I found Kai in the crowd. Beside him, Durin was bristling silently. The look on Kai’s face was almost demonic. Durin had a hand clamped on Kai’s shoulder. Megan and Walter huddled with the rest of the Supernatural Council around Kai.
Meryl clapped her hands. “Thank you all for attending this evening. I know that this will be the beginning of a fruitful relationship between the supernatural and human worlds.” I could practically feel Declan’s eyes burning into my back.
“Is she serious?” he hissed at me.
“I think so.”
Meryl continued to speak. I soon realised the meeting with the Human League was peripheral to her actual goal. Boy was she a master at shoehorning. “I have no doubt that if there were ever a need, our two species will come together in unity. We must never forget the sacrifices those who came before us made.”
Somebody grabbed hold of my hand. I turned to find Nanna beside me. Her fingers were calloused from all the gardening but somehow also soft, and best of all, familiar.
I’d lost sight of what Meryl was saying. Nanna squeezed my hand. “...two of the greatest men to have ever walked this dimension. Today, we in House Laurent present this gift to Malachi Pendragon as a promise of a shared future.”
Chanelle reached up and pulled the silk aside. The crowd gasped, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from astonishment or distaste. The present was a sculpture of Kai’s father and another man I guessed was Chanelle’s. Kai’s father stood tall with a book clutched in his arms, a caring smile on his face. The other man was in full battle armour. He was positioned in a protective semi-crouch in front of Kai’s father. His sword was raised. He clutched a decapitated demon head in his left hand. It was all very antiquated.
Kai locked gazes with me. If I weren’t so busy ruminating on how they were deliberately spitting in my face, I would have been embarrassed for them.
“May this be a reminder...” While Meryl spewed rubbish about how great the Nephilim were, I couldn’t help smiling at Nanna. She’d spent seven years under the influence of a demon and refused to break. I blinked and my memory showed me the image of my mother’s broken body as the waves crashed around her. Misguided or not, she had done the only thing she knew how in order to save the world. The thought always brought a feeling of bittersweet agony to my throat. And then there was Hilary. The Grand Mistress of the Sisterhood who had defied a deity to keep me alive. All of them completely human.
I felt Declan shuffling beside me. If he spoke, I didn’t hear it above the rushing in my ears. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nora gripping Mani’s hand. She kept looking at the sculpture and then back at me. But she didn’t move. Nobody moved a muscle because what could they do? The Laurents were a powerful Nephilim House. Chanelle was the Council’s chosen bond mate. I was just a human who kept getting in their way.
Nanna tugged my hand. “Lex,” she said. “I think this is quite enough now.”
I completely agreed. The first circle was one for containment. I enclosed the sculpture in a blue circle that pulsed and expanded into a sphere. The other circles I drew around the humans in the room were for protection.
“Lex!” Jacqueline shouted. I shoved away all their voices.
An inkblot of black interspersed with silver and gold bloomed inside the blue circle. They started off as small dots that fanned out and compounded to become cylindrical. Within the blue sphere, my bone magic vibrated as it had when the Evil Three had tied me to the pier.
“Move,” I warned the supernaturals. I wouldn’t do anything more to protect them. The blue sphere would either contain the bone magic, or it would shatter and there would be hell to pay. As the darkness whipped around the sphere it shaved chunks off the sculpture. I smiled when it sawed off Chanelle’s father’s head. It popped right off, ricocheted into the blue sphere and crumbled into dust.
I could hear shouting and screams but nothing could broach the circle I’d drawn around myself. Faster and faster the sphere spun until they reached a critical mass. I clapped my hands together. The sculpture disintegrated. The resulting fission of magic caused a blinding flash of light to explode in the room. I stood my ground as the blowback of my own magic hit the circle around me and the ones I’d drawn around the humans. I absorbed all of the magic I could so that I wasn’t being battered. Slowly, the aftermath of the magical bomb I’d just set off eased.
Over where the Supernatural Council has stood, Kai was still cemented in place. I glanced at him, daring him to challenge me right now. He raised a brow at me. I wasn’t sure but I think I felt something akin to anticipation rolling off him. Griff coughed beside him. I allowed the circle I’d drawn around Griff to dissipate. I withdrew all of my circles.
The room was a mess. The cascade of my magic had shattered the windows. The buffet tables had collapse. There was debris all over the floor. But all I could see was the pile of rubble sitting on the trolley and scattered all around it. “Would you look at that,” I said. “I didn’t even have to use an Angelical word or anything.”
I stepped over where Chanelle and her mother were huddled together for shelter. Tiberius was already trying to help them up. The shriek that came out of Meryl’s throat could give a banshee a run for its money.
“How dare –”
“See you in the Games.” I walked out of the ballroom to the soundtrack of ominous laughter from the Ravenhall sorceresses.
32
Footsteps followed me. “Don’t say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to say a word,” Kai said.
“If you
