Chapter 33 Fireworks
Fireworks
The first explosion went off overhead while none of them were looking up.
Luc and Alaric had been discussing the strange properties of human potions, and Caelum had been listening to them talk, soaking in the details without consciously trying to listen. His eyes never stopped roaming out over the crowd, looking for anything that felt amiss.
He’d relaxed somewhat, though.
If Sirena had known it was him, she would have followed him back to the couch. She definitely would have made a move by now, since she wasn’t one to prefer a slow, cautious approach in anything she did.
If she had any fault as a fighter, it was definitely patience.
Caelum himself had switched from alcohol to water, and poured in two of the sobering-up potions when no one was paying attention. As a result, his mind felt most of the way clear, which definitely helped.
As the two mages next to him continued to talk about the different mind-altering substances favored by humans, Caelum let it filter into his mind as a background hum of surprisingly interesting information.
A few times, Luc nearly ventured into territory that came close to the research work he’d been doing with Blackstone and their Holiday Club, but when Minh laid a hand on his arm, he’d fallen silent, then changed the subject.
That small digression swung Caelum’s own mind back to Luc’s project, however, and the surprising thing he’d learned about his mother’s family on the last night of Yule.
He’d asked his mother for a sample of her blood the night before they left the Tower, and she’d given it to him without asking a single question.
He’d brought it back to Malcroix, hoping Mocking could make something of it.
He assumed Luc hadn’t looked at it yet, and that the sample still sat under a freezing spell in his lab.
“You all right?”
Bones glanced over at her. It occurred to him only then that he’d not been looking up at the fireworks at all, but staring off somewhere into the dark.
He averted his gaze from her probing stare, and his arm tightened around her back.
He considered a few different answers, but in the end, he looked up at the sky. He wanted to kiss her, but if she kissed him back, there was a good chance he’d drop his vigilance more than he should, and he needed to remain sharp, at least until he got them out of there.
He stared up at the colorful rosettes exploding outward in the night sky. He tried to forget about Sirena, his blood, his mother’s blood, and his father’s probable reaction to everything his wife had done after he’d been thrown in prison.
He lost himself in the unicorns and faeries winging through the air, made of magical fire that morphed colors as quickly as it morphed shapes.
He watched the rosettes turn into whales and dragons, sea monsters and giant squid, druckers, water fae, dragonflies, phoenixes, fauns, monoceri, firefoxes, coiling snakes, and a hunter with a bow and wings.
A few more exploded, becoming beautiful women in Egyptian headdresses, scarabs, cats’s heads, ibises, gryphons.
It all blurred together after a while.
He fought the impulse to check the watch he wore in his waistcoat, or to conjure a timepiece in the air.
He could wait. It would be over soon. He could feel the display speeding up, with more explosions coming faster, bringing delighted shrieks from the young Magicals sitting by their parents on couches, rugs, and blankets.
Caelum lazily toyed with Leda’s hair, even as he suppressed his own magic, holding lightly to yet another slight distortion chimaera he’d thrown over the two couches where all of them sat.
He pulled the green crystal out of her dress just long enough to look at it, to reassure himself it was there, then put it back.
They would be fine.
Leda would be mostly invisible. As for Caelum himself, he now fell under that ancient La Fey protection too. The thought made him shiver.
He forced out another exhale, closing his eyes longer than a blink, then felt a stare aimed in his direction and turned his head without thought.
Sirena stood there, highlighted in green and pink from the last explosion that had gone off overhead.
She was smiling at him. Her close-set blue eyes reflected fire from the cascading lights, her high cheekbones accentuated by the metallic blue-black hair, which she had partially pinned to the top of her head.
She smiled at him, and he saw the savage triumph in her stare.
Right before her eyes dropped to Leda.
The glee that shone briefly in those doll-like eyes chilled him to the bone.
He didn’t let himself think.
He was making the first mudra before he’d made it all the way to his feet. He snapped his wrist as he stepped in front of Leda, not bothering to keep his voice low as he cast.
“Asthibhangah!” he hissed. He twisted his other hand into a complex set of mudras all in a row. “Mech sveta rassekayet!”
Sirena, who’d already sent a spell of her own, darted out of the way of the bone-breaking spell he’d sent, even as his second one cut a razor-sharp line across her thigh.
She screeched, loudly, firstly in pain, then secondly with a long, drawn-out series of barking tones he recognized from missions he’d been on with his father.
She was calling the others in.
Like a fucking dragon, she was calling to her own.
How many?
He pushed that thought from his mind, too. He had no way to know. He had no idea what brought them here, if they’d been tipped off and came specifically to bring him in, or if their presence at the faire had some other purpose.
All of that went through his mind in slow-motion as he turned his head to see Mocking, Greythorne, Minh, and Leda all staring up at him, eyes wide in shock, unmoving from their places on the couch. Barely an instant had passed.
“Run!” he snarled. “Get the fuck out of here!”
He had ahold of Leda’s hand before he’d finished spitting out the words, and was already hauling her to her feet. She gripped hold of him tightly, her face instantly paler and more serious as she struggled to move as fast as he needed her to.
He turned to run, and hissed in a breath.
He hadn’t realized until that instant that he hadn’t been the only one to hit his mark with one of his spells.
Something Sirena sent, likely a branding curse, had burned a hole through his coat, and into his side.
She’d missed his abdomen, which likely would have caused a lot more damage, and his heart, but it hurt like hell as soon as he moved the muscles and skin.
“Fuck,” he hissed, stumbling into the couch.
Leda grabbed his arm, fighting to hold him upright.
He managed to catch himself, straightened, then caught hold of her hand.
His eyes scanned the crowd for Sirena, but she must have moved out of range.
He began moving them as quickly as he could off the lawn and towards the road leading to Malcroix.
He fought to push past the pain, fuck he should be good enough at that by now, but his body didn’t want to cooperate.
He wondered if Sirena had thrown something more than a branding spell, then decided he couldn’t worry about that until he found them a way out.
He could feel others in the Cathedral now.
Their familiar vibration rippled his magic.
Worse, they were moving with intent, like wolves stalking prey.
He felt them converging on their spot in the middle of the square.
He had no idea what they knew about him, but they definitely seemed to be trying to cut him off from leaving the garden in the center of Academy Square.
He couldn’t phase out in the open like this, not with light from the fireworks raining down on all sides.
He’d already seen people notice the magic.
He caught the eyes of regular Magicals staring at them as they passed, watching him limp, sensing something off. They’d clearly caught enough to know the interaction between him and Sirena hadn’t been for show.
He had to get Leda out of there.
But he couldn’t just leave Alaric, Mocking, and Minh there, either, given who they were. They’d been seen with him now. That alone might make them targets. Fuck, for all he knew, the Cathedral had come because of Luc’s research.
He’d have to get Leda back first.
The others would have to fend for themselves until then.
He made a snap decision, and wrapped his arm tightly around her waist.
“Hold on,” he muttered. He focused his magic, not bothering with the polar bear primal he’d used most of the day, but drawing directly from the black crystal instead. He aimed his focus on his legs, envisioning the symbols that went with the spell in his mind.
“Plavamanah padah,” he murmured.
He flinched when coils of blue magic wrapped around his legs, strengthening them and filling them with so much energy his muscles all twitched.
His bones ached like they’d been made into metal, but also felt strangely cushioned, like he stood on a dense pocket of air.
He gripped Leda tighter, then leapt for the nearest high thing, which ended up being the giant monocerus fountain at the center of the gardens.
He leapt up to the top of one of the creature’s large, marble heads, using the strength of the leaping spell.
Leda shrieked, but wrapped her arms around his neck and a leg around his waist.
He didn’t wait. Th spell would only last a minute at most.
“THERE!” a familiar voice shouted, that one male. “He’s up there!”
Spells zipped and hissed through the air, aiming at both of them.
Caelum leapt again, throwing more of his magic into the spell as he did.
Something grazed his ankle without making solid contact.
Another spell whizzed by his head, but then he and Leda were gone, flashing through the air so quickly it blinded him.
He hit the cobblestone road just past the northern edge of the park, stumbled, and fell onto his hands and knees.
Leda flew over his head and rolled.