Magic Breaks

“A flaming sword.” Hugh shook his head. “Come on. Let’s do this.”

“Wait,” Towers said.

Diana shot forward, bringing her saber up for a thrust. It was a good thrust, well aimed and fast. Hugh met her halfway. His gladius slipped into her side almost on its own. He spun her about, clamped her to him, her back against his chest, and held the blade covered with her blood to her throat. It took less than a second.

Argh. I grabbed the bars. Magic burned me and I let go.

“Tell me, Kate,” he said, his voice casual. “When Lennart is on top of you and you’re waiting for him to finish, do you ever think of me? Just to spice things up.”

Diana rasped, gasping for breath. Her side bled as her body pumped her lifeblood out of the wound.

“No,” I ground through my teeth. “But when I feel down, I picture killing you and it cheers me right up. It makes me giggle.”

Hugh laughed and jerked Diana up, her temple pressed against his cheek. “See that woman you put in the cage?”

Diana’s breath came out in hoarse gasps.

“Ask her for your life,” Hugh said.

“You f**king bastard.” When I got out of here, I would cut pieces off him until he stopped moving.

“Ask her nice,” Hugh repeated. “If she gives you your life back, I’ll let you go.”

“You made your point. I don’t want her to die,” I said.

“Ask her,” Hugh said.

Diana’s lips moved. “Fuck you.”

“Wrong answer.” Hugh sliced her throat and stepped back. The female knight froze, upright, eyes opened wide. Dark blood gushed from her throat. Her eyes rolled up and she stumbled and fell. Her blood spread in a wide puddle on the floor.

Nick’s eyes were empty. He looked at the blood, seemingly untroubled by it. He might as well have been dead.

“A waste.” Hugh flicked the blood off his sword.

Towers moved forward, cautious. He moved like a spooked cat, light on his toes and jumpy.

Had everyone gone crazy today? “What are you doing? Just shoot this a**hole! He can’t keep using power words. He’ll run out of juice before you run out of crossbow bolts.”

“Swordsman, huh.” Hugh put the gladius on the examination table behind him. “Look, Ma, no sword.”

Towers darted at him and thrust, lightning-fast. Hugh leaned out of the way just enough for the blade to miss, grabbed Towers’s wrist, leaned back, and hammered a side kick into the knight’s ribs, just above his right hip. The kick didn’t just land, it exploded. Towers stumbled back, bending over his injured side.

Hugh smiled and motioned him over. “Come on.”

Towers darted in and slashed left to right, aiming for Hugh’s throat. Too slow; I’d lean back.

Hugh leaned back and the blade grazed his left shoulder.

Towers reversed his swing and tried to smash the pommel of the sword into Hugh’s face, leaving his midsection wide open. You could drive a bloody cart through that opening.

Hugh dodged, grabbed his gladius from the exam table, and cut at Towers. The first blow opened the knight’s stomach. Before he had a chance to reel, Hugh sank a sharp precise thrust to the knight’s side, right between the ribs into the liver.

Towers dropped to his knees, cradling his guts. Hugh grabbed his hair. “Ask her for your life.”

“I want him to live,” I ground out.

“He has to ask,” Hugh told me.

Towers jerked a knife from his belt and buried it in Hugh’s thigh.

“I guess we’ve got ourselves a no.” Hugh stabbed his gladius into the knight’s chest.

Towers gurgled and sagged to the floor.

I spun in the cage, helpless. He kept killing them and they kept dying and I could only watch. Rage boiled inside me. “Why are you doing this?”

Hugh flicked the blood off his sword. “You wanted me to show you something.”

“Well, so far all I’ve seen is you killing the Order’s second-best. Pick on someone your own size.”

“All in good time.” Hugh smiled at me, his eyes cold.

Where the hell were the PAD and the National Guard? How long did it take them to mobilize?

“Like it or not,” he said, “you’re still his daughter. Run from it, spit on it, that’s your choice. Those of the blood can insult the blood. Nobody else. I won’t allow it.”

I finally understood. This wasn’t just about me; this was about the Order dragging my name through the mud after I left and then caging me here now. This wasn’t just elimination. This was punishment. He would kill every knight in the chapter but not before he made all of them submit to me and beg me for their lives.

I had to do something.

The ward between the bars of the cage wasn’t solid. It hurt like hell when I thrust my hand through it, but I could thrust it. I turned my back to Hugh and clawed the cut on my left forearm. Pain lanced me. Crimson washed my skin, the magic in it alive and ready. I pulled it, shaping it with my will into a five-inch-long spike. It was long and sharp and an eye was such a soft target, with the brain right behind it. I just had to get him close to the cage.

“You’re going to want to see this next part,” Hugh said. “I’m just getting started. Or is it too much for you?”

I turned to Hugh. “I keep thinking about the fire that destroyed your castle. Nobody could’ve lived through that. What if you aren’t even you?”

Hugh stepped closer to the cage.

“What if my father has a closet full of Hughs, and every time Curran and I break one, he just pulls another copy out?”

Hugh stepped over Towers’s body and slowly, deliberately walked over to the bars. Just out of striking range. All I needed was another two or three inches.

“I once watched a movie where a man made clones of himself,” I told him. “Each clone was dumber than the previous one. I think that actually might be true. You’ve attacked the Order. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve seen you do yet.”

Hugh leaned forward. His blue eyes fixed on me, hard and predatory. That’s right, show me how big and bad you are. Come on. Tell me all about it. Come closer. Closer.

“Tell me, what’s your number, clone-Hugh?”

“You want to know how I survived? He stole a phoenix egg and put me inside it. For two months I soaked in it, growing new skin and a new spine, and thought of what I would do to Lennart and you when I got out.” Hugh leaned closer. Another inch and we’d be in business. “And let me tell you, the look on your face when you watch them die makes it all worth it.”

The stairs shuddered under rapid steps. Hugh turned.

No! Argh, almost had him.

Four people charged into the room: a dark-haired female knight I didn’t know, Ted Moynohan, the medmage Steinlein, and in front of them all, a slender man with a bald head and Celtic-blue war paint tattooed on his face. Richter. The Order’s resident psychopath.

Great. More people for him to kill.

“The knight-protector.” Hugh swung his sword in a lazy circle, warming up his wrist. “Finally. And here I thought you’d just let me wreck your house.”

“Open the cage and I’ll take him apart,” I said. I had beaten him once. I could do it again.

Hugh chuckled. “Come on, Kate. Don’t embarrass them. They’re knights. Time someone tested them.”

Ted looked at the two prone bodies on the floor around him and smiled. His people were dead and he smiled.

The realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Ted wanted a massacre. He was on his way out, either to be disgraced or to retire, and he must’ve wanted it to count. He must’ve decided to go out in a blaze of glory. But his death alone wouldn’t be enough. If Hugh killed him, the Order might find a way to overlook it, but if Roland’s warlord slaughtered the entire chapter, the knights would do everything in their power to hunt him down. It had to be brutal, and bloody, and vicious, so those who died wouldn’t be just fallen knights or victims, they would become martyrs.

Hugh wanted to kill all of them. Ted wanted all of them to die. He wanted his own Alamo. The knights would give their lives, every single one of them, after a dramatic final standoff, and Maxine would bear witness to all of it. We were watching the start of the war between Roland and the Order.

Nothing I could do or say would make any difference. I sank to the floor next to Robert. Across the room Nick looked at me, his face pale like the snow outside. Our gazes met. He understood and he would watch it all just like me and Robert.

Ted pointed at Hugh. “Get him.”

• • •

RICHTER PULLED OUT two short blades and blurred, splitting into three transparent versions of himself. Two were false and one was real. The triplets charged, launching a flurry of strikes at Hugh. The preceptor of the Order of Iron Dogs backed away under the barrage, blocked, and kicked, putting all of the power of his massive legs into it. The real Richter flew across the room and bounced off the wall.

The dark-haired woman lunged from the side and stabbed at Hugh, aiming between his left ribs, fast. Hugh leaned back, let the sword pass, and drove his left elbow into the female knight’s face. She stumbled back. Richter dashed back and sliced at Hugh’s right shoulder. Blood sprayed. Hugh backhanded Richter out of the way.

The woman charged in again and froze, caught on Hugh’s blade like a fish on a hook. He thrust up into her chest, twisted, carving out the heart, and hurled her corpse at Richter. The smaller knight dodged and charged Hugh again in a frenzy. Hugh dropped back, blocking with the flat of his blade, his face calm and collected. His eyes turned calculating. It was like Voron had been resurrected and possessed Hugh, and I knew exactly what came next. He would cut Richter apart, slowly, methodically, using every opening. He would not lose his temper, because in this place, where the angle of the blade separated life from death, Hugh was impossible to rattle. If a red-hot meteorite punched through the roof and exploded, he wouldn’t blink an eye. I knew that place well. That was where I was at my best.

Richter drew blood again and again, each strike of his blades opening another minor wound. Hugh held back.

Then Richter swung his right arm a fraction too wide.

Hugh’s sword sliced, precise and merciless. He stabbed Richter in the stomach, whirled, and kicked the knight’s leg out from under him. As Richter dropped to his knees, Hugh stabbed him in the spot where the neck met the shoulder. Richter gasped. Hugh swung his sword and Richter’s head rolled on the floor.

My chest hurt. I would remember this feeling for as long as I lived, this terrible feeling of being locked in a cage and being able to do nothing.

Ted Moynohan roared. A dark red outline flared around his body, sliding over his mace. Apparently the knight-protector had some magic of his own.

Hugh crouched and grabbed a second sword from Towers’s body sprawled on the floor.

Ted charged. Hugh moved out of the way. Ted whipped the mace around as if it weighed nothing. Hugh blocked, letting the mace slide off Towers’s sword, but his arm shook a little. He shifted his feet. That was a hell of a blow. If I were him, I’d try to avoid blocking.

“Did you know who she was when you decided to belittle her?” Hugh asked.

“I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,” I said.

“Someone has to do it, since you won’t.”

Ted spun the mace and swung at Hugh. Hugh blocked again and the mace head snapped the blade in half. Hugh slashed Ted’s arm with the broken blade and jerked his hand away. The broken sword clattered to the floor. Whatever that red aura was, it hurt like a sonovabitch.

“Did you know who she was?” Hugh repeated.

Ted swung his mace again. Hugh ducked, leaped over Richter’s corpse, and grabbed a shield off the wall.

“You didn’t. You still don’t, do you?”

Ted swung again and Hugh thrust the shield in his way. The mace connected. Boom. The shield rang like a gong.

“I would’ve thought your boys would have better intel.”

Boom.

“At least do your damn homework. Sloppy, Moynohan. Very sloppy.”

Boom. Hugh was waiting for Ted to fall into a pattern. Ted would hit harder and harder, trying to break through the shield with raw strength. Once an opponent fell into a pattern, they became predictable—and they could be defeated.

“When you get a power like that on your side, you move heaven and earth to hold on to it.”

Boom.

“But you didn’t, did you?”

Boom.

“Because you’re a moron.”

Ted swung, putting all his power into the blow, expecting to break through the shield. Hugh stepped right and turned. The mace whistled through the air a hair from his chest. Ted had put so much momentum into the blow, he couldn’t stop. The weight of the mace drove him down and Hugh stabbed him in the chest. If he didn’t hit the heart, he was damn close.

Blood surged. Ted’s eyes bulged.

“No,” Hugh said. “No, that was too easy.”

What?

Ted struggled to raise the mace. The red aura around him died.

Hugh clamped his hand to Ted’s chest. “Come back. You’ve got more in you.”

A blue glow flared around Hugh’s fingers. Something gurgled in Ted’s throat. Red bubbles expanded out of his mouth.

He was healing him. This was torture. “Just let him die!”

“No, not yet.” Hugh shook his head. “Come on. Come back to me.”

Ted’s arms shook. He sucked in a breath.

Hugh released him. The knight-protector stumbled back.

Hugh banged his gladius against the shield. “Come on, knight. Show me more.”