14. Paray Vellast #2
Miles and Gabriel exchanged grim grins. One way or another, this was it. Miles blasted the double doors open with a kinetic burst that sent splintered wood flying.
“Paray Vellast!” Gabriel announced as the doors flew open and they strode inside. “We have unfinished business—”
The words had barely left his mouth when Miles sensed it: a sudden, sickening emptiness where his magic should be. His staff went cold in his hands. The components in his coat, once humming with magical energy, became nothing more than inert lumps in their pockets.
“Anti-magic field,” Miles muttered at Gabriel in disbelief. “Fuck.”
Vellast smiled thinly from behind his desk, flanked by four heavily armed guards. “Welcome, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Gabriel seemed bored, slouched against the doorframe with exaggerated nonchalance. “Well, obviously,” he drawled. “And we were expecting you expecting us, but were you expecting us expecting you expecting us? ”
Miles envied his confidence. Without his spells, Miles’s options had narrowed considerably. His hand tightened uselessly around his staff, now just an ornate wooden stick he wasn’t particularly skilled at wielding.
Vellast rose from his chair, a cold smile playing across his lips. “How nice for you, Lord Goldmar . But I wonder—were you expecting this?”
He gestured toward a side door. It swung open, and another one of Vellast’s agents dragged in a limp figure.
Dammit.
Genna. Unconscious, bruised, and bound but still in possession of her apron. A wave of self-recrimination washed over Miles. He’d known, but knowing was different than seeing.
“Actually, yes. You really are an idiot. Are you going to explain your evil plan to us now? I’m not in the mood.” Gabriel’s tone was light, but his eyes narrowed to slits.
“What have you done to her?” Miles demanded, fury replacing fear.
“Nothing permanent.” Vellast circled his desk, running his fingers along the elegantly shaped edge. “Yet.”
Beside him, Gabriel had gone still, his earlier playfulness evaporated.
Genna stirred slightly but didn’t wake. A trickle of blood ran down her temple. Miles felt sick. She was a formidable hedge witch, but even she had limits. Vellast’s fifth guard stood over her with a spear pointed at the back of her neck.
Miles’s mind raced through options. No magic meant no teleportation, no fireballs, no blasts of force. Just his wits, whatever Gabriel could do, and the small dagger hidden in his boot that suddenly seemed woefully inadequate against four armed guards and whatever else Vellast had in store.
“I hope you’re as clever without your spells as you are with them, mage,” Vellast said, clearly relishing Miles’s discomfort. “You’ll need to be, if you’re stupid enough to fight.”
Miles assessed their predicament with growing alarm.
Anti-magic fields weren’t common in Averdon.
They required both specialized knowledge and expensive components, and they crippled the common magical objects people used daily.
The fact that Vellast had one suggested he’d been preparing for this confrontation more thoroughly than they’d anticipated .
“Ugh, just get to your demands.” Gabriel cut through Vellast’s self-satisfied smirk. “What exactly do you want? Gold? Groveling? A written apology for ruining your little slave trade?”
While Gabriel spoke, Miles began scanning the room.
Anti-magic fields needed a source, an enchanted object that projected the effect.
It couldn’t be tucked away inside a wall or something similar; the field would emanate outward from it and couldn’t penetrate through thick material.
His eyes swept across display cases and ornate furnishings.
“What I want,” Vellast said, gesturing toward the tapestry that hid his wall safe, “is the return of my property. My gems. My ledgers. My papers detailing arrangements that are no longer any of your concern.”
Gabriel giggled, a high, unnerving sound that made even Miles glance at him. It was a deliberate performance; Gabriel was playing up the unhinged victim angle, keeping Vellast’s attention focused on him.
“Oh, those little trinkets?” Gabriel’s eyes widened with mock innocence. “I’m afraid I don’t have them anymore. You see, when you sent those clumsy assassins after us this morning—interrupting my beauty sleep, I might add, not that I need it—I decided the evidence would be better placed elsewhere.”
Miles continued his visual search while Gabriel distracted Vellast. Nothing on the desk. Nothing among the decorative weapons on the wall. His gaze traveled upward.
There. Mounted on the ceiling. What appeared to be an elaborate light fixture contained something unusual at its center. A large gem encased in glass, pulsing with a subtle glow that most people would mistake for mundane illumination.
A clever setup. The gem projected the anti-magic field from above, covering the entire room while remaining out of easy reach. Miles couldn’t cast spells to destroy it. He couldn’t reach it without crossing the room past four armed guards and climbing on the desk.
Vellast’s face transformed as he processed Gabriel’s words. The man’s composure cracked.
“What do you mean you don’t have them?” Vellast’s voice rose, losing its cultivated smoothness. “Where are they?”
Gabriel examined his nails, the very picture of boredom. “Oh, somewhere safe. Somewhere very, very safe. ”
“Who has them?” Vellast demanded, his face reddening. “Tell me now, or your friend will suffer.”
“Friend?” Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Oh, Genna? I wouldn’t worry too much about her. She’s survived worse than whatever amateur torture you’ve managed.”
Miles kept his expression neutral while calculating the trajectory needed to hit the gem. The ceiling was high, perhaps twelve feet. His staff was balanced for spellcasting, not for throwing. He’d need to account for the staff’s weight distribution.
“Stop playing games,” Vellast snarled, his cultured facade disintegrating. “You’ve always been the same. A pathetic little toy that doesn’t know its place.”
Miles felt rather than saw Gabriel stiffen.
“You know,” Vellast continued, his voice syrup-thick and poisonous, “Madaze brought you to me at least four times over the years. Did you know that? I fucked you until you bled and didn’t even remember until you made your little threat. You were that insignificant.”
The room went deathly quiet. Something dark and terrible flashed across Gabriel’s face, a millisecond of raw hatred before his features settled into dangerous stillness.
In the wake of that stillness, Miles’s world vanished behind a curtain of blood-red static.
A roar filled his ears, drowning out everything but the urge to wrap his hands around Vellast’s throat and squeeze until heavy cartilage snapped.
He stood paralyzed, air trapped in a chest too tight to expand.
Then, a soft moan from Genna broke the haze. No. Rage was a luxury he couldn’t afford. This was going rapidly sideways. Miles made his decision.
“I’m so sorry for this,” Miles whispered to his staff, feeling remorseful for what he was about to do to his faithful companion. Then he gripped the staff like a javelin, took two quick steps forward, and hurled it toward the ceiling with all his strength.
Every eye in the room tracked the staff’s upward arc: Vellast’s, the guards’, even Gabriel’s. A moment of suspended breath as the staff reached its apex and then...
Missed. The staff clattered weakly against the ceiling nearly a foot from the gem fixture, falling back down to land on Vellast’s desk with a resounding thud.
“Really, darling?” Gabriel muttered without looking away from Vellast. In a blur of motion, he drew a hand crossbow from its holster at his hip, fired, and returned it to its holster again .
The bolt hit the gem dead center. Glass shattered, the gem cracked, and magical energy dispersed in a shower of sparks.
The glorious ozone-burn of magic snapped back into Miles’s awareness, sweet as the first breath after nearly drowning. Diving low, he scrambled across the floor toward Genna, ignoring the shouts and sudden movement of guards.
His fingers brushed against her boot for the physical contact he needed, as one hand dug into a pocket for the vial of quicksilver, and he called on the magic that had been denied him moments before.
He whispered the words, and reality collapsed around them.
His spell materialized them just outside the room, where their merc gawked at his abrupt appearance.
Miles fumbled a healing draught open and started pouring it down Genna’s throat, knowing Gabriel was alone in there with Vellast and his thugs.
Genna stirred, a small moan escaping her lips. Miles gestured to the mercenary, who took his place and tipped more of the draught into her mouth while Miles cut her bonds with the dagger in his boot.
“Come on, come on,” he urged, watching color slowly return to her cheeks. Every second felt like an eternity.
Her eyes finally fluttered open, confusion giving way to recognition. “Miles? What—” She tried to sit up, winced, then reached for her head.
“Vellast’s men. They took you,” Miles said. The sellsword helped her to a sitting position. “Can you stand? Gabriel’s in there alone.”
A crash from inside the study punctuated his words, followed by a shout of pain that didn’t sound like Gabriel. Genna nodded, struggling to her feet with the merc’s help.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she promised, her voice gaining strength as the potion took effect.
Miles couldn’t take the hired sword with him and leave their backs open. He couldn’t wait for Genna to recover. He charged back through the doorway.
The study had transformed into chaos. Two guards lay motionless on the floor, dark pools spreading beneath them. Gabriel moved with incredible speed, dodging the desperate jabs of a guard wielding a spear.