in to keep it close.
Joan could see it all in brutal clarity.
Maybe if they’d tracked her down instead of going after Mik, Fiona wouldn’t even have gotten a chance to do this.
Maybe if they’d trusted Joan, followed her lead, Joan wouldn’t be staring down the woman who had copied her magic.
“She crossed our wards uninvited,” Merlin was hissing at Valeria. “You don’t need to answer the challenge, you can have her tried on those grounds alone.”
“And have everyone say I am too weak and old to lead? I am not afraid of Fiona Ganon,” Valeria hissed back, stepping forward as she darted a glance at the audience.
No! Fear was a jolt through Joan. Valeria had underestimated Fiona over and over again; if she did it here, they’d all be in danger. They never should have gathered witches for the spectacle of Mik’s trial in the first place. Now they were the jury analyzing Valeria for weakness.
Joan reached past Astoria to draw her aunt’s attention over the din. No matter what idiocy her family had wrought, she still didn’t want them to die.
“Listen to Dad,” Joan urged. “She’s boosted her power by experimenting on me, Aunt Val. Not only could she outspell you, if she sucks in enough magic, there won’t be any left for you to work with.”
Valeria dislodged her niece’s hand. “I don’t have a choice here, Joan.”
“Of course you do,” Joan argued. “She kidnapped and tortured me—she doesn’t have the right to call a duel. You’re Head Witch, you make the rules.”
Valeria took another step forward. Her words were partly snatched away by the roar of magic. “There are some forces even I bend to.” She raised her voice. “I accept your challenge, Ganon.”
Ego. Stupid fucking ego.
Fiona’s grim satisfaction was more infuriating than any glee might have been. Still, with all this drama, Fiona believed what she was doing was righteous. A reluctant soldier forced to walk a specific path.
The audience scrambled to the edges of the room, leaving a gap at the center for Valeria to face down Fiona.
Valeria flicked her fingers, and a white chalk circle appeared on the floor.
Joan had seen a duel only once in her life, between two minor families.
You could win by forcing your opponent out of bounds, forcing them to yield, or killing them.
So many witches specialized in a certain type of magic. Molly’s was luck, Mik’s was light, Astoria’s was air and fire. Valeria was particularly adept at time magics, a powerful and tricky subspecialty that should have won her any duel.
Still, Joan wasn’t sure that’d be enough. She was herded, helpless, to the sides of the room as Fiona and Valeria entered the circle. It seemed the witches around them were fully prepared to fall in line with tradition and see how things turned out.
“What happens now?” Mik whispered in Joan’s ear.
“Challenger goes second,” Wren said, grim. “So Valeria takes the first move. It’s turn-based: One witch mounts an attack that the other can defend against and reroute into a counterattack, then they swap.”
There was no telltale show to Valeria; this wasn’t some grand performance for her. Every second was a dalliance she couldn’t afford, one where people, some of the most influential people in New York, watched her take on an out-of-state witch from a no-name family.
Fiona shifted, and the floor cracked further under the force of her magic, but the cracks were a slow creep.
Valeria’s first strike was brutal, an opening offensive meant to end the game.
With her right hand, she grabbed time within the circle, slowed it to a fraction of its creep.
With her left she formed an offensive spell, blasting Fiona with a shock of air meant to fling her out of bounds.
Fiona didn’t move. Joan’s first thought was that she couldn’t, not with time moving so slowly for her, but as Valeria’s left-hand spell struck, it simply dissipated across Fiona’s body, a sheen of energy that rippled with an icy-blue hue.
Fiona lifted her own hands, moving at normal speed, and the force of Valeria’s spell sucked into her.
“What am I looking at?” Mik prompted, fingers digging into Joan’s side.
The room seemed just as flabbergasted. Valeria seemed shocked, though she handled it better than everyone else, revealing it only in a pinching of her brows. The moment she dropped her time magic, her turn was over.
Wren was shaking her head in confusion. Fiona had performed no visible counterspell, and Valeria’s attack had clearly hit her head-on. It was mind-boggling. Joan flitted through everything she knew about Fiona’s magic.
Grace had told Joan about Fiona’s specialty, once.
“Pocket realms,” Joan said from numb lips.
The crowd around her, friends and strangers alike, swung toward her.
Now that Joan looked, she could see a faint dark blue glow hugging Fiona’s body.
“Fiona specializes in pocket realms. She’s encased in one.
She’s nullifying attacks by changing the magical rules right outside her skin.
Aunt Val’s abilities will need to adjust to cross a minor realm wall to actually hit her, and it’s a realm Fiona controls completely. ”
“Can your aunt do that?” Astoria murmured.
Joan, quite honestly, didn’t know. Maybe before, Valeria could have outlasted Fiona’s abilities. Eventually, her pocket realm would have dissolved without enough magic to sustain it. But Fiona had the thing on magical steroids.
Valeria dropped her ineffective time spell, and Fiona launched her attack with a rapid, explosive force. Her hands danced, cobbling together pieces of half-recognizable spells. A blue cube formed around Valeria, glitching for a second, then stabilizing.
It shrank.
Rapidly.
Threatening to crush the older woman in a pressurized mini-realm.
Valeria flung her arms out, slowed the spell’s execution, and reversed it until it burst open again. Triumph lit her body language, but it was Fiona Joan was focused on. Fiona and the little upward tick to her lip.
She’d expected that.
Astoria tensed, right hand kneading into her left shoulder in the phantom hint of pain.
Joan wasn’t a fan of her aunt at the moment, but she couldn’t watch Fiona kill her. “The shards, Aunt Val!” Joan screamed.
Valeria’s attention flickered up to the still-formed blue shards, fast enough to shield against the first five.
Not fast enough to protect herself from the one that tore through her knee, sending her to the ground with a cut-off cry of pain. The shards flickered in and out of being, like Fiona was struggling to control them, and her brow furrowed.
“How do we stop them?” Mik said desperately.
“That circle’s lethal to anyone not in the duel,” Wren said, flinching away from the sight of Valeria’s blood pooling on the floor.
They traded turns rapidly now, Fiona pounding her with pressurized spells that burst, folded, ripped Valeria apart, Valeria desperately trying anything she could to avert them and only barely surviving.
Against logic, Joan had hoped her aunt might still win. She’d always seemed infallible.
But hope was a lead balloon, and it crashed at Joan’s feet. Valeria was outmatched in every way, against a spellmaker with greater casting knowledge than her, wielding an unbelievable amount of power. Joan didn’t know what Fiona had done to circumvent magic poisoning.
Fuck the rules. Joan reached out to channel.