Chapter 34 #2
“No need to draw this out or make things unseemly, then. Here is my resignation,” she called, speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. If I thought my gut was twisted before, it was nothing to the panic that gripped me now. This couldn’t happen!
“This was the plan?” I spluttered, incredulous, glancing at Fable. She looked as alarmed as I felt, chewing on her bottom lip, her face so pale she looked green.
Mallachtan leaned closer to Thalienne, arrogance radiating from him in waves. His voice was low, but the cruel satisfaction in it was unmistakable.
“I’m glad you’ve finally come to your senses, Thalienne. When I’m headmaster, I’ll bring these damned part-Fae to where they belong.” His smile was tight and triumphant as he attempted to look down his nose at her.
I didn’t doubt that he thought ‘where they belong’ meant ‘in the ground.’ There would be no training of anyone who had even a fraction of Fae blood in them.
How many accidents would he concoct? Could that be what I’d seen in that part of my vision?
Were all those Dwimmers trapped in a version of what could be?
But that didn’t fit, that had been my present, not a potential future.
My fists clenched tight at my sides and everything in me screamed to rush forward, to shove him back and defend Thalienne and Heathermoor.
But attacking a member of the Senate in front of – I made quick work of a head count – nearly twenty Runecoats was a terrible idea, if getting out of here and back to Opie was the priority.
Bryony eyed Thalienne from her spot a few feet away, her face rigid with carefully concealed anger. She turned and met my eyes with a shake of her head. No doubt she felt the same as I, but she didn’t do anything either.
We couldn’t make a move.
Mallachtan straightened, raising the resignation letter dramatically into the air, though he didn’t even look at it. “On behalf of the Senate, your resignation is accepted, Sage Thalienne.”
My teeth ground together as I watched. Did Thalienne really plan to just give her school away to this monster? After all the work she’d done to keep her students safe, to train them, to help them? After he’d nearly killed us all and then blamed it on her?
“Thalienne won’t actually let this happen,” Gary whispered, sounding as anxious as I felt. “Will she?”
“Her back is against the wall,” Ellie murmured.
“Doesn’t mean she can’t fight,” Marina growled and I touched her hand, giving it a squeeze. I fully agreed. But I wasn’t sure what Thalienne could do against these numbers. Kill them? Maybe.
But then more would come. And what then? Full-out war?
Thalienne raised her chin, her voice steady and clear as she took a step back. “Are we done here, then?”
His eyes narrowed. “For now. I’ll send word to the Senate that you’ve agreed to step down peacefully.
” He grinned wickedly as he added, “Then I’ll head to my new office at the top of Heathermoor to get my things settled.
Be packed and gone by the time I’m back.
One hour should be sufficient. And you’re lucky you have that much time. ”
Mallachtan looked in my direction. “You and your friends will remain here. I will deal with you when I return.” He turned sharply, signaling to his men to follow as he strode toward the gate. Thalienne, on the other hand, remained rooted in place, unflinching.
Gods, I hoped she knew what she was doing.
I was sick to my stomach as Mallachtan and his men made to go through the gate, walking away from here, with Heathermoor fully in their hands. My pulse thudded in my temples, anger bubbling up beneath my skin – she should have done something. Anything but this.
Thalienne stepped backward so she stood next to Bryony, but her gaze remained fixed on the Runecoats. There was no panic or concern in her expression.
Just steely resolve and a fire that I felt as her eyes hardened – Mallachtan had just pissed off a member of House Phoenix.
I watched the two part-Fae Dwimmers. Bryony’s fingers twitched, the faintest hint of motion, but the spell took effect immediately.
With a whispered word I couldn’t quite catch, the dew covering the grassy hill shimmered and then hardened, transforming into a slick of black ice.
The entire slope was now as smooth as polished glass .
. . except for the small patch of dirt directly beneath Mallachtan’s feet.
He froze, eyes widening as his Runecoats were suddenly scrambling, skidding, feet flying out from under them as they slid toward the gate in a clumsy pile-up of limbs and panic.
They shouted and grabbed at one another for purchase, a few even tried to cast runes, but it was no use.
They slipped through the open gate, and a blue glimmer shot from Thalienne’s finger a heartbeat later, sealing them out as she turned, giving a too-sweet smile at a now pale-faced, purple-cheeked Mallachtan.
“What was it you were saying about my office, Senator?”
Mallachtan sputtered, eyes darting toward his closed-off escape route. Bryony lifted her ice spell now, but it didn’t matter. The damage had been done.
“Y-you – you think you can get away with this?” he choked out. “I have entire boats filled with reinforcements just waiting on the other side of the loch! They will get through this gate, they will destroy it if we must!”
Behind him the gate rumbled, like a beast waking.
“I don’t think you should threaten the gate,” I said. “It has quite the sucker punch when it wants to.”
Mallachtan’s eyes flicked to me, but it was to Thalienne he spoke.
“You’re playing a foolish game that you cannot hope to win in the long run and will only make the Senate less inclined to be lenient. Already, they’re considering the death penalty for how close you came to killing your students.”
“Lying piece of shit,” Zeed snapped. “You laid that curse!”
“Did I?” Mallachtan sneered. “The Senate has concluded that Thalienne laid the deadly curse, and there’s no actual proof to the contrary.”
And of course, no one saw him run his fingers across it; it might have only been me and Zeed. Thalienne would be the only other person to know for sure, as it was her spell he’d cursed, but clearly the Senate was not inclined to take her word for it.
“About those reinforcements coming across the loch,” Thalienne said, her tone matter of fact as her lips curled into a chilling smile. “I’m afraid our beauties, Fred and Nanala may have something to say about that.”
Mallachtan opened and closed his mouth, gulping at the air like a fish out of water, that self-satisfied sneer gone. He raised an arm, and the curse . . . it was a bad one. The smell of rotten eggs flowed first as he began to cast the rune.
A spell that would turn a body inside out but keep the person alive.
“Get down!” I yelled, reading the curse, but it died on his fingers as a blur of darkness flashed toward him with a speed that went beyond human.
Typhon.
His hand shot out, wrapping firmly around the heavier man’s throat, lifting him clear off the ground, even as he grabbed the older man’s casting hand and snapped his fingers like dry twigs.
Mallachtan screamed and fought, but there was nothing he could do.
“All I needed was a reason, and you’ve given it to me, attacking those I am sworn to protect at all costs.
” Typhon’s voice was a whipcrack, his magic ripping around him, overwhelming even as it curled around his legs – the shadows looked more than a little like the Draconell crest. Right down to the snapping mouth that bit at Mallachtan’s legs.
“Are you seeing this?” Fable whimpered, grabbing at me. As if I could look away.
Mallachtan wheezed, his legs bicycling wildly in the air. “There are witnesses! You wouldn’t dare.”
I lifted my hands, ready to fire as Mallachtan tried to whip off a quick rune with his broken fingers, but Typhon’s Quirk was too strong. The spell dissolved in a prick of light the moment it was cast, surging into Typhon as easily as the magic he was draining from Mallachtan’s body.
The shadow Draconell’s fangs were buried deep in Mallachtan’s left calf. Gulping, its throat convulsing.
“You have no idea what I would do to protect . . .” Her. Unspoken, echoing the child version of Typhon, only now his voice was a chilling whisper.
My heart hammered in my chest, but I was unable to look away as he absorbed every last scrap of that bastard’s magic. And even then he didn’t stop. No, that only made him squeeze harder, seeming to feast upon his lifeforce itself.
Less than ten seconds and Mallachtan went limp, his eyes wide and unseeing. Only then did Typhon drop him. His corpse hit the ground with a dull thud and Typhon stepped back.
I caught sight of the still-pulsing fury there, his lips curling into a snarl as he stared down at the Senator’s corpse as his shadow dragon retreated, sliding back into him. Satiated for a time. Then, he turned, his gaze locking with mine. If there had been any doubt, there was no longer.
He had killed Mallachtan for one reason, and one reason only: for daring to put my life in danger – for threatening me.
Typhon Moreno.
No matter what came next, I knew one thing was true. I could trust this man with every part of me.
Maybe, even my heart.