Nausea grasped Lory’s stomach at the sight of the blood spilling from the man’s throat, splattering the grass at his feet as he collapsed, hand uselessly grappling at his broken flesh.
“Splash and freeze,” Thal murmured behind Lory, and when she glanced at Aiden, he gave a curt nod.
“Better him than us,” he said with the conviction of someone who had calculated the outcome of this battle and come to the conclusion that the ends justified the means.
Before Lory could truly bemoan the life lost, Nyla’s gasping breaths caught her attention, and for a heartbeat, the impulse to help her enemy ran through her, but a fresh set of roots was already shooting for Tabi, whose hand was raised high above her head, fingers curling like she was squeezing the life out of a lemon.
“Burn them,” Tabi shouted as the roots came close enough to touch, and Lory lunged for them, dropping her sword to let her fire spread into her other hand, and grabbed the flexible wood as it raised before them like a serpent poised to strike.
They hissed and retracted so fast Lory could barely let go before being dragged along. Stumbling a few feet forward, she got close to the place where the wall of air had held off Tabi’s magic a few moments ago, and she quietly thanked Thal and Aiden for their thorough eradication of that obstacle, or she might have been shredded by magic.
Another strike of lightning rained down on them, but the roof of safety woven from Thal’s power no longer covered Lory, and as a finger of electricity soared through the night, it caught on her sleeve, singeing the black fabric and the skin beneath.
“Ouch!”
Slapping her hand over her biceps on instinct, she forgot to extinguish her fire, and the side of her shirt caught flames, the heat spreading past her elbow.
“Move your hand,” Aiden shouted, giving Lory a heartbeat to react as his ice magic wrapped around her body like a glacial embrace. The flames on both her shirt and in her hands died down, suffocated by the cold touch, but the pain of the kiss of lightning eased as well, so she didn’t complain, staggering back toward her sword abandoned on the ground and picking it up.
Nyla’s choking faded in a gurgle, and the nature wielder dropped to the ground the same as Tabi’s arms dropped to her side.
“Two down,” the ashling confirmed, drawing her own sword, which she’d sheathed while working on Nyla’s demise. The roots lay abandoned and simmering, a light orange glow eating through them before they turned to ash.
“Nice little trick, Bellmont.” Of course, Ricca would find a way to mock them for surviving an attack. “Does your ice still work if it meets its worst enemy?”
“And what should that be?” A thick lance of ice appeared in Aiden’s hand as Thal directed some of the water he’d pulled from the protective mesh toward the ice wielder.
Ricca’s laugh was the only response, and as it multiplied, its pitch increasing and the echo assaulting Lory’s hearing, she understood.
She understood before the others did, her shout of warning dying in the mayhem of sound, and when the lance inAiden’s fist splintered into a million pieces, one was enough. One single piece flying directly for Aiden’s throat, cutting through the sensitive skin, and when his blood emerged from his neck, it wasn’t frozen. Hot and liquid, it dripped, the angry stream proof that they were far from safe, even when they stood four against two.
Lightning cracked the sky, and before Tabi could make it to Aiden, her hand already reaching for his throat, the white light hit her in the chest, and she tumbled to the ground, eyes rolling as she coiled in pain.
“Tabitha!” Thal called her name, but another lightning strike aimed for them, finding a hole in Thal’s protective web and reaching for the water wielder’s arm, mingling with the water.
Lory couldn’t decide who to run for first, or if she should have abandoned them all and saved herself—a thought that made her insides churn. They’d come to stand by her, to save her if they could—now, it was her turn to protect them.
With a scream, Lory charged, fire bursting up her blade as she aimed it at Solen, whose face—to his credit—turned pale at the sight of the Flame-born unleashed.
Lory didn’t care that he was murmuring at the sky to send another finger of white power—she blindly stabbed at the ashling, the muscles in her thighs burning as she lunged for him. Her whole body was burning, for the Guardians’ sake.
The next strike of lightning met an inferno of golden-orange fingers reaching for Solen’s wrist, gobbling up the powerthat had been supposed to find its mark in Lory’s heart, and as the fire spread over the ashling, a deep, rumbling voice at the back of Lory’s mind murmured,Set us free, Elory the Flame. Set us free.
Lory barely heard it, the wrath inside of her consuming her as the images of the splinter of ice in Aiden’s neck, the streak of lightning hitting Tabi, and then Thal, kept repeating themselves.
Solen would never hurt one of her friends again—ever.
“Stop, Lory.” Like in a trance, Aiden’s voice drifted into her consciousness a heartbeat before his ice-cold hand wrapped around hers, pulling her back from the ashling she’d wrestled to the ground.
A pair of cold arms wrapped around her as she stumbled back against Aiden’s chest.
Alive—he was still alive, and the wound on his neck wasn’t soaking her palm as she reached behind her.
“You got him, Lory. You’re all right.”
Lory barely dared glance at the scorched space at her feet, where Solen lay motionless in a circle of ash. Burn marks shimmered on their forearm and on their shoulder, where Lory had touched them, and a gash at their side oozed blood.
Shehad done that. She had killed them.
