Dimitri stepped forward, arms crossed, brow low. “We shouldn’t get involved with the phantom. He looks unstable.”
“He’s suffering,” Eleanor disagreed, stepping forward as she wrung her fingers together. “He’s not a threat to us. He’s a victim. That binding circle was leaking magical essence rot. It killed the land, and there’s no telling what it’s done to him in the last twenty years. Leaving him is unethical.”
“He’s not totally harmless,” Slater threw out casually, getting to his feet next to me. “He lunged at Rune several times.”
“He’s traumatized,” Eleanor explained softly. “Not evil. You’d do the same after twenty years of being alone, tortured by magic with zero magical reserves because of it.”
A tense silence passed over us.
“Wait a second,” Coralynn interjected, holding out a finger. “How would aphantomsurvive twenty years of this without food or water?”
“Can’t magic circles keep someone alive?” Aura asked, her lips pouting as she stared at the poor phantom.
“Itcould,” Coralynn answered. “But it would be a seriously strong magic circle for that to happen.”
“Can you tell if that’s the case here?” Dimitri asked, his jaw tightening as his red eyes swept our surroundings.
The phantom stayed on his knees with his head down. He didn’t even acknowledge us anymore.
“I can’t.” She shook her head softly. “But itispossible.”
“Does it matter either way?” Eleanor asked, her tone pleading. “He’s a phantom. Asupernaturaljust like us. He’s suffered. How can we not at least give him a chance?”
“That’s…true,” Coralynn murmured. “If I had been kept like that, I would hope someone would try to save me.”
I nibbled on my bottom lip and looked over at him. He was pale with hair covered in dirt to the point that I couldn’t eventellwhat his actual hair color was. He was skin and bones, and he was mumbling something over and over again.
Even with my basilisk hearing, I couldn’t understand it over the hum of the magic circle.
“Drecken said the arcane specialist was to decide,” Dimitri muttered, glancing at Slater.
“Vote on it,” Slater answered automatically with a quick glance in my direction. “We’re all involved here, so I don’t want to take the choice away from the majority. Team work makes the dream work, you know?”
The corner of my mouth curled into a smile.
“Good idea,” Eleanor murmured with a soft smile. “I just want everyone to think about how they’d feel in this situation.”
“Show of hands for destroying the circle and freeing the phantom,” Dimitri announced.
Dimitri kept his hand down, along with me and Slater.
Eleanor, Koa, Aura, Zuko, and Coralynn raised their hands.
“Votes are in.” Dimitri winced.
A sick feeling bottomed out in my gut.
“I guess we let him out, then.” Slater raised a hesitant hand. His chaos magic flared to life in the shape of his long, hissing serpent. The snake was four-times his normal size, and he untangled from Slater and slid toward the circle with a flick of its shimmering tongue. “Break it,” Slater instructed.
Snakey’s tail pushed over the circle, and lightning-like magic struck around it before it shattered in a thunderous wave of dark bolts and cracking runes.
The phantom man stood, whole for the first time since I’d seen him. He didn’t flicker, and he stood straight-backed as if hehadn’tbeen suffering in a magic circle for twenty years.
“Shit.” My instincts were screaming at me that we’d made the wrong decision by letting him go. Granted, I knew that much to start with. It was why I had voted for leaving him in the circle in the first place.
A glamour peeled away in magical layers, revealing a man who was no phantom. He was the warlock.
His smile curled. “I knew you’d come,” he said, eyes locking onto me. “You couldn’t leave me alone, could you, Mirabelle?”
