Chapter 70 A Wild Ghost Appears #2
Her own childhood had been cratered with tragedy, having spent several years in juvenile detention for a crime she never committed. By her own admission, she’d taken the concept of double jeopardy slightly too far.
Levan thought of those nights spent in his bed, making love, reflecting on their childhoods, revealing the long shadows cast over their hearts.
“Was any of it ever real?” he muttered, loathing the vulnerability of the question.
“No.” The word came swift and sure as a judge’s gavel, though perhaps too swift, too sure.
“Even when we had the holly tattooed on our ribs?”
Behind Alucia, her subordinates exchanged bemused glances.
“Even then,” she snapped, her taunting smile faltering then falling. “I never truly understood why you fell for the ruse. There was mutual attraction, yes, but it was always a shallow thing.”
Levan stared at her like he might a ghost. “I mourned you for years, and you were never dead.”
“We were dead. Hells, we were never alive in the first place.” With the suddenness of a spooked horse, Alucia jerked her head in Levan’s direction; an order to the rest of the Whitewings. “Bring him in.”
They all raised their wands at once, stepping toward him.
Stay back, he compelled, imbuing the command with the deep desire for self-preservation. Stay still.
The magic obeyed.
So did the Whitewings.
Despite the peril of the situation, Levan felt a curl of satisfaction—he’d never compelled six mages at once before. His magic was as strong as ever, providing he did not use it for ill.
Overhead, a cloud swaddled the moon, darkening the sky and the village below. Alucia looked behind her, at her unnaturally rigid henchmages, and then at Levan’s clenched jaw, his balled fist, the intense concentration on his face.
He had never told her he was a Compeller.
“Looks like I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.” Alucia’s tone aimed for flippancy, but Levan knew her well enough to pick out the first flickers of fear. She raised her own wand grimly. “Sen ammorten.”
Levan dodged the killing curse, na?vely surprised at the savage suddenness with which she’d cast it.
She wasn’t bluffing. He really had meant nothing to her.
“Sen ammorten.” She cast several more in quick succession. “Sen ammorten. Sen ammorten. Sen ammorten.”
He ducked behind a pillar, scrambling for a plan.
All his focus and magical energy were channeled into holding back her six henchmages.
He tried to extend the perimeter of his compelling sphere to include Alucia too, but for whatever reason, it didn’t take—perhaps he’d have to drop the first command and reissue it to include her, but that could give them a gap in which to launch an assault.
There was a chance he couldn’t compel them again, that his ornery magic would obey once and once only.
Sloppy. If he’d imposed an end condition on his initial command—as he had with Tiernan Flane, ordering him to be compelled until discovered, and then take his own life—it would have stuck, and he’d be free to cast other magic. But he’d been panicked, knee-jerk.
He retroactively tacked on a condition to his command, hoping it would take.
Stay back, stay still, until your leader has fallen.
Yet he couldn’t know for certain that it had worked—not without risking casting a new spell and hoping for the best.
Hells, what a bind.
Alucia fired killing curses so furiously that the pillars in front of the station—including the one he hid behind—began to crumble.
Dipping and dodging, Levan fought the urge to run inside the station and hurl himself into the gate—he couldn’t leave Saffron and Miret.
He racked his brain for a better plan. There was a dagger in his pocket, but he’d have to get close enough to use it—and his throwing skills had never been reliable.
He could run in the direction of the river, leaving the half-dozen compelled mages on the village green, luring Alucia away from her protection. As he drew close enough to wield the currents, he could use the river to drown Alucia, as he had the Sordai in the cave.
No, he thought fiercely. Saffron and Miret are back in the direction of the river, and I can’t drag a horde of angry Whitewings toward them.
There were other elements to wield besides water, of course.
The streetlamps were filled with condensed magical light, not fire, and he’d always been weakest at wielding earth or stone, but a light breeze blew down the High Street—could he turn that into a ferocious enough gust to knock the Whitewings down like bowling pins?
No. Too strong and there might be collateral—civilians were pouring out of the tavern like a leak in a jug, keen to watch the curious duel breaking out on the village green—too weak and it wouldn’t be worth the risk of dropping his compulsions.
Alucia was on him now, raining down killing curses almost faster than he could dodge them.
Rasso wove through the falling pillars, still growling viciously, and Levan wondered if he had it in him to order a savage fallowwolf death on the woman he once thought he’d marry.
No—he could stomach the image of her ravaged body, of her bleeding heart in the jaws of his pet beast, but not the image of Rasso falling dead at the hand of her errant killing curses.
A vicious forked spell plunged into a window just behind him, so close to his ear that he heard it whistle past. The glass shattered, tinkled over the cobbles.
Levan felt like a cornered animal, pacing back and forth in front of the station and its crumbling pillars, unwilling to run in the direction of the tavern and risk civilian crossfire, unwilling to run in the direction of Saffron and Miret.
His fool’s heart had already cost him so much.
Panic mounted and bucked in him like an axelmare. He tried to summon the sense of calm he got when practicing sparring with Miret. After dragging a few ragged breaths deeper, slower, a coolness settled into his muscles, and he drew from a place of trust in his own body, his own ability.
He stopped abruptly, changed direction, dropped to the ground, and aimed his wand cleanly at the now feral-gazed Alucia.
“Sen debilitan,” he incanted, imbuing the curse with all the self-preservatory intent possible.
His wand obliged and fired his spell, but it missed Alucia, who dodged with a catlike agility he’d never seen her deploy. Behind her, the six compelled mages started toward him. His retroactive end condition hadn’t worked.