CHAPTER TWENTY #3
As I geared up to use Larimar’s magic again, I could feel my hands, my head, everything screaming in protest. But I shut it all out as I zeroed in on the six Enforcers in front of me.
I thought about doing my go-to move—surrounding them in a massive block of ice.
But this time, I decided to try something new.
Something that I hoped would be slightly less taxing on my system.
I lifted the six Enforcers in a swirling, raging mass of water. I lifted them five feet into the air. Ten feet. Twenty.
Then I let the water fall. And them with it.
The six of them connected with the ground so hard that it knocked one of them unconscious straight away.
The remaining five cried out, water sputtering from their mouths and spraying from their nostrils, as their arms and legs took the brunt of the impact.
Every one of them dropped their Immobilizer on impact.
Without missing a beat, Nya and Kieran swooped in and grabbed up the guns. They tossed several away, out of reach. Then Nya fired two, which were each fully loaded with five…blasts? Bullets? I still wasn’t certain what made up those blazing balls of light and power.
Kieran stared at one of the Immobilizers for a moment, seeming to weigh something in his mind.
Then, without another moment’s hesitation, he mimicked Nya’s movements—one hand steadying the barrel, one gripping the trigger—and trained it on the chest of a nearby Enforcer.
The technicolor sphere that he let loose found its mark, and the Enforcer toppled to the ground, giving the dagger-wielding woman in front of him the upper hand.
I watched the whole event numbly. There was no room for my judgment here.
It was war. It was kill or be killed.
“So,” Nya shouted behind me, clapping a hand on my arm. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say you know you can wield magic now.”
“They called her a ‘Conductor,’” Kieran called back, discharging a few more well-aimed shots and tossing the empty gun to the side.
Nya’s answering laugh was so normal, so not a part of the horrors that were happening around us, that it soothed me to hear it. “Always with the creative names!” she roared. Then added, “I still like ours though—‘Badass Magical Human.’”
I laughed in spite of myself.
Nya and Kieran sprinted off again.
Turns out, lifting six adult men in raging mass of water was no less taxing than generating mini mountains of solid ice, which felt very much like a “No, shit” moment for me.
My vision was pulsing now with the pounding in my head.
But I managed to keep up with Nya and Kieran, and in a matter of mere minutes, the two of them felled four more Enforcers, saving one man on our side who had been knocked to the ground.
His eyes were shining with tears when Nya helped him to his feet, but he didn’t waste any time in rejoining the battle, returning the favor by coming to the aid of two more people who were being overpowered by Enforcers.
Although neither of them were enjoying the task at hand, it was clear that Nya and Kieran were in their element. They were not only excellent fighters but excellent partners. She had his back, and he had hers, in the truest sense of the phrase.
I flexed my aching fingers and wrists, readying myself for when I would be needed next. We were going to make it through this. Together. There was no alternative.
The sun’s movement across the sky was the only thing that kept me from losing all concept of time. It finally drifted above the waves, highlighting them in vibrant gold, and then the sky became a clear, cloudless blue.
Nya, Kieran, and I took a moment to pause and try to catch our breath. The air reeked of sweat, blood, and charred flesh.
“How much pain are you in?” Kieran asked, scanning me from head to toe.
I didn’t have it in me to lie this time. “A lot.”
“Turning that whole section of Enforcers into an iceberg must have taken a lot of magic,” Nya mused, observing the giant block of ice that glittered on the other end of the battlefield.
The heads of Enforcers—twelve at last count—poked out of the ice in various spots, their expressions a mix of absolute bafflement and frustration.
If I weren’t so focused on trying to remain standing, I probably would have found the sight hilarious.
Kieran placed his hands on either side of my face, tilting my head upward and forcing me to look him in the eye. “You need to stop using magic.”
“I don’t think I have a choice but to stop, unfortunately.
” My hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders raged with flaming pins and needles.
I attempted to lift my hands as if to summon Larimar’s power.
Not only was the movement excruciating, but that sensation that had been becoming more and more familiar, the feeling of magic welling up in me and preparing to dispel, was almost entirely gone now.
“Find somewhere to hide and rest,” Kieran ordered. Then he added softly, “Please.”
I opened my mouth to respond. As I did, an Immobilizer blast blitzed past, an inch from Kieran’s shoulder.
We all whipped around at the same time to see Zander, the barrel of his Immobilizer smoking.
I didn’t know whether to weep at the fact that he was alive and—aside from the angry gash on his head from the fight with Kieran and some dried blood crusted on his face and hands—seemingly unharmed, or weep at the fact that he had just come within an inch of killing Kieran.
“Get out of the way, Maila!” Zander was in full Enforcer mode. There was nothing warm or familiar in his voice, only the hardness of someone who was fighting for his life. Fighting for the lives of his friends and companions. Just like us.
“Zander, don’t—” My words were lost from the moment they left my mouth.
In a flash, Kieran had lunged from where he crouched next to me, and he and Zander were trading blows.
Kieran knocked the Immobilizer from Zander’s grip, but my relief didn’t last long.
The punches and kicks they aimed at one another, targeting vital organs, seemed almost as deadly.
In the flurry of flying limbs, Kieran managed to get an arm around Zander’s neck, slamming him to the ground with enough force that I could hear the thud over the chaos around us.
But it wasn’t long before Zander had wrenched free, and the two were tumbling over one another, grappling on the ground just as they had before, but now I was watching it play out fully before my eyes.
“Good to see you again, Maila.”
That voice. My blood froze in my veins. I was no longer on a battlefield.
I was on the front lawn of my house. The blur that was Kieran and Zander faded away.
The Enforcers battling around them were the Enforcers gathered in my front yard.
The faces twisted into battle cries melted into faces twisted with grief and guilt.
And there he was, close enough to touch.
Leon.
“I would say I’m surprised you’re not in your apartment where you’re supposed to be,” he said nonchalantly. As if people weren’t killing each other on either side of us. “But lying, deceiving, and sneaking around seems to be what you’re best at these days.”
Up close, his blue eyes were the same as I remembered.
Unremarkable. But the pure revulsion in them, so at odds with his level tone, pierced all the way down to my very soul.
I had to avert my gaze, and it was only when I did so that I noticed his hand.
Tangled in Nya’s braids. Holding the barrel of an Immobilizer to her temple.
“It’s a shame that you couldn’t understand,” he continued, “that I only do what is in the best interest of Cyllene. Someone has to do what others will not. Someone has to keep us all safe.”
He wrenched Nya’s head so that she stumbled to stay upright. Her face was schooled into that calm, quiet defiance that was so familiar, I could still see it with perfect clarity when I closed my eyes. Irene’s face, at the end.
“But here’s the thing,” Leon went on, still in that easygoing voice.
Like we had all the time in the world. “There’s something else that you need to understand, too.
And that something is that some of us are really fucking sick of your shit.
We are sick of catering to a moody, bratty little girl just because she might be able to do some good for our city one day. ”
My legs were trembling. In my head, I screamed for Kieran. For Zander, even. For someone. Anyone.
“You have this ability, sure. Good-the-fuck for you. But you’re never going to do anything useful with it, Maila.
I’ve known you from the time you were a child.
Even then, your parents catered to you. Irene catered to you.
What a spoiled little thing you were!” He laughed, and the sound was like metal crunching.
“I tried to tell the rest of The Council that if we were going to waste any of our valuable time on you, we needed to do it early. Work with you, train you, figure out what you were capable of. See if there was even any hope for you, or if we just needed to cut our losses and forget your fucked-up family ever existed in Cyllene. Even you would agree that makes sense, right? More sense than letting the years go by, with you doing whatever useless shit it is you do with Cato in that library?”
There was a pause.
“Answer me. It doesn’t make sense, does it?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but all that came out was a garbled noise. I shook my head.
“Right. It doesn’t make sense. All the time I put in with your family…
I mean, fuck me, all that time I spent with two little girls, trying to stay close, keep tabs on you, get you ready for that next step…
and damn if it all hasn’t gone to waste.
First with your mother, then Irene, and now you.
” The whites of Leon’s eyes were visible the whole way around now.
His jaw shifted from one side to the other, teeth scraping between his words.
“Even now, we’re all supposed to bow before you, Maila.
Our almighty Conductor. Our great weapon.
Maila wants to work in the Library? Let her.
Maila wants to learn all about magic down in the basement?
Let her! After all, she’s a twenty-year-old girl.
No, even better! Ten years old, when we first assigned you to the Library.
A little girl needs to know the secrets of our city, right?
So she can run off and share them later in life with some Stranger boy she’s fucking?
But even that’s forgivable. Anything goes when it comes to Maila Gray. ”
I stole a glance in Kieran’s direction. That split second told me that he saw what was happening and was scrambling to get to us. But Zander, either oblivious or fine with what was happening, used the opportunity to land a punch that made Kieran’s head snap back with an audible crack.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
Leon’s scream shattered any ounce of resistance that was left in me. I collapsed onto the ground, my chest heaving with sobs.
“That’s what I thought!” His face was contorted in rage now. “A coward. A meek, sniveling little girl. You’re not some great weapon. Your mother, your father, your sister…they had that fire. They were fighters until the bitter end. Until I put an end to them. But you. What a fucking joke.”
He threw his head from side to side, cracking his neck. Rolling his shoulders. Gun still trained on Nya. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, and I knew because I knew her that they weren’t for herself.
“A few others on The Council—Addis and that insufferable prick Cato—seem to think you’re worth keeping around, no matter what shit you pull,” Leon snarled.
“So unfortunately for me, I have to rescue your ass from this mess you’ve gotten yourself into, and take you back to them.
But before I do…I think it’s important for you to understand that your behavior has consequences. ”
He was grinning then, his teeth a menacing slash of white across his demented face. He ground the barrel of the Immobilizer into the side of Nya’s head, making her grit her teeth.
No, no, no, no.
It couldn’t be happening again. I had relived this so many times. I had turned it over and over and over and over. Played out every possible scenario. Every possible way that I could have saved Irene, but didn’t.
Leon’s face was absolutely glowing as he savored my realization of what was about to happen.
“They say if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Maybe you’ll think about that the next time you want to take up with someone like this one here or choose to get fucked by some delinquent.
” He tossed his head to the side, in Kieran’s direction.
And then time screeched to halt.
Leon’s finger moved for the trigger.
Nya tilted her chin upward. Ready. Accepting.
I lunged.
Not only with the strength of Larimar’s magic. With the strength of all that was in me, all that had been simmering beneath the surface for ten long years. That living, breathing thing that had consumed me. Left me drowning in unbearable grief. The thing that now said I would not endure this again.
I crashed into the two of them so hard that Leon lost his grip on Nya’s shoulder. So hard that Nya lost her footing, falling onto her back.
A gurgle erupted from Leon’s throat, breath and blood and everything in him strangled by the spear of ice that pierced straight through him, goring the front of his neck and chest and splintering out his back like some obscene icy growth.
Larimar…forgive me.
Leon’s blue eyes, just as cold as the ice that now skewered him, flashed with what could only have been the terror of certain death.
And then there was a boom. A flash of light.
Leon’s last fuck-you, to me and to us all, as he pulled the trigger.
In that moment, that last fraction of a second, I let my gaze drift beyond his gun.
Beyond the arm that held it in position.
I let my gaze drift across the grass to the silver eyes that I already knew were trained on me.
And I let my own eyes fill with everything that I felt for him.
Everything that he meant to me. Even as his own widened in horror.
There was an instant of pain. Scalding, clawing, all-consuming pain. Pain that tore me in two. Pain that became everything I was, all that was left of me.
And then this time, truly…
There was nothing.