“She gone crazy?” Valen frowned at her as he leaned towards Marek.
“Maybe,” she muttered and brought Ares’s hands to the ice, desperate to know that she wasn’t imagining things. “Melt it.”
Magic never lied though.
She closed her eyes.
Saw the faint, pulsing white outline of Daimon in the centre of the ice.
Each pulse of light was paler than the last, and the time between them was growing.
“Hurry.” She shoved Ares’s hands harder against the ice.
“Back off then.” Ares jerked free of her grip and glared at her. “I’m not doing this with you in the firing line.”
She shuffled away from him and everyone else backed off.
Ares closed his eyes and blew out his breath, his dark eyebrows drawing down as he moved his hands over the ice. Heat shimmered over them, starting to rise off his shoulders too as he worked to melt the ice.
“You’re doing good,” she said, hoping to encourage him, partly because she wanted him to keep going and partly because she didn’t want him to burn the building down.
She had never seen him try to control his fire before, hadn’t realised how difficult it was for him.
Sweat dotted his brow, fizzled and turned to steam, and his face set in hard lines, concentration etched on it. His shoulders tensed, arms shaking.
She looked at Daimon, more aware than ever of the similarities between him and Ares. Her heart went out to both of them, always having to hold back their powers and fight to keep them in check so they didn’t hurt the ones they loved.
She was going to do something about that once this was all over.
If Daimon came back to her, she would move heaven and earth to find a spell that would allow him to have physical contact with his brothers again.
She would do the same for Ares as a thank you for helping her save the man she loved.
The ice creaked and then cracked, great fault lines spreading across it as it gave under the heat of Ares’s power. Water pooled around them, slipping between the cracks between the floorboards, dripping into the empty building below them.
The faint pulses of light grew stronger as the ice melted away from Daimon. She swore she wasn’t imagining it.
Cass jerked right, towards Ares, as a huge chunk of ice crashed down and tumbled across the floor. More followed it and Marek pulled her backwards as one came right at her. She gasped and looked at Ares, relief washing over her as none of them struck him. They melted as soon as they neared him, falling as water that hissed as it touched his skin.
The moment the ice was gone from Daimon’s upper half, she pulled free of Marek’s grip and rushed to him. She pressed her fingers to his throat, shivering as the cold numbed them, desperately seeking a sign of life.
She whipped her head around when she found it.
“It’s weak,” she said, voice wobbling as emotions collided inside her, fear fighting the hope that had dared to rise.
Marek and Valen grabbed Daimon and hauled him from the ice, laying him out on the floorboards. They shook their hands, flexing their reddened fingers. It seemed even when he was close to death, Daimon’s power still affected his body.
Ares moved to him and held his hands palm down above his brother, ghosting them over him as Cass joined him. She kept her fingers to Daimon’s throat, studying his pulse.
It was too faint for her liking. Slowing again.
He was going to die.
She shoved that thought out of her mind, banishing it as determination flooded her, had her running through every spell she knew.
She had studied the basics of necromancy and she was talented at healing. If she combined the two, would it be enough to pull a living person back from the brink of death?
She looked down at Daimon, heart breaking and tears filling her eyes.
It was worth a shot.
“Hey!” Valen barked as she held her hand out and one of the knives he wore strapped to his ribs shot into her palm.
His golden eyes widened and he lunged for her as she brought it down towards Daimon’s throat.
Keras grabbed her before he could, hauling her away from their brother, and she loosed a frustrated grunt when she tried to break free of his grip and couldn’t.
“I can save him.” She thought she could anyway. “Let me go.”
Keras didn’t look convinced.
“Let her try.” Ares sagged beside her, shaking his head, his dark eyes bleak. “I’ve done all I can.”
Keras kept hold of her, and just as she was about to lash out at him with the knife, he released her.
She twisted back towards Daimon and carefully nicked his bare shoulder, just enough to draw a few drops of blood. She cut the tips of her index and middle finger and pressed them to the blood on Daimon’s shoulder. Her eyes slipped shut as she focused on the powerful connection that formed between them.
Cass started with the healing spell first, weaving the strongest one she could manage, and began threading it with incantations she had read in an ancient tome, one that had felt closest to the truth about necromancy to her.
With the tracking spell still active, she could see Daimon as he lay before her, could see Keras as he came to kneel on the other side of him and pressed his fingers to Daimon’s throat.
“Is it working?” Ares said.
Keras nodded. “His pulse is getting stronger.”
Cass was careful to keep the focus of the spell heavily on the healing side, holding back the darker magic that rose within her, flooding her with cold.
“We need to be ready to move him the moment he’s strong enough.” Keras’s tone had her focus slipping and the hairs on the back of her neck rising. “This was all too easy.”
He was right about that.
“Maybe they figured he was dead and useless to them?” Valen sounded hopeful.
“Maybe it’s a trap?”
