Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Reyna jumped, shifting to her owl form mid-leap, and dove at Vasilios’s face.
Her talons connected and ripped flesh. He stumbled sideways, mouth open in a silent shriek, and the pistol clattered to the ground.
Her feathers shimmered as she switched back to human form in time to slam a kick into Vasilios’s stomach that flung him against the wall. The plaster cracked behind his head.
She paused, caught between awe at her own strength and disgust at the feeling of Vasilios’s skin tearing under her talons. She shook her fingers like she’d touched something slimy.
Vasilios recovered quickly and sank into a crouch, lips curled back. Reyna’s pulse spiked. She’d never been in a real fight before—eighth grade shop class didn’t count. This was life and death. What was she supposed to do?
Weight pulled on the pocket of her dress. The tuning fork.
Vasilios leapt. She whipped the fork out and smashed it against the crazed man’s forehead.
“Stop!” she commanded. Heat flared along her skin. Vasilios froze, still snarling at her.
Reyna glared at him, flooding the fork with her will to keep him still.
He shook, fighting her command. The shaking grew to tremors—rocking though his body, spreading into the tuning fork, and reverberating up through Reyna’s arm, as she fought to hold him motionless. A thought came, clear and calm.
Kill him. Will him to death, to stop forever.
She recoiled. No!
She had only ever created with her heat, never destroyed. She made things, she didn’t unmake them. But she couldn’t let Vasilios hurt them either.
“Sleep.” She stretched the word out, covering his resistance with her command. The fire of her will roared until she thought her skin would blister. Heat waves flickered in the air. Vasilios resisted three seconds more, then collapsed to the floor.
Gasping, Reyna shoved the tuning fork back in her pocket and dabbed water from the vial around her neck on her pulse points. She looked at her arms expecting that this time surely there would be smoke, but they looked clear. Cadenza slipped off her chair, gaping at her.
“Come on.” Reyna grabbed Cadenza’s hands and broke the zip ties. “We gotta go.”
“That was amazing!” Cadenza slowed in the hallway, pointing back to the room Reyna had just pulled her out of. “You were amazing! I can’t believe—”
Reyna turned back to pull Cadenza into a run. “Won’t be so amazing if he wakes up and we’re still dawdling in the hall. We can sneak out the side entrance and get to the car.”
Cadenza shook her head. “No, I think they’ve got Ruairi and Cyrus somewhere, we need to find them.”
Voices shouted behind them.
“Sounds like he didn’t stay out for long,” Reyna said.
A muffled shot sounded, and plaster burst off the wall. Cadenza yelped, and they skidded around a corner.
Reyna clutched at the wall for balance. “Stupid heels.” She ripped them off her feet and chucked them one at a time around the corner. Someone grunted.
“Ha!” She laughed in triumph and ducked back around the edge of the wall.
“Where’s Canon?” Cadenza asked.
Reyna ground her teeth. Canon had blown his second chance, the thread had snapped, and right now she didn’t want to think about how much that hurt. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“What?”
Reyna just shook her head. A howl reverberated through the building, and they both whipped their heads towards the sound. Cadenza took off running, and Reyna followed as she made a hard right down a hall of rehearsal rooms.
One of the doors burst open, and a guard flew through the air to crash into the wall.
A tall, red-haired man stalked out of the room and lifted the crumpled guard from the floor by the throat, a snarl rippling from his lips.
Reyna’s breath caught as the red-haired man’s teeth elongated and sharpened.
Drostan was the only other person she’d seen shift or even get close to it.
“He will not taste very good, mind.” A second man, dark haired, not quite as tall, leaned against the doorframe. The red head growled in response, and the guard flailed, eyes bugging.
“Ruairi, Cyrus!” Cadenza called. “You’re ok!”
The dark-haired man looked over with a smile. “Ah, Cadenza, it’s been so long. You’re looking well. And you must be Reyna Weyland. Cyrus Norroway. A pleasure.” He shook her hand like they had all the time in the world.
“Not that pleasantries aren't great and all, but we need to go,” Reyna said. “Like now.”
“Of course. This misinformed gent”—he pointed to Ruairi’s captive—“insisted we wait for you here, but we got tired of waiting, didn’t we, Ruairi?”
A lone guard barreled around the corner, fist raised. Reyna stepped in, landed a jab on his nose, and he tumbled to the floor.
Cyrus whistled. “Oh ho! Lovely. He’ll be out a while.”
Reyna shook out her hand, expecting it to hurt, but stopped when she realized it didn’t. She stared at her hand and the man on the floor.
Interesting.
“Cyrus, we need to go,” Cadenza insisted.
“Right.” Cyrus clapped his hands together. “Ruairi, if you would, please.”
The taller brother shrugged and tossed aside his victim. He closed his eyes, steepled his fingers.
“What is he doing?” Reyna asked. The shouting grew louder down the hall. “We have to—”
Cyrus held up a hand. “Wait for it…”
A groan rolled under the floor. A wrenching crack split the air, and a whoosh echoed from the hall, followed by cries of dismay.
Water rushed around the corner, splashing around Reyna’s bare feet.
She gathered her skirts out of the flood and peeked into the other hall to find a geyser exploding out of the floor.
The flow bent in mid-air at a ninety-degree angle, knocking their pursuers to the ground like a fire hose.
She traded looks with Cadenza, neither of them speaking.
“Well, come on, then,” Cyrus said, gesturing to an emergency exit door. “I thought you were in a hurry.”
The greenroom door banged open, slamming into the wall with a crunch.
Canon looked up from the couch, where he’d been pretending to check poll numbers on his phone, to see Vasilios storm through the door.
Knowing this was where his former mentor would expect to find him, Canon had stayed in the greenroom and done his best to ignore both the sounds of the chaos backstage, and the flaming hole of worry burning through his chest.
Cadenza was out there. In the middle of all the shouting, the gunshot noises, and what had sounded suspiciously like ruptured pipes.
Reyna’s with her. Reyna’s a Guardian. Probably by this time they’ve found Taran’s brothers too. This is the best place for me to be to help her.
“Hey, Vasilios.” He waved, removing the earbuds he’d put in so Vasilios wouldn’t wonder why he hadn’t investigated all the noise. Nothing to see here. Just me, playing a game you know nothing about.
Vasilios pulled up short, then smoothed his hair back and bared his teeth in a smile.
“Canon. Have you seen either Ms. Cavalieri or Ms. Weyland? I have yet to offer my congratulations on their performances.”
“I think they headed home already. Drostan’s boys were tired from the flight, and it’s a three-hour drive.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” Vasilios sat on the couch next to him.
“What happened to your face?” Canon arranged his features in an expression of concern. Inwardly he smirked. A long gash ran from Vasilios’s forehead to his cheek. Reyna must have really gotten her claws into him.
“Nothing, I ran into something backstage.” Vasilios pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the wound. “Canon, you did very well tonight, but I want you to go back to Thomas all the same.”
“Again? He made it pretty clear last time he didn’t want to help me.”
“Yes, again.” He leveled a gaze at Canon. “Thomas Learmonth is old. But he is subject to rules even older than himself. You need only ask him with the right words.”
“What words?” Canon opened his sight while Vasilios recited a few simple lines.
His mentor was attempting to mask his desires while he spoke, but ugliness roiled beneath his facade.
A desire, hot and bloody, bubbled to the surface, and it took all of Canon’s control not to retch over the image of Cadenza dead and songless.
He buried the rage clouding his vision. He wouldn’t let that happen to her, but right now he had to see clearly.
Another desire superimposed itself over the first. Again, Vasilios tried to hide what he wanted, to think only of helping Canon win, but the vision of Canon winning the election morphed to Canon as Crown, then again to the Crown as Vasilios’s puppet.
That was his priority, ranking higher than even Cadenza’s death.
Canon jerked his eyes back to his phone, his last wisp of hope that some part of Vasilios actually cared about him dissipating like smoke. He allowed himself one second to mourn, then steeled his resolve.
“I don’t know. That sounds too easy?” Canon let a degree of doubt creep into his voice.
“What if it doesn’t work? I think it’d be better if you went with me, just in case.
” There. Let him think I need him, like a good little puppet.
“What about Monday afternoon? I’m staying with Cadenza all weekend.
Her safety is my number one priority right now.
Oh, her opera night performance at the club is tomorrow,” he added like an afterthought.
“I’ll be there of course. Are you going? ”
Vasilios hesitated, and Canon read the calculations going on in his head like a book. If he killed Cadenza with Canon watching, he could kiss his puppet Crown goodbye.
The couch springs creaked as his former mentor relaxed back into the cushions. “Yes, good idea. Monday will be fine. We can wait a couple of days.”
“Great.” Canon smiled and turned back to his phone.
Game on.