Were we really going to do this again? Risk our lives to stop the rain?
This particular portion of the wards was too finicky to have any kind of certainty about how a fix would go.
But Rumor had to stay standing. The humans outside wanted us dead too much. And the constant drizzle was hard on everyone in the city.Some more than others.
So I was going to have to do it.
I'd just cross my fingers that whatever understanding Niall had of my magic would be enough to keep me alive if everything went to shit again.
twenty-two
NIALL
It tooka hell of a lot of self-control to stay in the chair beside Liv's while she ate.
I wasn't touching the food.
She'd need all of the energy she could get, and I didn't have an appetite anyway.
When she finally closed the lid on the box of takeout, Larson pulled his chair over and set it next to hers, ignoring me altogether. Rob followed him, but he gave me a sympathetic smile.
He hadn't been there last time, but he'd seen the fallout afterward.
"Alright," Larson said. "Let's cross our fingers it goes normally this time."
Liv bobbed her head. "Agreed."
My brother's gaze flicked to me, and he hesitated.
He talked big, but he wasn't going to do anything if I wasn't on board with it. Not with her.
Particularly not after what happened last time.
Liv wanted to do it, and Larson was under serious pressure from both himself and the other spellcasters. If they'd both decided this was what they were doing, all I could do was be there to help.
I dipped my chin.
Larson offered Liv his hand.
She sighed, but placed her own in Larson's.She took my hand with her other one, and squeezed the hell out of it.
"This is going to suck," my brother warned her.
"What? I thought it was going to be fun." She tried to hide it with a joke, but I could hear the nerves in her voice.
"If it goes wrong again, you know what you have to do," Larson told me.
My chest tightened.
"We put a failsafe in it so we can shut it down if it goes wrong again," Rob corrected, shooting his soon-to-be-mate a threatening look. "No one's going to die. I won't need to use it."
"We can hope," Liv muttered.
"For real," Larson agreed.
He closed his eyes, and Liv did the same.
The complex spell Larson had formed into a misshapen blue cube started to glow brighter as he enacted it.
