Chapter 43
Ezra
Unable to follow Cayden, I slipped into a dark, lifeless mansion. Without a tether to Quinn, her location was a void in my mind. I needed information. An explosion ripped through the building, shredding shadows into dust and birthing new ones in the blast’s wake.
Perfect.
Information.
I reached for the newly created shadows and slid through the world to come out in a room filled with shards of glass and bleeding bodies.
Cayden’s fists glowed as he fought a group of men. Their features were too similar to be anything but Lawsons. Shirtless, Cayden ducked and weaved, muscles rippling as he conserved his strength for a perfect opening.
Quinn screamed and hurled a rock at a Lawson flanking Cayden. It hit, bounced off. He stumbled but didn’t fall.
The flanker dropped under my first strike. I spun for another; glowing runes snapped under his fingers. My blade caught on something solid. Instead of taking off the man’s head, the new glowing weapon pulsed against my steel, and my quick slaughter turned into a dance.
“Duck!” Quinn shouted.
I looked over to see Quinn’s arm shaking under a huge chunk of rock. She tossed it forward, but it only moved about three inches before falling to the ground. She swore loudly and looked for something else to throw.
Pain lanced my leg, hot and sharp. I cursed my distraction and fell back. My foot hit my attacker’s chin. He stumbled back, blood streaming from his mouth. His sword tumbled from his hand and burst into green sparkles on the floor.
A larger piece of plaster flew out of Quinn’s unsteady pitch and hit one of Cayden’s attackers.
The man staggered, and Cayden broke his defensive stance to slap a rune on the man’s cheek.
The man dropped like a stone. But the move created an opening on Cayden’s side, and another man kicked him hard. Cayden was sent flying backward.
A rope of gold and dark green shot toward Quinn. She tried to step back, but she hit the raised bed. Magic snaked around her, binding arms and legs tight. She buckled sideways, fighting to stay upright.
The caster lunged toward her. It only took me a heartbeat to step into her shadow.
My sword came out of it first. The caster collided with it instead of her and impaled himself.
I stepped the rest of the way out of her shadow and sliced upward.
The man screamed, yanking his arms back with both forearms bleeding, but still attached.
Two more circled me—an endless stream of orange. I loved it.
I grinned, switching my grip and pulling out a second, shorter sword.
“Enough of this,” a raspy voice called.
The man, now bleeding from his forearms, and his younger brother on my left fell back. Both placed their hands on the ancient Lawson Cayden had been fighting against. Power surged through the air.
A bear of a Lawson stepped between us and the trio, limping slightly from a gash seeping blood on his leg. He wasn’t a threat.
I slid sideways, aiming for the ancient Lawson. The bear lunged. I fell back, feeling my smaller sword pierce his hip, though he didn’t seem to notice, as my own sword nearly took my head off. I landed hard, gasping for air.
The bear slammed me down, his breath hot in my face. “For the Prophet.”
I bucked and kicked. My sword tangled between us. I dropped the hilts and swung blind. Three hits—one connected, dazing him enough to loosen his grip.
Two dark-green spheres, runes burning at their core, hurtled toward me as I rolled away from the bear. I kicked backward, pushed up on my hands, and sprang back to land on my feet in one smooth motion, with the bear no longer close to me.
The cut on my thigh burned. A new one on the side of my neck bled through my leathers. I ignored both and re-evaluated the room. No reinforcements had shown up. Men were either on the floor, unconscious, or still fighting.
The bear struggled to stand. Dark red stained his hip.
He watched me as I watched him. I’d underestimated him.
That wouldn’t happen again. Behind him, the two men with their hands on the ancient Lawson had become three.
Magic pulsed around them. A single knotted hand extended from the ball of green-haired men and reached out.
One of the most intricate runes I’d ever seen formed under the ancient Lawson’s guidance. The air trembled, pressing against my skin like a storm on the verge of breaking.
Quinn screamed.
I’d lost focus. I looked back just in time to see the bear finish picking Quinn up and wrapping her neck in the crook of his thick, hairy arm.
Just past her, Cayden concentrated on the ancient Lawson drawing a similar rune.
However, his fingers weren’t nearly as quick as his elder’s. This wasn’t a race he could win.
The smart move: step into the old man’s shadow and cut him down. But that left Quinn to the bear strangling her.
Quinn whimpered, flushed crimson, and sank her teeth into the bear’s forearm.
I couldn’t make the smart move.
I pivoted as runes flew at me from two men whimpering on the ground. Quinn turned purple. Instead of dodging, I took the first two hits. My shoulder went numb, along with the left side of my face. The third was too slow and missed me completely.
I leaped at the bear, slamming us to the ground.
He hit hard on his back, and Quinn slipped out of his arms, coughing. I focused on him, rushing forward and stabbing my shorter sword into his stomach before twisting and pulling up. Blood and viscera spilled over my hands as he sagged back in agony.
The ancient Lawson’s power swelled again. My gaze darted to Cayden, and the much smaller amount of magic seeping out of him. A fistful of gems glowed from his neck and wrists. He was giving this everything he had, but he didn’t stand a chance.
The ancient Lawson unleashed his magic. Cayden made a final slash with his pinky finger and thrust his hands forward. His much smaller rune caught the literal spout of power and slowed it, but didn’t stop it. The two streams resembled a faucet trying to hold back a waterfall.
“Cayden!” Quinn tried to rush to her friend’s side, but I grabbed her and pulled her into my chest.
Like a storm sweeping over the mountains, Cayden’s forest-green magic was overtaken by the darker blast. I lowered my head, recognizing this as a distraction to get Quinn out of here.
“Thank you for your sacrifice.” I wrapped my arm around Quinn’s waist and pulled her feet off the ground, reaching for the shadows in the hall.
Her elbow hit my ribs, her foot dented my toes, leaving blood marking my shoe. Surprise froze me in place, giving Quinn the chance she needed to slip out of my grip and run forward.
The two men throwing runes around like they were energy blasts sent one toward her, and she swerved, stumbling against the bed-like altar in the center of the room.
The second one flew true. An instant before the second connected, I jumped into its path.
The rune collided with my already numb shoulder, and the numbness crept toward my lungs, each breath thinner and shallower.
Quinn didn’t stop. Bloody footprints trailed behind her as she disappeared into the blinding light engulfing Cayden, who somehow, against all odds, remained standing. His outline flickered in the intense spell cast by the ancient Lawson.
I’d let her go. Once again, I’d made a bad call, but this time, she would die because of it. I never thought my heart could break for anyone but my lover. It did. I couldn’t accept a world without her in it. Even if it killed me, I had to try.
Where there was light, there was shadow.
I silently apologized to my lover and stepped.
I spilled out of Quinn’s shadow headfirst. Heat radiated from her.
Her big eyes were fixed on Cayden. Sparkling tears slid down her perfect cheeks.
“You’re not alone. I’m here. I exploded the collar once; I’ll do it again.
” She placed both her hands on his back.
The tension in the room eased. Every white tattoo covering Cayden’s skin melted away, and his clothing dissolved.
A shudder wracking his body was the only sign he felt anything.
The collar around Quinn’s neck smoldered with cerulean blue.
I took one step out of her shadow and turned, my other foot still inside. Foreign mists ran up and down my spine. An image of a naked man, lying among a pile of fibers and missing his knees, briefly became my reality.
The image vanished. Every bit of my magic poured through our shadow into Quinn. Cayden’s green twined with my purple, her prisms, and the new cerulean. My teeth buzzed, and my head throbbed. The stream doubled, then doubled again.
Cayden screamed, and his multi-colored stream grew, overtaking the old man’s faster and faster, until only their outline burned through the sizzle of his spell.
“You can’t do this, son,” the ancient Lawson’s raspy voice somehow boomed over all of us. “I’m God’s Prophet! I cannot die.”
“Lies. All of it,” Cayden snarled. A single tear rolled down his face. “Be with your God, father.”
Their outlines blurred, and the room’s pressure increased.
My ears painfully compressed as the pressure surged.
The wind howled around me, pulling me forward.
I managed to grasp the table, shielding Quinn and Cayden’s bodies from the flying glass.
Just as suddenly, the wind stopped, and the pressure subsided.
White ash drifted through the air along with curls of smoke. A black scorch dug into the stone floor where the trio had stood.
The room stilled, and stars twinkled above us.
Someone groaned in pain, and green magic shimmered to my left.
I pulled my remaining foot out of Quinn’s shadow. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she crumpled. I was right there to catch her. Her pulse beat steadily against my fingertips, the single thread holding me together.
Cayden stumbled. “Quinn.”
I rushed forward so he could catch himself on me and see Quinn’s breathing body in my arms. The collar on her neck still glowed a cerulean blue, and a bit of frost formed on the surface.
Quinn’s unnaturally cold body sank into my leathers.
My breath came out in a puff of icy mist in the not-so-cool air.
My brain churned slowly. Unlike my lover, I’d never drained all my magic. It had always refilled, until now. The numbness still radiating close to my lungs made it difficult to breathe.
Cayden brushed Quinn’s face. Pain, confusion, and shock twisted his features.
“I can feel her tether again, despite the collar.” He ran his fingers down her face. “Her feet, gods, she’s been fighting on glass barefoot. I can feel every cut. But her mind’s blank. Nothing is coming from her. The cerulean blue. Fuck me. Did he help us?” Cayden looked at me like a lost puppy.
I didn’t know who ‘he’ was. I wasn’t sure I understood half of what Cayden said.
Another pop of green magic glowed from my left this time. This wasn’t over.
I clutched Quinn tighter, every instinct screaming for my lover’s help, but I couldn’t risk splitting his focus. He was defending our home. He would feel the sluggishness in my mind. The sound of something buzzing, which I didn’t have words for, assaulted my ears.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
Cayden shook his head, and a weak ball of forest-green magic hit his back. Fire flashed in his eyes. He grabbed the hilt of my short sword, pulled it from its sheath, and ran toward the man still casting.
“He’s dead. You don’t have to do this anymore,” Cayden roared.
“For the Prophet!” the man screamed, already casting again.
A second ball of power from the opposite side of the room flew toward me, and I once again caught it on the same injured shoulder.
Cayden screamed and shoved the sword through the chest of the man at his feet before standing and sliding to the next man still breathing, and then the next. In five short blows, the final orange tie-dyed man stilled.
With Quinn pulled tight against my chest, I stood in the middle of death. The whir of metal grinding into something wood-like buzzed, though only I could hear it.
Cayden pulled the robe off the last man he killed and threw it over his head. He rushed back to my side and gently touched Quinn’s cold face with bloodstained fingers.
“We need Xan.” The tears streaming down his face contrasted with his cold, unnaturally even voice. “It’s her mind, the cerulean blue. I should have told Xan. I’m a fool.”
I didn’t understand, but finding Xan was always my answer.
Cayden and I bolted out of the room and ran through the massive building. A few women peeked at us from behind doors.
Cayden hesitated briefly. A woman in her forties, who could easily have been his twin if they were the same age, met his gaze. Something passed between them that I didn’t understand, and the woman’s posture filled with steel.
“The Prophet’s no more,” Cayden said flatly. “The observation deck is filled with the dead. The Sun God will not judge your entrance.”
The fear in the woman’s eyes hardened. She nodded once and went back into the room. Cayden sprinted away, leaving me no option but to chase after him.
Quinn shivered in my arms. My uneven steps, the stumble at the stairs, even the pounding through doorways did nothing to rouse her mind.
Something was wrong with me. The buzz didn’t change, no matter where we ran.
We exited into the night, and I cursed the cold winter air, which would only worsen Quinn’s chill. Only the stars and the moon provided us with light. Instead of following Cayden, I ran toward the last place I saw the post chaise. Quinn needed heat; he needed warmth.
I stripped in record time and pulled Quinn’s sweater off, finding her bare under it. Her feet bled, and a few shards of glass were still stuck in the cuts. I couldn’t dwell on how she ended up like this, only on what she needed now.
Heat.
She was small enough that I could slip into the insulated, weatherproof package chest with her held against me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Cayden asked.
Though the words were a threat, his voice remained cold and steady, as if his body moved on its own without his awareness.
“She’s freezing. Close the lid. Get us to the Architect.”
Cayden’s gaze flickered. Without saying a word, he stepped to the driver’s seat and shut the lid, leaving me in total darkness.
I fought the urge to dwell on how exposed I felt as I drew Quinn nearer.
The ground shifted beneath us. Help was at least an hour away and still engaged in the fight for my home.
The buzzing cut off. Quinn’s cry came muffled and distant, but it still dragged tears to my eyes. “Breathe, Kitten,” I whispered into her hair. “Stay strong. I’m going to fix this.”