The para-humans who had been dazed by the dragon’s psychic stun now startled. The Fae mage screamed. “Kill them! The Council have sent them with this creature to take what’s mine!”
My spine creaked at the constricting grip of the clay golem. It turned its back to the room, stealing my last glimpse of Kai with a spear in one hand and Chanelle held to his side. He had a bloody nose. There was also blood crusted to the side of his head. I shouldn’t have cared, but the image of Kai bleeding had terror shooting through me.
Just before I thought every bone in my body was going to break, a flash of fire bloomed behind the golem’s back. It bathed him in heat and singed my face. The golem made a deep, gurgling sound. Pretty impressive for something without a throat.
As the baby dragon hurled fire at it, the clay started to harden. Its grip turned brittle. The golem tried to turn and run. When it took a step, its leg shattered. Inertia had it falling over. I braced myself for the fall. We hit the ground. The golem broke into a million pieces.
Andrei was dead to the world. I dragged him against the wall to keep him from being trampled. Seeing its companion disintegrate, the silver giant that was trying to bash Bradley against the floor stopped and turned my way.
I couldn’t take on a metallic giant without my powers. The only thing to do was to cut off the source of the golem’s strength.
Unfortunately, that meant somehow defeating the Fae mage. Andrei groaned. I remembered the elemental orbs he’d chosen.
“Hey!” he protested when I mugged him.
Ignoring his weak attempt to overpower me, I grabbed the orbs and rifled through them for the ice element.
The dragon outside rammed the mountain. My feet slid out from underneath me. Several of the para-humans dropped to the ground and covered their heads while the Fae mage worked his magic to keep the cave intact. The cave trolls replaced the blue-tipped arrows with purple-tipped ones. The problem with dragon fire was that it created light. It made it possible for the trolls to see what they were shooting at, and they were dangerously accurate.
As soon as there was a hint of scales through the openings, the trolls opened fire. They reloaded with frightening speed. It was a game of volume and they were winning. I sucked in a breath as a purple-tipped arrow embedded into the juncture between the dragon’s shoulder and wing. It howled and retreated. I winced in sympathetic pain. The baby dragon whined.
The Fae mage directed his furious attention to it. “See what you’ve done?”
The same purple magic that tipped the arrows curled around his fists. He closed one eye as though taking aim.
Something brushed up against Michael’s seal. A sorrow so deep, it almost brought me to my knees. One of the kobolds who fell near my feet had a double-edged blade strapped to his back. “Can I borrow this?” I asked, before I kicked him in the head. His eyes rolled back. I yanked the sword from him and weaved through the minefield of cowering para-humans.
I wasn’t sure how the orb worked but it was solid like a big marble. You tossed marbles, right? That’s what I did anyway.
At the same time the Fae mage unleashed his magic, I threw the ice orb at his feet. His head snapped up in my direction just as a crack reverberated through the cavern. The orb exploded into a crystalline bomb that collided with the purple fireball. Shards of solid ice sliced through the air.
Too late I realised I was directly in the firing line. Hundreds of icy shards came hurtling towards me. It would have sliced right through my neck if a body hadn’t collected me and pushed me out of the way.
Even through the charred smoke and ozone that permeated the air, I breathed in Kai’s pine-and-sunshine scent. He rolled with me in his arms and caged me against the wall. Blue-white light flashed. It burned my corneas. I screamed and buried my face in his neck. I felt his body shudder around me before his muscles corded.
The flash only remained for a second. In its wake, the cavern became my worst nightmare. A frosty part of hell. Only this one was full of pissed-off para-humans. Kai shoved his palms against the wall, pushing himself up. His expression was stony. I immediately let go of his T-shirt. My heart twisted at the smudge of blood on his shoulder.
He turned away abruptly, pretending like none of this had happened.
The para-humans that could still function descended on us. So did the ceiling. I picked up the blade I’d dropped and met them head-on. Kai blasted through them with a rage that I knew came from a source close to fear.
I cut a path through them with surprising ease. I’d learned to fight demons and they certainly weren’t up to that calibre. Two goblins jumped into my path. One of them held a pickaxe, the other a spear.
“Really?” I asked. “He’s flat on his back.” I nodded to where the Fae mage’s crumpled form now lay. “Do you really want to be here doing this forever?”
The one on the left gnashed his teeth. Behind me, Max was rousing. Without the Fae mage’s magic, the golems had turned to dust. A warning growl rumbled in Max’s chest.
“Please,” I said. The word seemed to stump them for a second. I didn’t particularly want to hurt them. They didn’t particularly want to die either because they dropped their weapons a minute later and ran past me. The cave trolls were another
