I roll aside. The heat singes my cheeks. A spark slams into the top of my arm, gouging a chunk from my biceps.
I grit my teeth against the pain, my stomach rolling as my body tries to decide whether to faint or fight. I almost drop the wand. The fire cauterises the wound, staunching any further bleeding. My mind has already decided: I am far too stubborn to do anything but kick this woman’s arse.
“What are you doing, you idiot? We don’t want to kill her!” Meredith shouts.
The mage ignores her, lost to temper—power without discipline. Magic is controlling her, not the other way round.
A torrent of water bursts from my wand and crashes over her, dousing her left side. She retaliates, sweeping fire towards the trees, but a twist of my wrist snuffs the spell mid-air, the flames collapsing into nothing with a wet sigh.
“You’re clever,” she spits, adjusting her stance, “but not clever enough.”
Another fireball surges at me. I sidestep, letting it strike the warded trees; the spell ricochets and rebounds towards her.
She screams and drops the paperweight to shield her face.
I snatch it up and box it.
Another water spell slicks my fingertips; with a twitch, it spirals into a rope that whips around her wrist, yanking her wand arm down with a sharp jerk.
“How can you be so strong?”
A spear of ice follows, slamming into her forearm. Her wand clatters to the ground. She sobs as I use the rope of water to secure her arms behind her back, binding her tightly enough that she cannot wriggle free without dislocating something.
Richard—the one who has been staring at Samuel—spins and locks eyes with me.
“You!” he screams, his voice ragged with fury. “You killed him!”
“He is not dead. None of them are.”
He wails and charges across the sodden grass.
He forgets he is a wizard and he has magic. Instead of casting, he barrels towards me, hands outstretched for my throat.
He is moving too fast. Handling the paperweights has left me tired and slow. I am not prepared for anything physical. Hand-to-hand combat was never part of my training; my family saw it as a weakness but focused on cultivating my paper magic instead.
Yet this body—this bodydoes not remember that.
Something in me reacts. Instinctive. Automatic.
One moment I am frozen in shock, and the next I have caught his wrist, twisted his arm behind his back, and driven my knee into the backs of his legs. He collapses, and I follow him down, knee on his spine, fist crashing into his face.
A crack echoes.
He falls still.
My breath catches as I recognise the technique.
Beryl.
It is her fighting style—quick, brutal, efficient. I have watched her move like this—first as a woman, later as a stake guiding others—never imagining I might do it myself.
Then it dawns on me.
It is just like the technomancer magic: the sliver I took—and replaced—to make Beryl sentient has lain dormant inside me, silent until now. I stare at my clenched fists. I am channelling her; a remnant of her skill was buried deep, waiting to be triggered.
Bloody hell.
I know how to fight. Beryl will be tickled pink.
