Black Widow (38 page)

Every time she'd confronted me before, Madeline had been wearing a silverstone necklace and ring. But she'd been so sure that I was dead that she'd lowered her defenses and started wearing gold ones instead. As soon as Silvio had shown me a photo of Madeline sporting her new gold jewelry, I knew that this was how I could finally challenge her to a duel and win. This was how I could finally finish her.

Arrogance will get you, every single time.

I didn't have to beat Madeline with my magic. Didn't have to punch her. Didn't have to touch her at all. Oh, I would have been happy if I'd managed to kill her any of those ways, but those were just the feints I'd used to sucker her into my ultimate trap. My plans within a plan, just like all the ones she'd used on me.

Because the truth was that all I had to do was outsmart her, outlast her, just like I had the fire in the Pork Pit.

Then she'd be mine for the killing.

So I pulled back on my power, using the bare minimum to keep Madeline's acid from melting me where I stood. It was agony, since I could still feel the acid flames licking at my body, could still sense my skin blistering, could still smell my own flesh burning. But I used just enough of my Ice and Stone magic to let me endure the horrid sensations. I even staggered around, then fell to one knee, as though I were finally weakening. Through the green flames, I saw Madeline's crimson smile widen and the white flash of her teeth as she stepped forward, eager to finish me off.

I grinned back, although I doubted that she realized it. If I could have, I would have whispered the age-old adage:
Step into my parlor, said the Spider to the fly.

Madeline just didn't realize yet that she was the fly.

But she kept coming and coming, completely focused on directing every single scrap of power she had at me. The acid flames intensified. So did my pain, and doubt filled my mind, just as it had in the restaurant when the fire had come for me. I wondered if I'd miscalculated. If she had more power in her body than I did in mine and in all my silverstone jewelry put together.

If she was going to incinerate me with her magic after all.

But this was the path I'd chosen, and there was no turning back now. Even if I'd wanted to try to fight her with my own power, there was no point. Not anymore. Her acid was so hot, so caustic and corrosive, that it would eat right through whatever Ice and Stone magic I
could summon up, other than what was keeping me alive at the moment.

So I huddled there on the floor and concentrated on my own magic and the low, urgent whispers of the stone around me. The marble had experienced the cruelty of Madeline's power, just as I was feeling it now, and they wanted me to end it and her just as badly as I did. I thought that the crowd was screaming for my death—and my friends were just screaming—but I couldn't tell. The world had reduced to a solid wall of acid green fire, creeping closer and closer with every passing breath.

I don't know how long I crouched there on my knee with one hand braced on the floor, steadying myself. It could have been a minute, it could have been an hour. There was just pain and the stench of my burning flesh and then more pain. So I concentrated on the feel of my power. On that hardness deep down inside me that was Stone, perfectly matched and married to the bitter cold that was Ice. Two complementary elements brought together in one person, and now, in the one protective shell of my magic.

Madeline towered over me, more and more acid flames erupting from her hands, like fireworks exploding in my face over and over. But I maintained my control, and I held on.

And eventually, finally,
at last
, she started to falter.

It was just a small tremor, just the faintest hiccup of her power. As though one gas tank were empty, and she was plugging herself into another one for round two. Maybe that's exactly what she was doing.

But that's the moment I knew that I'd finally won—once and for all.

I drew in a breath, careful not to suck in any of the green flames, and let loose with a bloodcurdling scream, as if I were mere seconds away from fully succumbing to Madeline's unending waves of acid. I screamed again and again, then let my voice choke off, as if I were suddenly overcome with more pain than any person had a right to bear.

I tried to rise up. I could have made it if I'd really wanted to, but it was all part of my plan. I tried again. Then, on my third try, I let my feet slip out from under me and crumpled to the floor, as though I were on my deathbed.

I wasn't, but Madeline was—she just didn't know it yet.

But she was so eager to finish me off that she never even thought that I might be playing possum. She took another step forward, then another, then another, coming closer and closer.

I let her come.

I
wanted
her to come.

Then she did the one thing that was most important of all—she started pushing even more and more of her acid into the flames, thinking that my end was near and that all she needed to finish me off was a big enough dose of magic, one that would finally blast through the protective shell of my Ice and Stone power.

I lay there on the floor and let the world burn around me.

Finally, there was another little hiccup in Madeline's
magic. Another faint tremor. I waited, wondering if she might have guessed my plan, if she might be trying to sucker me in the same way that I was her. But the hiccup came again, and again, and again, like a car that was out of gas and sputtering along as far as it could before it ran out of juice completely.

Good thing, since I was almost out of magic myself.

My own natural power was long gone. So was what had been housed in my ring. One by one, I'd emptied all the links in my necklace, and all the magic that I had left was what was still stored in the spider rune pendant.

Finally, just when I thought that I couldn't last another minute, Madeline let out a great, heaving breath, as though she was as exhausted as I was. The flames on her hands died down, and she staggered back a few steps before she was able to regain her footing.

I huddled there on the floor, which had long ago been burned all the way down to the foundation. Slowly, the black and white and green stars faded from my vision, the roaring in my ears ceased, and I could hear the whispers of the crowd.

“Is it over?”

“Is Blanco dead?'

“She's burned, but it doesn't seem too bad to me.”

Madeline stood there in front of me, panting with exhaustion. But still, I didn't move, didn't speak. All I did was breathe and breathe and gather up what was left of my magic.

Finally, I lifted my head. Gasps rippled through the entire room, and Madeline's face paled as I managed to lurch up and onto my feet.

“You—you—you should be
dead 
!” she sputtered. “I heard you scream. I saw you fall to your knees, to the fucking
floor
. I used all my magic on you! How can you possibly still be alive?”

I grinned. “Because sometimes, to win, it's better to play defense than offense. At least, until the final horn is about to blow.”

Madeline frowned, wondering what I was talking about. Then she reached for her magic, still determined to kill me. But she'd burned through all of her power, and all she could muster up were some weak drops of acid that flickered like sparklers on her fingers. I looked at her, as tired and bone-weary as she was.

“This isn't over,” she hissed. “You're not dead, but you haven't won either. Not while I'm still alive. You can't possibly have any more magic left than I do.”

I shrugged. “I don't. Not in my own body, anyway. But do you know what the difference is between you and me?”

I reached for my spider rune pendant, holding it away from my neck and out to her. “I came prepared to
win
.”

Madeline's eyebrows knit together in confusion, her green gaze locked onto the pendant as I let it go. The spider rune swung back and settled into the hollow of my throat, the silverstone rune a cool balm against the red burns and blisters that marred my skin.

Madeline's fingers crept up to her own necklace, and she finally realized what I meant. She sucked down a breath to scream, probably for Emery to come finish me off, or save her, but it was already too late.

“Good-bye, Madeline.”

Before she could move, before she could react, before she could fight back, I reached out and clasped her hands with my own.

The flames of her acid magic licked at my skin, but I ignored the pain, even though it felt as though my fingers were melting, melting off. Madeline gritted her teeth and brought what was left of her magic to bear.

But it wasn't enough.

Oh, her acid still burned me terribly, and the silverstone branded into my palms heated up, as the magical metal absorbed as much of her power as it could to try to protect me.

Madeline was right. I'd exhausted all of my natural magic fending her off, but I still had the reserves tucked away inside my spider rune. When Owen had given me the necklace for my birthday, I'd appreciated its beauty and the thought and sentiment he'd put into crafting something so exquisite for me. But I'd also seen it as the weapon that it truly was.

One that I finally put to good use.

I reached for the magic that was stored in my pendant. I gathered and gathered and gathered up all that cold, hard, chilling power, imagining cupping it in the palms of my hands.

Then I shot it out at Madeline.

Her hands froze first, since that's where I let loose with the power. In an instant, my Ice and Stone magic had turned her delicate fingers a cold, bitter blue, and I knew that her skin and bones would shatter if I so much as blew a breath of air onto them.

In the next second, the Ice and Stone had traveled up
her arms and started spreading across her chest before zipping down her torso, pooling in her legs, and spreading out through her bare feet onto what remained of the marble floor. In another second, she was anchored in place, even as she desperately struggled to move.

I could feel her pushing back with her own power, forcing more and more acid magic out of her hands, but this time, it wasn't enough to overcome the elemental Ice that I was encasing her with. Still, I added another three inches of it around her hands, just to be sure.

Madeline opened her mouth. Maybe to scream at Emery to help her and kill me, or maybe just at the unfairness of how I'd used her own tricks to beat her. But I sent out another wave of Ice magic, more powerful than all the rest. A bright silver light flared, so intense that I had to shut my eyes against the cold burn of it.

When I opened them, it was done, and Madeline Magda Monroe was fully encased in my elemental Ice.

My hands were still clasping Madeline's frozen ones, and I could see her green eyes darting back and forth behind the Ice as she tried to think of some way to escape. But there was none. I'd made sure of that.

So I held hands with my mortal enemy and watched as the frantic movements of her lips, nose, and eyes grew slower and slower, and weaker and weaker, until she finally died, frozen in place by the cold, hard fury of my Ice and Stone magic.

28

When I was sure that it was done, and that Madeline was dead, I drew in a breath and finally let go of what little magic was left in my spider rune.

It was harder than it should have been to pry my burned, blistered hands out of her cold, dead, frozen ones, almost as if she were still somehow desperately clinging to me, but I managed it, even though I left a fair amount of skin behind.

This time I stumbled back for real and fell to my knees in the center of the ballroom. All around me, pools of bright green acid smoked, bubbled, and burned, but they were slowly losing strength, their flames sputtering, as if their hot, caustic power had somehow been tied to Madeline's life, her very existence. Maybe they had been. Either way, she was dead, and I wasn't, and I didn't care about what remained of her magic or how it corroded everything it touched.