Chapter 48 Survive an Abduction Attempt #2
“Yeah, well.” I flexed my fingers, light magic sparking. And I realized that when I moved, the magical barrier didn’t move with me. Interesting. “I’m not most women.”
“No,” Zaraiah agreed. “You’re the key to something much greater. Auremar is building a new world order. One where creatures like Kazimir—and you—will be properly leashed. We’ve chosen the winning side.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The irony was just too perfect.
“What?” Zaraiah demanded.
“You think Auremar is the power you’re aligning with?” I shook my head. “You have no idea what’s really happening, do you? What’s actually pulling his strings?”
“Enlighten us,” she said coldly.
I could have told them about the Shadow King. About him spreading through the ley lines. About how their grand alliance was really just feeding an ancient evil that would devour them all.
Instead, I smiled. “No. I don’t think I will.”
Zaraiah’s face flushed. “Fine. Your secrets won’t matter once Auremar has you.”
A shadow fell across us.
She didn’t even look up. “I was wondering when your pet would arrive.”
Nyx dropped from the sky like vengeance incarnate, all teeth and claws and fury.
Zaraiah raised her hand, and a shimmer erupted around the dragon—another barrier, similar to mine but crackling with different energy.
Nyx slammed into the barrier. She rebounded, wings flailing, then dove again—claws raking uselessly against the shimmer.
A keening wail tore from her throat as she thrashed, her massive body contorting in midair. Then she crashed into the ground.
“No!” I yelled.
“Did you think I wouldn’t prepare for her after seeing her at the Spire? A shadow dragon will fetch an excellent price from the black market.”
Zaraiah turned back to Nyx, gesturing with both hands. The barrier around the dragon contracted, shimmering walls closing in like a fist. The doppelganger circled closer, watching with clinical interest as Nyx’s struggles grew more frantic.
“Careful,” he warned. “Shadow dragons can phase when cornered.”
“Not through this spell.” Zaraiah’s smile was vicious. “I accounted for that. She’s locked in both this realm and the shadow—”
Rage burned through me, hot and bright. They were going to cage her. Sell her. My dragon.
Over my dead body.
I reached out my hand to test the barrier. It sparked and gave me an unpleasant jolt, but there had to be some way… something desperate and probably stupid.
The magical barrier contained me within this dome. They hadn’t bothered to block anything else—why would they? Everyone knew portal magic took years to master. Even Kaz had said it was emergency only, a last resort if I was cornered.
Well, I was definitely cornered.
I’d managed it twice more in training after that first success—each one a little larger, a little more stable. But never under pressure. Never with my life on the line.
My hands moved before my brain could catch up, tracing the gesture Kaz had drilled into me just days ago. Three degrees off and I scatter myself across dimensions.
No time to worry about wrist angles now.
I slashed at the air. The space between here and there shimmered, reality bending in a way that made my stomach lurch. For a terrifying moment, nothing happened. Just like in training. Just like every failed attempt where Kaz had sighed and corrected my stance.
Then I felt that thin membrane between spaces that he’d described.
Without his steadying presence, without his power amplifying mine, it felt like trying to thread a needle during an earthquake.
The portal flickered into existence, barely large enough for me to squeeze through, its edges crackling with unstable energy.
Fuck it.
I dove through before I could second-guess myself, praying I’d calculated the exit correctly.
The world twisted, compressed, then snapped back into focus. I stumbled out behind Zaraiah and Pip as they were still watching the dragon. My knees hit sand, and every nerve screamed in protest. But I was whole. I was here, and the magical barrier they’d conjured was over there.
I’d actually done it.
Power crackled around my hands as I pushed myself up, riding the high of not having accidentally dismembered myself across three dimensions. They didn’t know how powerful I really was—hell, I hadn’t known I could pull off emergency portal magic until five seconds ago.
The shadow warriors suddenly snapped back into focus, responding to my will. They rose from every shadow, surrounding us in a ring of darkness.
Nyx’s thrashing suddenly stilled. For a heartbeat, she sagged to the sand, her scales shimmering that strange rosy pink. Then her form flickered—solid, translucent, solid again—like she couldn’t quite decide which realm to exist in.
“No,” Zaraiah breathed. “That’s not—”
With a sound like tearing silk, Nyx shifted. Not quite phasing into shadow, not quite staying corporeal. The barrier, designed to trap a being in one state or the other, couldn’t hold something that was neither and both.
It shattered in a puff of smoke, sending Zaraiah flying backward into the sand.
Nyx shrieked her fury and took to the air. She spread her wings, teeth bared, silver eyes flashing.
“The spell should have worked!” Zaraiah scrambled backward. “I modified it perfectly for—”
Nyx, wait!
My dragon pulled up inches from taking Zaraiah’s head off, hovering with slow wingbeats that sent sand swirling.
“Here’s the thing about being underestimated,” I said conversationally. “It means you’re always surprising people.”
Zaraiah spun to face me. I didn’t give her the chance to use a spell or weapon. A spear of condensed shadow took her in the shoulder, spinning her around. She hit the sand hard.
The doppelganger moved, but I was ready. Light and shadow wove together in my hands—that hybrid magic that was mine alone. It slammed into him like a wall, sending him tumbling across the beach.
“You want to talk about Kazimir’s cruelty?” I stalked toward them, power crackling around me like a violent storm. “Let me tell you what I’m capable of. I killed Hero’s Guild members without blinking. I threw Academia students out of windows for disrespecting my friend.”
Zaraiah tried to push herself up, hand pressed to her bleeding shoulder. “You’re nothing but—”
“I’m the woman who chose the Dark Lord.” I crouched beside her, voice dropping to something intimate and terrible. “Not because he seduced me. Not because he forced me. Because I looked at all that darkness, all that violence, all that magnificent villainy, and thought, ‘Yes, that’s what I want.’ ”
Her eyes widened.
“You made one mistake, Zaraiah.” I straightened. “You thought I needed protection from him. But really?” I smiled, and it felt like one of Kaz’s smiles—all teeth and promise. “He needs protection from me.”
The doppelganger laughed, harsh and bitter. “Pretty words. But you’re still just a healer playing dress-up.”
“Am I?”
I reached for that place inside where light and shadow met.
Where my mother’s legacy tangled with everything Kaz had taught me.
Power erupted outward—not an attack, but a display.
The beach itself seemed to dim as shadows rose like wings behind me.
But threaded through the darkness were veins of pure light.
Both Zaraiah and the doppelganger flinched.
“I’m going to kill you both,” I said matter-of-factly. “Then I’m going to tell my husband exactly how you died. How you plotted against him. How you tried to sell me to his enemy. How you failed.”
“Wait—” Zaraiah started.
“No.” I raised my hand. “You had your monologue. You revealed your master plan. Gloated about your cleverness.” Shadows sharpened into blades in my hands. “But you forgot the most important rule of villainy.”
“What’s that?” the doppelganger asked.
“Never give your opponent time to counter-monologue.”
Zaraiah tried to shield herself, but she was already wounded and slow. My shadow blade drove toward her heart, punching through the first layer of her magical protections—
And hit something solid.
A figure materialized between us—the doppelganger, his form already shifting, taking the blade meant for her. He didn’t even scream, just locked eyes with me as my shadow magic tore through his chest.
“Go,” he rasped to Zaraiah.
She was already scrambling, pulling something small from her belt that she crushed between her fingers.
“Nyx!” I commanded, but too late.
A crystal shattered in a burst of acrid smoke. It made reality itself hiccup. The air around Zaraiah rippled, and suddenly there were three of her, all running in different directions.
Nyx’s jaws snapped shut on empty air where the middle one had been. The illusion dissolved into wisps.
“Fuck!” I yanked my blade free from the doppelganger and spun toward the other two Zaraiahs, but they were already dissolving too. Decoys. All of them.
Her voice drifted from somewhere in the darkness beyond the beach, already distant: “Tell Kazimir I’ll be seeing him soon, darling.”
I sent a spear of light magic toward the voice, but it hit nothing. She was gone. Nyx was circling back, furious at having been fooled.
I turned back to the doppelganger. “Your betrayal killed Sims.” The words tore from my throat, raw and vicious. “My friend.”
Nyx landed beside me with a ground-shaking thud, her silver eyes fixed on the doppelganger. A low growl rumbled from her chest.
The doppelganger laughed wetly. “Fifteen years of planning. You think… killing me changes anything?” Blood—or whatever passed for blood in his kind—bubbled at his lips. “Others will come. The demon realm remembers. We always remember.”
I looked at Nyx. Her scales shimmered with that strange pink-black iridescence as shadows rippled across her hide.
“Kill him,” I said coldly.