Oh, how I longed to crack his skull open with lightning. To see his eyes melt, run from their sockets while the last thing they saw was me.
I rose again, the wolf inside me howling. The storm clawed at my veins, desperate to spill free.
Thorne bared his teeth in an ugly smile. “You look pathetic, Magister, trembling like the scared little boy you are.”
I trembled because I was moments away from unleashing the storm.
“Brace!” he called to his men, though I could not yet guess why. Then he muttered under his breath, “Light of the Heavens, bare the truth and blind the wicked. Let righteous flame reveal all shame, let falsehood be stricken.”
I took a long stride toward him, ready to open him from throat to belly, but he raised his shield and slammed it into the ground.
Cobblestones cracked beneath it. Light erupted, a blinding, devouring radiance that swallowed the battlefield whole.
For a heartbeat, I saw nothing but white. A sight I knew well, though it felt strange when another had conjured it.
Everyone around me—our soldiers, Thalen, the battlemages—reeled from the blast of light, all of them temporarily blinded.
Sounds of blade through flesh echoed around me. Thorne’s men ripped through robes with their swords, cutting down a great manybattlemages. Our soldiers, dazed and disoriented, fell to slashed throats and shattered ribs.
Thorne surged toward Thalen, who still shielded his eyes. I had to move, or he would fall next. I had no desire to lose a magister today.
My blade blocked Thorne’s with a thunderous crack. Behind me, Thalen stumbled, tripped, and crashed to the ground. I stepped between him and Thorne, raising steel to meet steel.
At least that old, stubborn fucker was still alive.
That was when the horns of retreat sounded through the city.
Every man and woman on our side knew what it meant. They had ten heartbeats to fall back before I summoned the storm.
Thorne’s men seized the moment to swarm across the bridge and breach the gates.
One.
Our soldiers scrambled for shelter. Thalen and his battlemages withdrew into the dark. I no longer saw them.
Two.
Thorne left me behind and pushed into the courtyard with his swarm of rats, their steel clashing against the guards within.
Three.
I stepped onto the bridge and walked slowly to buy our soldiers some time to hide, toward the courtyard, trailing behind Thorne’s insurrection.
Four.
Steel rang against steel in a wild metal symphony. Lionel stood far off by the castle gates, still as stone, watching the battlefield.
Five.
Some of Thorne’s men noticed me and rushed to cripple me. The storm leaked, and I turned them to ash.
Six.
I was about to do something I had nearly done twice before. At the academy, when I’d stopped the riots with an unending storm. AtDrachenfels Keep, when I’d shown Evie my true self. But neither came close to what awaited now.
Because this time I would release it all. Every shred of energy within me, bound to the skies above. All at once.
Seven.
