He looked up at me, his face a mass of bruises, a nasty cut over his left eye. I realized with a start it was the same place he had been scarred from our Calling in the House of Eros. He looked confused for a moment as he realized there was an Air shield supporting him. Without losing his gaze, I nodded at him and winked.
“Adelfos,” I whispered, catching his eye. “No retreat.”
“No surrender,” he responded, surprise etched on his face as I focused to free him from the Suppression.
I turned my gaze to the piece of shit who was Maalik.
“Maalik, do you remember…” I began, breathing deeply as more Elusians began focusing their Suppression powers on me.
“Do you remember what I promised you in the House of Eros?” I asked as I pulled first one leg under me, then another. I struggled to my feet, their power like a physical weight weighing my body down, but I stood like a weightlifter, each movement coordinated to support the power pounding down on me.
I held my hands out to my sides and summoned my new powers. Both my palms were glowing, rings of Earth, Air, Fre, and Water flashing around them.
All the Elusians seemed to be focusing their powers on me now, but instead of continuing to weigh me down, they seemed to flow over me and through me.
“I promised you that if you touched him, I would rip you limb from limb,” I said.
Aurelius acted finally, pulling his pistol and aiming. Not at me, like I had expected. He aimed at Betts.
“Surrender, Kataramenos, or I shoot the girl,” he said.
Before either of us could act, I heard a loud roaring sound and saw a white blur descend from the ventilation duct in the ceiling, and suddenly Aurelius was looking down at the bloody stump where his hand had been, the pistol clattering to the floor.
A giant white snow tiger stood in the middle of the barracks, it’s white hide crisscrossed with black stripes. It shook its head and roared, Aurelius’ hand flying from his mouth as he turned his eyes on me. His silver eyes.
“Maybe I should be callingyoukitten,” I whispered. Hel roared at me, then turned back to the guards, bounding forward, slashing with claws that were every bit of six inches long. I heard the brief ululation of another guard, then the sound of bones crunching all the way over here.
The Elusians stupidly continued to focus their powers on me.
“Mageia!” I yelled, my voice rising above the sounds of fear and shouts from the Alexandrians. “The Elusians can’t Suppress your powers, not while I’m here,” I said, a dark smile growing on my face.
“Time to clean house.”
Maalik, being the coward he was, ran, but I was never far behind.
I’ll give him one thing. He was fast, but I had been spending weeks in these tunnels. I didn’t know them as well as Hel, but I had a better idea than Maalik where we were headed.
He slammed through a door to an area of the tunnels I hadn’t visited before, but Hel had told us about it. Water roared around us, and I realized this must be the aquifer that Hel had mentioned. The water splashed and rumbled, tumbling from an opening in the rock far overhead and pouring down into a cavern below. The whole room shook with the roar, the metal catwalk vibrating with the noise.
Maalik ran until he ran out of room. He stood at the edge of the metal catwalk that circled the cavern, desperately looking for an escape, but there was none. Not for him.
He turned back to me as I created an Air bubble around us to muffle the noise of the water.
“What— What are you?” he said, stumbling backward, his left hand grasping the walkway. I raised my right hand, rings of Air and Fire rotating crazily around it.
“I think it should be obvious, by now, Maalik,” I whispered, my voice reverberating with a strange power, echoing even in the roar of the cavern. “I’m Mageian.”
“Kat— Elex, no, you- you can’t!” he whimpered as he realized his Suppression power wasn’t working on me, so he switched tactics.
“We-We’re brothers! We could rule together! Cyrius is an old man; he’s losing his will in this war. We could kill him and take the throne. Think of what we could do, together, as brothers!”
“You’ve never been my brother, Maalik,” I said.
His simpering, pleading act faded as he gazed into my implacable gaze.
“Fine. Fuck you, Kataramenos,” he spat angrily. “You were always weak. Sniveling over your brother, your mother, those fucking slaves! I am thePrince!”He said, pounding his chest with his fist, his fingers brushing across the medals that flailed impotently. “I was meant to rule!”
Behind me I heard Luke and Hel pound into the room.
