She gave a laugh. “You thwarted me by chance last time, nothing more. Besides, those cantrips have already spread throughout the city. The Houses are desperate enough to sign a deal with anyone in exchange for a cure. You’ve already lost.”
I took a step towards her, and a piercing light shone from the distant shape of Elysium’s citadel.
“It looks like the battle is over,” she said. “I wonder if any of your friends survived?”
Shit. The battle was over? I couldn’t tell the victor from this far away, but if the transporter remained active, it didn’t look good. I needed to finish this fast.
While her attention was on the citadel, I conjured fire to my hands once more. Lex studied, no longer laughing. “So you really want to do this, Bria? To the person who raised you?”
“You stole me from my real family.” An inferno coalesced in my hands, searing the ground below our feet. “I’m through playing games with you.”
23
“Very well,” she said, dismissing the flames I threw at her with a wave of her hand. “We’ll settle this once and for all.”
She made a twisting motion with her hand. At once, my own hand moved in unison with hers, until the bone strained. Pain ripped up my arm and I bit back a scream, determined not to cry out. I just had to hang on until backup arrived, or until I found a way to get through her defences. My head swam with dizziness, and I gritted my teeth to keep from passing out from the pain.
My feet swayed, reminding me the ground beneath us was still unsteady from the earth mages’ tunnelling. Maybe I can work with that. I clenched my teeth against another sharp stab of pain, then I used my free hand to throw a fireball at the ground.
Flames burned the soil away and shook the earth below our feet, forcing Lex to brace her hand on the wall to steady herself. The moment the pain lifted, my next fireball hit her in the face. She yelled in shock and pain as it burned through her flesh straight to the bone.
She’d recover, quicker than I’d like, but I had to find the man who’d raised me and get that cure from him before it was too late for the entire city. I’d worry about Lex and Adair later.
I took off at a run, the ground flying away beneath my feet. Roth would be somewhere near the Houses, I was sure, but hardly anyone was out on the street at all. They must have run for shelter when shit had hit the fan. Sensible, given the golden cantrips lying in the streets.
At the first opportunity, I clambered up onto the rooftops and then leapt from one sloped roof to the next until the world became nothing but a breathless blur. When I spotted a familiar landmark, I landed on my feet on bare ground littered with bodies. The area surrounding the Houses was eerily silent, and the citadel’s light had died down enough that I knew the battle was over. The assassins must have withdrawn, leaving the deadly cantrips to do their work. As I approached the citadel, it lit up again, in a single blink. A signal. An invitation to enter.
I walked up to the door, which opened at my touch. The room within was littered with bodies, too, yet silence prevailed. I climbed the staircase, my heart beating fast.
When I opened the door to the upper room, one lone man stood alone next to the transporter. Like Lex, Roth hadn’t aged a day. His features suggested elven heritage, his hair was glossy black, his suit impeccable enough that he might’ve walked into that gathering in London and not stood out in the slightest.
It’s true. They’ve won.
But I didn’t see Liv’s body among the dead, nor the Elemental Soldiers. Roth tilted his head, a smile playing on his mouth.
“There you are,” he said. “I thought you’d recognise my signal.”
“Give me the cure,” I warned.
“I have something more important,” he said. “I found a friend of yours.”
Someone stepped into view. Tay, her hands limp, her eyes blank. Still dead… yet Lex’s final act had been to reanimate her. Zombie-Tay walked over to me, her face blank, and halted in front of me. There was no life left in her, I knew, but part of me balked at the idea of striking her down all the same.
“I wonder why she gave her life for you,” Roth said softly. “She had so much to give us, yet she threw it all away.”
“Stop talking.” I walked past her, conjuring a fireball to my hand. “I know she’s dead. She can’t feel pain. But you can.”
We circled one another, and he held up a cantrip with a smile. “This is the cure. Want it? All you have to do is agree to work for me.”
I could see where this was going. “You’re manipulating me. You have zero intention of following through.”
“I plan to keep my word,” he said. “I don’t want to argue with you, Bria. Despite the way you’ve shunned your upbringing and brought disaster upon us, you aren’t our enemy. You’re our ally, and I hope you’ll choose to fight by our side before the choice is made for you.”
“You mean before you force me to ‘choose’ to help you.” My hands clenched. “Yeah, no thanks. You can get stuffed.”
“Shame,” he said. “I think you need an incentive. You see this machine here? You know what it does?”
“Amplifies any cantrip inside it,” I said. “Not news to me.”
“Any cantrip.” He indicated a slot on the side, in which a cantrip had already been placed. “Know what this one does?”
I couldn’t see all the markings on its surface, but I saw enough to make ice flood my veins. “The virus…”
“Exactly,” he said. “This handy device amplifies the effects of any cantrip, including ones of our own creation. If, say, there was a
