Chapter 25 #2
In the last moments before the battle began, I looked for Kallen. He was standing at the front of the crowd, and as we locked eyes, a small amount of relief mixed with the terror. I wasn’t alone.
Then a horn sounded, and all hell broke loose.
Drustan lunged towards Imogen in a flash of orange.
She sidestepped, and suddenly there were two of her darting around him.
When Drustan lashed out at one, his sword met empty air.
A third Imogen appeared, circling behind him, and Drustan turned just in time to meet this one’s blade with his own. The clash of metal was met by cheers.
A swirl of black smoke rushed across the floor, coalescing into Hector’s shape before he stabbed towards Imogen’s side.
She had vanished again, though, and there was nothing left for his weapon to find.
He immediately ducked, and a lock of his tied-back hair fluttered to the ground, chopped off by an invisible weapon.
Nearby, Torin was advancing on Oriana, hacking his sword in vicious arcs—apparently he had decided to target the Earth princess rather than me. Oriana evaded him with surprising quickness, then launched a counterattack.
I stood frozen, shocked at the speed and viciousness with which everyone else had leapt into action. My feet felt like lead.
Oriana was an adept fighter, but Torin was clearly about to overpower her. She spun fluidly out of the way, water spilling from her free hand and slithering towards Torin’s feet. She didn’t even glance my way as she retreated past me.
That was how little the others feared me. And that was likely why Torin hadn’t attacked me first—he thought I would be easy prey whenever he got around to it.
Move! I silently screamed at myself. This was the only advantage I would get.
I reached for my magic, sensing the web of life filling each of the faeries on the floor.
The two Imogens darting around Drustan felt like nothing at all, but a blank spot of air near Hector had a beating heart, so I focused on the contours of that invisible body and forced her to stop moving.
Imogen turned visible again, looking startled.
Hector surged towards her, but she was too strong to be held by my magic for long—or else I was still too new to using it—and she broke free in time to intercept his attack.
Next I imagined a knot forming in Torin’s calf. It barely had an impact, considering his innate resistance to magic, but the slight hesitation in his gait was all the encouragement Oriana needed. Her sword slashed towards his shoulder, and Torin threw himself to the side.
Oriana pressed her advantage as the water reached Torin’s boots, but he was too fast. Light glinted off his sword, and a second later he had sliced open Oriana’s bicep.
The crowd roared. Oriana spat out a curse, then stormed away, dripping blood.
Torin’s back was still turned; this might be the best chance I got to eliminate him.
Heart hammering, I sprinted towards Torin, preparing to stab him in the leg.
Something must have alerted him—a cry from the crowd or maybe a shift of the air—and he spun, intercepting my sword with his.
The blades shrieked, then caught at the hilts with a painfully jarring impact.
As my arm briefly went numb, I tried to freeze him with my magic, but the effect lasted less than a second, giving me just enough time to disengage and skip back before his blade flashed an inch from my face.
“Gut her!” someone called out. The crowd screamed in excitement.
Torin snarled at me. A light blazed from his upraised hand, sending sparks scattering across my vision.
I instinctively lunged to the left, feeling the breeze as his weapon passed by.
Still half blinded, I sent more freezing magic his way, desperately hoping it would give my vision time to recover.
My foot hit a puddle of Oriana’s magically cast water, and I slipped, crashing to the floor with tailbone-bruising force.
My eyes watered with pain. The pounding of blood in my ears was a drumbeat.
With my senses opened, I heard Torin’s heart, too, and sensed the swing of his arm through the air.
My power looped around his wrist, slowing the movement enough for me to roll away before his sword crashed into the floor next to my head.
Chips of wood flew where the edge of the blade gouged into the parquet.
A shocked cry rose from the crowd, while others cheered.
That blow wouldn’t have just cut me—it could have killed me.
“The rules,” I gasped, scrambling away and trying desperately to get my feet under me.
He sneered down at me. “Not my fault you’re so clumsy with magic that it affected my aim.”
So that was the lie he would use. The reckless human, not yet in control of her powers, inadvertently bringing about her own death.
A surge of hot wind ripped my hair out of its pins. Torin stumbled back, bracing an arm in front of his eyes. Licks of flame rode the air currents, setting his clothing alight, and I realized who had come to my aid.
I jumped to my feet, shooting a grateful glance towards Drustan. He was still busy with Imogen, blasting each apparition of her with bursts of wind and flame to drive the real one away. Hector was swirling in and out of shadow nearby, using his sword to accomplish the same.
Rage surged through me as I faced my would-be murderer. Torin was slapping at his clothes, trying to put out the fire. Drustan was limited to the less deadly aspects of his magic, so this wasn’t the type of fire that burned hot enough to turn bones to ash. A pity.
Gritting my teeth, I lunged towards Torin, lashing out in a fast, direct strike. He pivoted to avoid being skewered, but my magic was wound around him now, and I yanked him towards the sharp edge of the blade.
I only had a moment of control over his body, but it was enough. My sword met his side, sinking in. Blood bloomed over the white fabric.
Shocked cries echoed through the room, and the Light faeries instantly stopped cheering. Torin looked down at the growing red stain like he couldn’t believe it. When his gaze snapped up to mine, I’d never seen such hatred on anyone’s face before.
“You’ll get what’s coming to you,” he hissed.
Triumph spilled through me, hot and addictive. I showed him my middle finger before running towards the three faeries still battling for supremacy.
There were four of Imogen now, whirling around the floor in swirls of steel. Hector ducked the swing of one sword, then cursed when his counterattack breezed through empty air. Drustan swept up one version of Imogen in a fire-kissed cyclone before stabbing towards her.
A line of red lanced across Drustan’s arm, bisecting the swell of his muscle. Blood dripped to the floor, and Imogen reappeared at Drustan’s side, looking smug as she held her sword aloft. “The Fire prince falls,” she called out.
Drustan had been eliminated.
I met his furious gaze. It wasn’t a fair fight when one participant could cast countless decoys and vanish at will.
Imogen winked out of existence just in time to avoid an attack from Hector. I extended my magical senses, feeling her progress in the patter of her heart. Then I reached an invisible hand inside her ribs, wrapped it around her lungs, and squeezed.
Imogen coughed, staggering. She tried to suck in a breath, but I didn’t let her lungs expand.
The room spun around me. I stumbled, dizzy, then cried out when Imogen suddenly appeared in front of me, stabbing for the center of my chest. I barely got my sword up in time to parry, but there was no contact, and then she was gone.
An illusion. And in my distraction, I’d loosened my grip on the real Imogen. She was moving like a whirlwind towards Hector, steel blade a blur.
Behind Hector, Torin lunged back into the makeshift arena, his side saturated with blood and eyes filled with hate. He swung his sword…and cut Hector’s head off.
Horror swamped me as the severed head toppled to the ground. The rictus grimace, the wide-open eyes, the spraying blood…My sword sagged, and my ears buzzed as screams filled the air.
“Kenna!” It was Kallen’s voice, slicing through the tumult. “Move!”
Operating on panicked instinct, I threw myself to the side.
Something whooshed past me, and then Imogen was there, teeth bared.
It was the real one this time, fully visible and with her heart pumping an aggressive beat.
She performed an artistic twirl of her wrist, and despite the elegance of the movement, her sword met mine hard enough to knock me back several feet.
I grabbed her arm with my magic, stilling it, and the screams around me stuttered, too, laughter breaking through in jagged, eerie bursts.
Hector was whole again for a blink of an eye, snarling as he sprinted towards us through a sea of illusory Imogens, and then his headless corpse was lying on the floor in a pool of blood while Kallen knelt over it, screaming.
My head pounded, and my throat felt so tight from terror I might choke. I seized Imogen’s throat with my magic instead, willing it to hurt. The world flickered between one reality and another—a ballroom where Hector was coming to my aid, then one where he lay dead in Kallen’s arms.
I reached for Kallen instinctively, my magic surging towards the carnage. His heart wasn’t beating.
That wasn’t him. There was no one there at all.
I forced Imogen’s legs to buckle, dropping her to the floor. The illusion broke, and I could see the truth again. Hector was alive and bearing down on us, grinning wildly. “Keep her there,” he called.
Imogen bared her teeth, then flung her sword away. It spun through the air before the edge bit into Hector’s thigh. The crowd cheered as the Void prince’s blood sprayed.
He cursed and lowered his weapon. Defeated—and no longer coming to my aid.