One Thousand Kisses (36 page)

Anisette nibbled her fingertip, flinching when furniture crashed into their dome. “If we all had transport globes, we could each touch a lost one and steal them.”

Sonja nodded. “The numbers are roughly even. Fourteen of us, eleven of them.”

“Leave the Torvals for me and Embor. We’re staying.” Skythia stretched, brushing the zenith of the defensive shield. “It’s clobbering time.”

The brunette started crying and mashed against the barrier like it would protect her.

Warran stormed toward the girl. As he passed his sister, Ophelia snatched her brother’s arm.

The atmosphere droned with power depletion. Ophelia flung an air spell at the barrier, wind buffeting Embor’s resolve. Anisette supported him while he strained to outlast it. Not much magic left. The lights began to flicker.

The young woman, unfortunately, was too close. The cyclone twisted into her, and her body flew across the room.

Anisette lurched forward. “Oh my goodness.”

Warran pointed at Embor, yelling at his group. “Get me through that shield or the deal’s off.”

Euridyce turned her gun on the onesies.

Artur turned his gun on her. “The lost ones mustn’t open themselves to magic. This has gone too far.”

The balding man ignored Artur and stuck his fingers in his ears. Another director, a fairy of considerable girth, hauled back his fist to strike the onesie, but Ophelia flicked him aside with wind. His stout body tumbled across the floor.

Artur pivoted and shot at Ophelia. The lights sparked out, dropping the chamber into darkness.

“Brownout.” Sonja’s voice echoed hollowly in their pocket of safety, and someone chanted a prayer to the spirits. “Here we go.”

But it wasn’t a brownout. Embor could still fuel his barriers. Something else was happening.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The air began to sing, a knifelike whine. All around Ani, Embor’s staff collapsed, moaning and cursing. She clung to her bondmate, using his steadiness to keep herself upright. It felt like her brain was being turned inside out. Everyone’s hormones displayed panic and fear except one person, outside the shield.

“The lost one,” she said, raising her voice over everyone’s harsh breathing. “He’s using magic.”

“Stop him at all costs.” Embor dragged Ani close and dropped the shield.

Too late.

An explosion rocked the Court complex. The floor shuddered. The ceiling crumpled in. Embor threw up his arm along with a deflector shield, covering friend and foe alike, right before marble slabs pounded into it.

Ani protected her head with her hands, knowing it wouldn’t help if the shield failed. Shouts and cries, near and far. A few shields supplemented Embor’s, desperate and wobbly. Transportation magic popped on all sides as fairies capable of it escaped and took their companions with them.

Embor trembled beneath the rocks and magical depletion. Ani pressed her lips to his neck and infused him with so much power he heated like a forge. He heaved the deflector up, sending the broken stonework crashing down the sides.

Hunks of ceiling boomed into the floor. Sirens wailed throughout the complex.

“He ripped a new ring.” Ani patted Embor’s chest, checked his pulse.

“It’s bigger than the rings in Vegas combined.” Embor exhaled, his temperature decreasing. “Are you all right?”

“How could the Torvals be so greedy, risking everyone’s lives for political gain?” Anger stirred inside her as she considered the ramifications of their ambition.

“Because they’re Torvals,” Embor said.

Wind, heavy dust. Flashes of fire and power. The pallid light of unstable magic pouring into the earth like magma.

It wasn’t a ring. It was a crater. A tear in the world’s fabric so huge, she could almost see humanspace through it.

On the plus side, it was pulling magic from the whole area. The chamber was no longer devoid of power. That was the only plus.

Lightning flashed, brilliant and sudden. Embor frowned.

“Skythia’s fighting someone.” He hauled Ani up, and they checked their companions. Gangee tended a man with a crushed skull. Nearby, Sonja knelt over Artur’s body. Ani didn’t know if she was helping Artur or was the reason he was unconscious. Hormones flickered above the rubble, fairies in need of assistance.

But none flickered as brightly as Warran Torval. The Elder was at the other end of the room, hurling rock, hunting for something. Ani’s view was partially blocked by a section of buckled dome.

She directed Embor’s attention. Warran was alone and distracted. They might not get a better chance. “There’s Warran. We could overpower him.” Her hands tingled as the notion took hold. “If you can get me close enough to touch him…”

“Soon.” Ani could sense the fire racing through Embor’s veins. “Right now we have bigger concerns.”

He was right. They didn’t have time for Warran unless the other man forced the issue. If they couldn’t get the lost ones to humanspace, there’d be no elections, no Court, no revenge and no Realm.

She created a globe, brilliant and glowing, and flung it into the air. It wobbled, barely resisting the magnetism of the ring. Then she made several more, illuminating the destruction in the session chamber and the fairies trying to escape.

“Embor, I see them.” Three onesies, helping each other, limped over a heap. Colors swam around their bodies. “They’re not handling this well. Their hormones are chaotic. They’re frightened, full of magic. Can you transport them out?”

“Where to?” Embor asked. “The Drakhmores were imprisoned, so they aren’t waiting in Ellsmen to send the onesies through to Jake.”

Lemmar Stonehaus appeared beside them. “I’ll take them through a ring.”

“This is a ring,” she reminded the men after another glance at Warran. “Transport them here.”

“We have no idea where this opens,” Embor said. “It’s morphing so fast we can’t assume it will work like other rings.”

Ring science wasn’t Ani’s specialty, and she had no ether. The ring practically engulfed the chamber. The earth groaned its resistance. Magic boiled in a maelstrom, unreliable and wild. It wasn’t safe here.

“How about green ring?” she suggested. “Like we planned.”

Embor nodded. “Jake and Talista can handle them. Lemmar?”

“I’m on it.” Lemmar vaulted over crumbled stone and a few bodies to reach the young fairies.

Embor struggled to force-transport them, finally shoving them free. Magic hissed like a teapot when they blinked into between-space, interrupting Warran’s search. He locked gazes with Ani through the murk.

She bit back the urge to shriek—like a harpy, not a frightened child. Gangee had given her a few tips on agony magic as they’d healed the cabinet. Warran deserved to be her testing ground.

The Elder smiled the same cold smile she’d grown to dislike before any of this had happened. Dust marred his tailored tunic and beard.

“I see you’ve brought me my bride, Fiertag.”

Without so much as an acknowledgement, Embor blasted fire through the intervening space and engulfed Warran. The flames burned incandescent, melting stones and crackling the air. Ani could feel it from here.

When Embor made a fist, she heard the other man scream.

She punched Embor’s arm. “You can’t kill him. You can’t be like him.”

With a curse, Embor released the blaze. Warran cringed inside a cocoon of ice that burst into steam. He rallied with a pile drive of frigid air that slammed into Embor and Ani.

It hit like a wall. Some of Ani’s hair froze before Embor whipped up a shield. His ire, his temperature, increased each moment Warran sustained the current. He shook his head, melting his hair and clothing.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

Her teeth chattered. If she clung to Embor, she’d burn. If she didn’t, she’d freeze. “Getting angrier.”

At me?
said Embor’s voice in her head.

At the situation.
She used water magic to remove the ice from her lashes. Indignation blazed in her cheeks.
I changed my mind. You can kill him a little.

I’ll have to switch to a battle shield
, he warned.
That increases our risk.

I know.
Many fairies were still in the chamber, buried under rubble or helping those trapped. They couldn’t drag this out with lives at stake.

Embor compressed the shield so it curved in front but left the rear open. The icy air tightened into needles. They tinkled like bells in a mounting crescendo until they pinged off the edge into Ani’s skin, drawing fine dots of blood.

As her bondmate melted the ice, a tug of magic lurched through Ani’s body. Someone was trying to relocate her.

She grabbed Embor, hissing when her palms baked. Between-space loomed around her, and she felt the new ring sucking her in. “Someone’s trying to transport me through the ring. Close the shield.”

“Can he run two spells at once? Blast that devil.” Embor dove into her consciousness and seized the thread of transport magic. Following it back, he launched a firebomb through between-space at Warran.

The icy rain ceased when Embor’s spell hit, causing a small detonation. The rocks where Warran had been glowed red and smoky. The earth continued to complain and the magic to swirl. Ani spared a thought for Skythia, somewhere in combat.

“Your sister?” she asked.

“Chasing down AOC directors.” His brow furrowed. “Enjoying herself far too much.”

“Warran’s still here.” She squinted through the blurry shield. “I see his hormones and another set too.”

“You need to go. Take Gangee and Sonja and find Skythia.”

She massaged her hands and thought about that tingle. Thought about Gangee’s sixty-second lesson in agony magic. Thought about Warran and Ophelia and how angry, how very angry, she was. “I’m with you.”

“I can handle him. He doesn’t know I’m stronger now.” Embor released his shield, preparing to go on the offensive. “People are wounded. You’re needed elsewhere.”

“I’m needed here.” Ani inspected the room. The sizzle of magic gushing through the rift, obvious now after so much tumult, unnerved her.

Embor hmmed. “Where do you see his essence?”

She pointed at the mound of rubble that had been Warran’s original target.

As if her gesture had awakened a beast, the wreckage heaved. Stones whistled through the intervening space like cannon balls. Embor threw up a barrier.

The impact shoved them back. Ani fell. Rock thudded into the shield so violently it rattled her teeth.

“That’s not Warran,” she warned. He hoisted her up, tense and alert. “That’s air.”

Boom!

From behind, gale force winds flung them like dolls into Embor’s shield. Ani hit with a bruising crunch and landed in a sprawl.

She hissed with pain. Her shoulder burned. Dislocated. Could she heal herself? She needed that arm.

Embor rolled into a crouch. The barrier deflecting the rocks remained stable but left them vulnerable to Ophelia.

The air around Ani began to heat, almost comforting to her shoulder.

“They’re cornered,” Ophelia called to Warran. “Do you want me to save the girl for you?” She kicked a table out of her way as she approached. Blood and bruises covered her pasty skin, and her head was bald as an egg. Her long, skinny fingers splayed as she prepared another wind slam.

Ophelia was what Warran had been trying to uncover. Apparently he’d succeeded. And apparently she’d lost her wig in the process.

Ani concentrated her magic and let it guide her as she snapped her shoulder into place. Pain whistled in her ears, but not loudly enough for her to miss Warran’s response.

“Kill her,” he said. “I’ve got someone else in mind.” The icy needles resumed as Warran reentered the fray.

Embor loosed a stream of fire at Ophelia, which she blew back against them. He stopped the flame before it sizzled Ani. Unlike in her bedchamber, Warran and Ophelia didn’t hold back in some attempt to convince the Elders they were the good guys.

A stiff airstream punched them again. Ani, already flat, skidded across rubble. She thunked into the shield shoulder first. Ice tinkled off the other side of the barrier, but there wasn’t as much pain as expected. She’d healed her injury, something she’d never been able to do before the bond.

We need a bubble
, she said to Embor,
and a minute to strategize.

Or she tried to tell him. Something had twisted his mind, sliding between him and his abilities. A white glare, icy and blank, where there should be warmth.

She recognized it. Ophelia was using spirit magic to make him forget where he was. Turning off his fire.

If he lost the shield, the ice would slice them apart—provided the wind didn’t batter them to a pulp first. The Torvals would hover out of her reach and send wind, stones and hail to do the job.

Ani crawled to Embor’s side, where he gripped his skull and cursed. Touching his skin and melding their minds, she pushed at Ophelia’s magic.

Embor gasped as she entered him. Defended him. Her hands, buried in his dusty hair, flared like electric eels.

With a jolt, she broke Ophelia’s control and followed the thread home. Her earth power slammed into the other woman. Ophelia squealed like a rabbit caught by a fox.

The hail ceased. The shield collapsed. Ani lay across Embor, raw pain coursing through her. Released from Ophelia’s snare, Embor set her aside and disappeared.

Ani couldn’t see. Her eyes were full of squiggles. She heard flesh smack, fire roar, ice pelt in deadly slivers. Hot and cold rippled across her skin. Warran and Embor.

Where was Ophelia? The pain she’d caused the other fairy echoed inside her like the aftereffects of healing. Gangee hadn’t warned her—hadn’t had time to warn her.

Across the room, Sonja shouted, seemingly at her.

Watch out for what? Ani blinked.

A battered face appeared above her, evil, black eyes boring into her soul.

“I never liked you,” Ophelia rasped. “I’m so glad I get to kill you.”

She slapped her hand over Ani’s mouth and stole her air. Sucked it out of her lungs. Ani could swim for hours underwater, but this was different.

She convulsed, unable to so much as cough. She scrabbled at Ophelia’s arm before fear slipped away and anger prevailed.

Shoving her fingers at Ophelia’s throat, Ani didn’t need air to rend the other woman from the inside out. Unknit her bones. Unheal every wound she’d ever had and then some.

She didn’t need air to snatch the other woman’s magic and rip it out of her body forever.

Ophelia collapsed without a sound. When his sister lapsed, Warran cried out. The woman weighed little more than a sapling. Ani screamed through the ghastly recoil, which seemed to help, before pushing the body aside.

Ophelia wasn’t dead. Ani shut her lids over her bulbous eyes. Whatever she was, she wouldn’t be a danger to them again.