Illusion: Book Four of the Grimoire Saga (31 page)

Deidre sheathed her sword. Kara sat upright and shot a fireball at Deidre’s face. The isen ducked. The fire burst against the wall, charring the paint. Kara shot another, but Deidre dodged it again. Another wound on the wall.

A bolt of lightning flew from Deidre’s fingers into Kara’s chest. Kara tensed, her body frozen as the electricity tore through. Smoke clogged her nose. She gagged. The pain lessened. She fell back to the floor, her head banging against the stone. Her cheeks flushed. A second wave of pain tore through her mind and down her neck. A steady throb pulsed along her spine.

Deidre straddled Kara, setting one knee on either side of her body. The woman’s icy fingers dug into Kara’s neck. She choked. She clawed at Deidre’s hands, trying to tear them away. They didn’t budge. The nails dug deeper. Kara’s throat closed. The air wouldn’t come. An ache spread along her neck. She twisted her hips under Deidre’s grasp, flailing in an attempt to knock the woman off balance. Deidre barely shook.

“And I wanted him to watch. Too bad,” Deidre said.

“What is
wrong
with you,” Kara gasped.

“We’re isen, child. This is what we do. All we understand is cruelty and anger and pain.”

Deidre released her left hand, though the right remained clamped around Kara’s windpipe. Flame erupted around the thin fingers. In a moment of lucid thought amidst the agony, Kara summoned fire as well. But Deidre grabbed her wrist with a fiery hand before she could do anything, clamping the wrist guard with a firm grip.

Leather melted in seconds, the drips welding to her flesh. The spikes digging into Kara’s skin dug deeper, hitting bone. Skin burned. Smoke fizzled from the mess. An eruption of pain ripped through Kara, blinding her. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t move. She wanted to beg for the pain to end, but she couldn’t speak.

Instead, Kara screamed.

Braeden cursed and spun around. Panic flooded his body. A chill swept clear to his toes. The throne room whizzed by him, empty except for Flick. The little beast whimpered at the base of a pillar, ears back as he cried. His legs stretched out along the floor, and he didn’t move.

Flick let out a tiny howl. It pierced the air, loud and sorrowful. Braeden shuddered and lifted the little creature into his hands. Flick yelped. He redirected his energy into the tiny body, focusing his energy on healing. Bones cracked and shifted in Flick’s spine. He whimpered, ears twitching. Braeden wrapped one hand around the creature’s back to keep him still.

The final bone snapped into place. Flick’s ears perked upright. He chirped and licked Braeden’s palm.

Braeden cursed under his breath. His eyes shifted to the unguarded flag behind his thrones, but worry tugged on his mind. He had a choice: release the flag and order the Stelian armies to stop, or take those precious minutes to find Kara before she was killed by a deranged isen strong enough to steal a Blood’s soul. With Kara’s wrist guard on, she’d never have the strength to take Deidre. She needed Braeden’s daru. If Deidre saw the war ending below, she may even kill Kara quickly out of spite.

Frustration bubbled in his gut. That wasn’t a choice.

“Where could they have gone?” he asked the air.

He set Flick on his shoulder and bolted into the hallway. His team of vagabonds stood outside the doors, swords drawn.

Remy cocked a hand as if ready to throw something, but his eyes widened when Braeden stepped into the hall. The Kirelm lowered his arm. “What—?”

“No time. Split up. Find Kara!” Braeden interrupted.

“But she didn’t come through here,” another Kirelm said.

A distant scream echoed through the hallway.

“Where—?” the Kirelm continued.

“Shh!” Braeden held a finger to his lips.

The scream died out.

“You”—Braeden pointed to a Kirelm vagabond—“get that banner down and wait for me. The rest of you, find Kara!” Braeden snapped.

The scream had no direction, so he followed his intuition and raced along the corridor. He didn’t pause to see if the squad obeyed. He didn’t care.

A chorus of yells and the clang of metal drifted down the hall. The path curved to the left. On his right, a wall of open windows displayed the war below. He caught glimpses of the battle—flames, bobbing heads, cobblestone—in a courtyard below. A gray tower filled the space across from him.

A roar rumbled through the air like thunder. The castle trembled. Braeden grabbed the edge of a window to steady himself. A dark mass flew by—a wyvern.

Garrett.

The wyvern disappeared around the edge of the castle, its tail curving around the stone as it vanished into the night.

A second scream shattered the air, clear and close. He flinched. The anguish in the woman’s tone broke his heart.

Kara.

He scanned the area below before his eyes flicked upward. Carden’s balcony—the one attached to his study—filled the night sky directly above Braeden’s head. He couldn’t see inside from this angle, but his heart sunk into his stomach anyway.

To scream like that, she had to be in incredible pain. Braeden sucked in a breath and prepared himself for the worst. He got her into this mess, and he’d get her out of it.

He scratched Flick’s head. “Ready, buddy?”

Pain tore through Kara. Her body ached. Her lungs wouldn’t operate. She gasped, but no breath came. White light blinded her when she opened her eyes. Fresh lines of agony ripped across her stomach, her chest, her face. Deidre couldn’t have stopped with the wrist guard—daggers of pain cut across her torso. Her cheeks flushed. She choked on bile.

Drowning in the bathtub was a hiccup compared to this.

She could barely function. Thoughts came across in fractured phrases, nothing but nonsense in her mind. Anxiety pulled on her body, yanking her shoulder blades together. Something fizzled. A flash of red blurred across the white.

Deidre cursed. Something crashed. Something else splintered apart.

The pain receded. Kara sat upright and nursed her arm. Patches of her vision returned. Her hand hung limp at the wrist. Black char covered most of the skin on her arm. The edges of the leather wrist guard blended with her freckles. She couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

A figure crossed her periphery. Kara glanced at it. Deidre raised a hand, a brilliant white light in the center of her palm. She threw it like a baseball at Kara’s head. Out of instinct or perhaps sheer luck, Kara ducked. It sailed past. Something crashed behind her. A fresh wave of nausea tore through her gut. A current of pain shot through her arm and into her shoulder. She cursed and scooted back across the floor.

Deidre aimed again and loosed another ball of light. Kara twisted away, but not in time. The light hit her upper chest—and sailed clean through.

Kara screamed, louder than before with the combined agony of her burned wrist and now the hole through her body. Blood spilled across her shirt. White and black flecks danced past her eyes. She gasped for air. Her mind retreated, unable to take the pain.

Deidre smiled, her grin spreading across her face. She drew her sword.

Crack!

Deidre’s eyes shifted to something behind Kara and cursed. A wave of air hit her in the chest. She sailed into the wall and tumbled to the floor.

A warm hand caressed Kara’s forehead. Braeden appeared beside her, kneeling. Flick whimpered from his shoulder.

Crack!

Flick’s familiar teleportation left Kara less ill than Carden’s little gray creature, but she retched anyway. Her world spun. She couldn’t take this. No more.

Please, no more.

The light faded. The temperature fell. A narrow line of light outlined a small door, only about half as tall as it should be. Shadows filled the small space, along with the outlines of thin sticks leaning against the far wall.

“Where are we?” Kara asked.

“A broom closet. I used to come here as a child when Carden scared me.”

Kara smiled but coughed. Another wave of pain ripped apart her lungs. She sobbed. Her hands shook. She wished she could hold both her new injury and wrist, but the former went largely unattended.

“You cowards!” Deidre screamed in the distance. Her voice bounced through the door, muffled almost beyond recognition.

Braeden lifted Kara and leaned her against him. She grimaced. She sat with her back against his chest. He slipped an arm under her burnt wrist. She flinched. Every breath hurt. Pain became aches, and the aches throbbed with every heartbeat. The longer she sat still, the deeper the agony dug into her core.

He ran a hand through her hair. “It’s going to be okay.”

She scoffed, her voice weak. “It hurts.”

Deidre screamed in frustration, her voice a little clearer this time. “Look at the mighty Blood of the Stele, running like the scared child he is!”

Kara flinched at the venom in Deidre’s voice. “She’s crazy.”

Braeden lowered her hand and eased it into a beam of light. The black burns welded her wrist guard to her skin, as she’d feared. Red boils covered her lower arm.

“Can you heal me?” she asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Braeden.”

“I—I don’t…”

“Please.” Her voice broke.

He hugged her, pulling her to his chest. “I can’t heal you. You’ve lost a lot of blood, and it looks like she beat you within inches of your life.”

Kara released a slow breath. She’d refused to take off the wrist guard at the start of the battle because of all the horrible things she’d done without it on. She’d sworn to herself to never remove it again. With Braeden so close, it made sense to resist the temptation. With the untamed power fueled by fear, she could do more than kill him—she could burn down the Stele in the process or possibly kill every Stelian alive. She hadn’t wanted to risk that.

But now, she faced dying herself. Everything died, but she didn’t want her second death to come so soon.

Her cheeks flushed. She relaxed into Braeden, letting him take her full weight. Her muscles couldn’t hold her anymore.

His voice rushed by her ear. His chest hummed with the sound. The words blurred together, none of them making sense. She groaned, fighting the desire to sleep. She had to know what he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Let me take the wrist guard off,” he said.

She shook her head, nausea rippling through her mouth as she spoke. “Don’t think you can.”

“I’ve got to try.”

“I’ll lose control. Kill you.”

“I don’t care.” His voice cracked.

She wanted to smile, to tell him it would be all right, but her mouth wouldn’t obey. She lay there, in his arms, her senses fading with the blood that drained on the floor.

Her eyes slid shut.

“Kara, come back to me,” he said in her ear.

Her back and neck muscles relaxed into him. The pain dissolved. Inwardly, she smiled.

I’ll try.

Chapter 23

Bloodlines

Braeden’s vision blurred with tears. His throat stung. He relaxed his hold on Kara so she could be more comfortable and set her head in his lap. He ran his thumb along her cheek, heart racing as he tried to figure out what to do.