Ivy slashed and stabbed, her breathing ragged. “He must be in the trees.”
“That’s not going to save him.” Ezo’s voice sank into a gravelly growl. “These things can definitely climb.”
“He’s got his talents; we’ve got ours. Speaking of which, Ezo, now would be a good time.” Ivy lunged, stabbing a screaming gythan through the ribs. For a moment it looked like she might not be able to withdraw the sword. Another gythan attacked her from the side, and she fought it off one-handed before she finally jerked her first sword free and used it to lop off the beast’s head.
“Right.” Ezo pulled something out of an inner pocket in his vest. He bit part off with his teeth, then said, “Adi, close your eyes, and cover your ears!” He heaved, and the object flew into the mass of gythan.
His words didn’t fully penetrate the fear clouding my brain, but when I saw Ezo duck and cover, so did I. Even so, a flash of light burned my closed eyelids, and a sound like I was perched in the middle of a thunderstorm blew through me, shaking my whole body. The gythan screeched and bellowed, and when I raised my head, several of them had their faces pressed to the ground or were rolling around covering the little triangular ears that poked out the sides of their heads.
“What in the hundred hells was that?” I shouted, my own ears ringing.
Ezo already had his crossbow in hand again and was shooting bolts into the stunned gythan with startling accuracy. He paused just long enough to grin at me over his shoulder. “That’s a different kind of magic.”
Maybe I had been too hasty with my disgust for machinery.
Ivy cried out. I turned to see the surging gythan knock her off her feet and cover her in a roiling pile. Firenza was on the ground too. Still standing, but with gythan all around her, one of her wings held awkwardly to one side, shredded and bleeding. “IVY IS DOWN!” she bellowed.
Like a shadow, Talsar darted from the trees, striking out with his daggers, eyes hard, teeth bared. He fought his way toward us, but he wouldn’t get there in time.
“I can’t get a shot without hitting her!” Ezo yelled.
Ivy’s cries reached me, tortured and muffled.
I’d thought these people could handle anything, but they might actually die. Right here, right now. We might die. And we weren’t even to the hags yet. How were they going to fight the hags if they couldn’t defeat gythan?
Then I remembered—they weren’t supposed to fight the hags, and they definitely weren’t supposed to defeat them.
I didn’t have to stay and watch this. I could run. I could forget it all and just run away. Maybe when they were dead, I could search their bodies for whatever trinket the hags wanted. Maybe they would still teach me the power arcane, even if I didn’t have their four travelers. But for some reason—a reason that had nothing to do with the hags or power—I could not let them die.
I retrieved the small, ancient book from where it was hidden in a secret pocket in my skirt. There were spells, and there were spells.
With shaking fingers, I flipped open the peeling leather cover and slid my fingers between the delicate, yellowed pages, finding exactly the one I wanted. Laying the book open on my left hand, I raised my right to the sky, then pressed my palm down onto the arcane geometry inscribed there. It was a risk, doing magic this strong alone. If I tried to conduct too much energy through myself, I would lose control of the spell, and dire things would happen. Normally it took at least two people to channel the power for a spell like this.
But I wasn’t any old person, I was Adeline Riverdeep. I would make the magic answer to me.
Tingling heat flowed up from the drawing and into my palm. The ground around the boulder sizzled to life with a glowing purple-and-gold replica of the symbol, ten feet wide, with me at its center. It spun, burning away the grass, vibrating the earth as it moved. Ancient words spilled from my lips, heavy with the weight of ages. The power peaked; I ripped my palm from the page and thrust it toward the sky.
A sphere of gold-and-violet energy exploded from me, expanding faster than thought. I rode with the power, guiding it around my allies so it broke across the droves of gythan, against them, through them, pummeling and pulverizing them until they were nothing but a screaming, steaming mass heaped upon the ground. Power flowed from me like water from a punctured waterskin, but I pressed on until I reached the utmost of my body’s capacity. Until, alone, I could do no more.
I collapsed backward, panting. Not onto the cold, hard surface of the boulder, but into Ezo’s waiting arms.
I might have blacked out for a second, but only a second. Ezo was still holding me when I woke. I sat up, away from the goblin boy and his warmth, and surveyed the field, silent but for Firenza’s panting.
The gythan were dead. I had killed them all.
Ezo released me and jumped from the boulder, heading for Talsar and the pile of gythan where Ivy had disappeared. “Do you see her?”
“No.” Talsar’s leonine movements were uncoordinated and panicked as he yanked and tugged at the bodies. His voice cracked. “Firenza, help me!”
The gargoyle waded over and began tossing corpses over her shoulder as if they weighed no more than fallen leaves. “Ivy!”
At last, the forest elf appeared, still and gray and looking so strangely delicate in death. Her face was scratched and torn, and large parts of her exposed skin were—
My gorge rose, and I had to look away. There was so much blood.
Talsar fell to his knees beside her, regardless of the gore. “No. No. Not like this. Not in some gods-forsaken field on the road to nowhere. Not for nothing.” He pulled her into his arms.
My heart turned over at the terrible memory of the things I’d said to her. So awful, and for what purpose? So I wouldn’t like her? It was too late for that; I already did.
“YOU!” Firenza leveled a finger at me. “DO SOMETHING!”
My mouth worked for a second. She thought I was some kind of healer. But magic was a vast and diverse thing, and I was no healer. “I can’t. I don’t know those spells.” My eyes swung to meet Ezo’s just in time to see his hope die. “I’m sorry.”
I was. I could not fathom the depth of the grief that reached up to strangle me from the inside. Ivy was gone, and I had hardly even known her. But I knew she was sweet. Knew she was kind, and generous, and even awkwardly funny sometimes.
And she’d been on this road because of me. I was the reason she was dead.
Ezo stood next to Talsar, one hand on his shoulder. Firenza knelt opposite them across Ivy’s body and smoothed the hair from her friend’s bloody face. She was crying too.
I would be the reason all of them died.
For a long moment, they all sat there in silence.
Then Talsar laid Ivy on the ground and whispered, dark and determined, “Not like this.”
Eyes widening, I watched as he reached inside his coat and pulled out something that looked like a walnut. He slid his hands under Ivy again, holding her limp body not just gently but tenderly. The other two didn’t seem confused or surprised. He met their eyes in turn, and they both nodded.
They’d known. They’d known what he carried.
No one gives away a vital spark. They cost too much. He wouldn’t do what it looked like he was about to do. There was no way.
Then Talsar opened his palm and pressed the most powerful magical object I had ever beheld—an object someone he loved had given their life for—into Ivy’s chest.
Ivy jerked, her lungs expanded, and she cried out, head thrown back, boots kicking the ground. Wounds all over her body shrank and began to close. She let out a sound of agony, and Talsar pulled her into his chest, holding her tight against the spasms that racked her until, at last, she stilled.