42. AS IT WAS DIVINED
AS IT WAS DIVINED
NOW THIS WAS THE SCENE FROM THE VISION.
Balthazar, his hands raised and pulsing with power against the backdrop of Hiram’s disturbed tomb, while all around, the graveyard whirled in chaos.
Alistair didn’t know how it ended, but he knew this would happen. Embry gritted her teeth. The witches had to win—because this was most definitely a battle to be won or lost, no longer a mission to extract Balthazar, but to survive their second all-out brawl in so many days.
Their ambush had turned into a counterambush, and now spells were flying this way and that.
The sorcerers dodged and rolled, gleefully attacking and parrying from their advantageous upper ground with power that was, indeed, twenty-times stronger than the witches’ own.
Worse, the longer this went on, the more exhausted and literally drained the coven would get.
Embry didn’t have any kind of metric for how much juice a vampire’s life could give the well the two dozen of them were drawing from, but she knew that if her plan didn’t work, there’d be no outlasting the Hale clan.
There’d just be losing, surrounded by their ancestors’ disappointment.
Embry immediately fired another stun spell from one hand and the immobilization enchantment that wasn’t entirely legal from the other, aiming at the bigger target of Balthazar’s torso, hoping the double-up would help her land a blow.
It didn’t. Balthazar deflected both spells and laughed.
“Daddy dearest didn’t teach you much in the way of sparring, did he? Or were you against learning how? Worried you might break a nail?”
“Now that is just insulting,” Embry spat, advancing on Balthazar, not taking the bait and searching for Lazarus in the chaos over his shoulder. “My manicure is magically fortified, and I’ve had the requisite coven defensive training. I’m not a novice.”
“If you were trained by these people, Princess, you are most certainly in trouble.” Again, Balthazar laughed, tossing up a shield as she shot every spell rolling through her mind at his grin.
They bounced off, but it felt good to do something.
“Witches are like our little, battery-powered cousins. So cute. So ineffective against real talent.”
The witches had the upper hand in numbers, having double the people on their side, but not in magic.
It took two to three witches to effectively defend against a barrage of magic from a single sorcerer.
Which meant that Rye was over Embry’s shoulder, facing Balthazar with her. At her back, Rye Knighton, always.
“If sorcerers are so powerful, why aren’t you in power?” Rye shot at Balthazar along with a bolt of fire that arced close enough to the top of Balthazar’s shield that smoke glanced off his perfectly pomaded waves.
“That’s the question, isn’t it, Knighton?
” Balthazar asked, tossing all caution to the wind and hopping off the platform and onto the ground in front of them, shield up and eyes dancing.
“Why are so many inferior witches clogging the Table’s seats with their inferior magic?
Habit, stagnation, and nepotism, I suspect, if our princess here is any indication. ”
Embry’s breath caught as if all the wind had been knocked out of her.
Balthazar recognized the realization crossing her face and met it with a knowing smile. Yes, every time he’d used Princess as an endearment, he’d meant it as a slight. From the very first moment they’d met.
Your reputation precedes you, Princess.
Balthazar tossed his arms wide at the fight churning around them. “I mean, look at your witches now—there are dead men in this cemetery with a better chance to win this fight.”
Embry couldn’t help it; she looked around.
Balthazar was right.
The witches were mice, prey to two dozen sapphire-eyed cats with claws and a sadistic streak.
Her friends and other young witches were mostly shooting spells from behind the safety of several grand Woodcross gravestones surrounding Hiram.
Meanwhile the elder crew wielded powerful magic to no avail—other than wearing them out, Merle’s voice going hoarse for all the orders he was rattling off.
And Daddy, well, the scars of the tussle with the vampires were visible in the lethargy of both his spells and his aim. Maybe she should—
“Em!” Rye shouted, and Embry blinked back to her position.
Rye grabbed her by the waist and dove to the right—just as Fairfax and Ames, on the run from three sorcerers, plowed straight through the space she’d previously occupied.
As they hit the ground, both Embry and Rye popped up and aimed for the same spot on Balthazar’s shield, hoping to crack it.
It bounced right off—and back at them.
Cursing, Embry and Rye dodged just in the nick of time, their own twin spells careening into a tombstone behind them, shards of weathered stone spraying their backs.
Dark magic seriously was something else.
Balthazar laughed so hard he tossed his head back, holding his defenses in a single palm and gathering something offensive with his free hand. So far, the sorcerer hadn’t attacked anything but their pride, but this? This would not be good.
“I’m inferior, then? Is that why you did it?” Embry asked, hoping the pain in her voice would toss him off-balance.
It didn’t. In fact, Balthazar seemed to feed upon it.
“Don’t sound so hurt, Princess. It wasn’t personal. You were the perfect pawn.” His teeth flashed. “Truly everything I could’ve wished for and more. Pliable, so desperate for approval and connection, so willing to help.”
Pliable?
PLIABLE?
Embry Woodcross would show Balthazar Hale how exactly not pliable she was.
She couldn’t be bent. She couldn’t be broken. She wouldn’t let him even think he’d won this. Embry was going to institute the strategy she’d revealed to her friends in the conservatory, even if she had to adjust it on the fly.
“Rye,” Embry whispered. “Shields up for both of us.”
He knew the plan. He trusted her to execute.
Rye funneled all his magic into both palms and a film of protective magic covered their bodies.
As soon as the magic flew across her person, Balthazar laughed again before taking yet another menacing step forward.
They couldn’t move backward, or they’d run into someone else’s fight.
Shield in place, Embry recited the incantation as quickly as possible.
The magic washed over her, and Embry disappeared before the sorcerer’s eyes.
“Hide-and-seek, Princess? Really? Don’t be a child.”
Immediately, Rye’s acting skills kicked in and he looked around as if he didn’t know where she’d gone, though she touched his hand.
Embry bent to his ear, letting the scent of rosemary wash over her invisible form.
“You know me better than anyone. You’ll know where I am.
But he won’t.” She patted his cheek. “Keep yourself safe, and remember it isn’t real. ”
Rye’s eyes darkened but he didn’t dare give away that she was still beside him.
Embry forced herself to get going. Balthazar’s gaze darted around, hunting for her.
Guessing incorrectly. Which, of course, he wouldn’t admit, even as he aimed his magic in all the wrong places.
It was quite inelegant, it must be said, like someone groping a wall for a light switch while carrying groceries.
Embry grinned as she silently skirted the long way around the battles, dodging gravestones and people.
They were losing. Badly. She considered enchanting as many of them as possible to be invisible, doing it one at a time as she moved, but it was too risky—she’d give away her position in a heartbeat.
Not to mention, she’d drain herself of energy she’d need.
If she could just get behind Balthazar’s shields, if she could place a hand on his body, she knew exactly what would stun the sorcerer so hard that the whole thing would grind to a stop.
Embry maneuvered around her mother’s gravestone, trailing fingers along Luciana Woodcross’s final resting spot, no longer as rough as it had been after almost eighteen years in the elements.
The flowers she and Daddy laid weekly had lost petals in this fight.
Mums were indeed hardy, but not when underfoot in a magical skirmish.
“Take note, coven members!” Balthazar bellowed, still wildly searching for signs of Embry—footprints, a surge of magic with no obvious source, a collision she couldn’t avoid.
“When you’re down, your heiress—your princess—disappears.
Literally! While you bleed for the coven that bears her name!
How can you not be appalled by such cowardice? ”
It was probably indulgently unserious, but Embry rolled her eyes.
Balthazar was most certainly projecting in his “stage voice” and it was coming off a little too melodramatic, even considering the drama of the situation.
Balthazar was undeniably handsome, yes. But how had she not noticed his personality?
Embry wasn’t pliable, but she had been charmed by this boy.
And that, like everything else, apparently, was an act.
The sorcerer wasn’t actually a dashing high school senior; he just played one on the stage (and in class, at lunch, and anywhere else the Raven’s Head student body could see him).
Which was when another barrage of thoughts hit Embry. Did he rig the homecoming royalty elections? So that he and Oakley would win? So that Embry would have a public meltdown and be a better suspect?
Did anyone actually like this guy? She didn’t.
Whatever the truth, Amethyst Oberon, for one, wasn’t having any of it.
“Oh shut up, dummy!” Ames yelled while punching a beanstalk version of Balthazar square in the jaw with her title-winning right hook. Guess even sorcerer shields worked only for spells, not hands-on threats. “We’re not stupid enough to let you know where she is.”
Instead of mounting a verbal comeback, Balthazar was still searching for Embry with half his attention and rebuffing Rye’s brutal barrage of spells with the other.
His divided attention was exactly what she needed to work in her favor.
And the timing was excellent—Embry was coming up behind him now, from where he’d stopped on the edge of the tomb.
Quietly, she snuck around the side. She didn’t dare step onto the rim of the stone grave, worried (a) she might fall in or (b) she’d somehow rock the lid and alert Balthazar to her presence.
Balthazar hadn’t once looked behind him since she’d managed to approach him from that direction.
Maybe he thought the open tomb would dissuade her.
Maybe he simply expected her to come straight for his face, scorned woman that she was, which was why he’d cast his magic like a car’s windshield instead of a tightly wrapped burrito.
Whatever the reason, Balthazar Hale was about to learn what it was like to mess with a witch.
Embry edged closer, her hands carefully raised in front of her body, two separate enchantments loaded into her fingertips. In her left—a high-powered spell meant to immediately dissolve his shield. In her right—the money shot.
If it worked, the result would be a stunned and defenseless sorcerer.
Keeping her attention squarely on Balthazar, Embry did one steadying yoga breath, bit her lip, and closed the distance to the sorcerer’s broad, leather jacket–clad back. It appeared unguarded, but Embry reached with her shield-dissolving spell anyway, a precaution.
Except, just as her fingers grazed the soft leather, Balthazar shot around, her wrist suddenly caged in his punishing grip. “Not so fast, Princess.”