“That’s it, Nai. A little bit more,” Sariah said, her singsong voice seeming to come from a million miles away.
I thought of my mom and the cave, and with one final breath, I yanked my hands apart.
The sound of splintering rock was followed by a loud boom and then a crash as stone fell against stone. The air filled with silt, and the floor rolled beneath my feet.
My eyelids snapped open, and I stared at the giant broken slabs of onyx that littered the floor.
Ha!
A permanent opening between Shifter Island and High Mage Island now existed like an entry to a cave, but the edges were glowing blue with my magic.
This was how it should have always been. No more shutting out the two sides. No more exclusion.
The noise had alerted the blood mages in the high mage library of our attack, so I charged forward, stepping over the broken stone, and crashed right into my soul on the other side. The odd sense of wholeness slammed into me as the two parts merged once more.
Our group rushed into the long hallway, hopefully toward our victory.
Reyna and Kaja caught up to me, swords drawn. We ran, shoulder to shoulder, taking up the entire hallway width as we charged.
“Intruders!” a shrill female screamed just as we stepped into the large space. I scanned the room, skimming over the bloodstains or scorch marks where my grandfather and so many others had died. Anger pulsed through my veins, and I lashed out with my magic, sending a whip of blue light right at the two blood mages in front. Just before my magic reached them, a force slammed into me, knocking me backward. My whip fizzled as the air was pushed from my lungs by the impact.
Okay.
They wanted to play hardball.
With a roar, I leapt to my feet.
I released my magic, and it flew, wild, free, and unrestrained. The blue tendrils crackled in the air as they climbed toward my enemies—and then surrounded them. It was like watching someone inside of a microwave. One second, they were there, and the next … just like Surlama, they burst. Pieces of them rained through the air.
Hardball it was.
“Holy shite,” Kaja breathed next to me. “Remind me to never piss you off.”
Yeah … I’d had enough. I’d reached my max tolerance of brutal and sadistic, and I wasn’t going to stop until every last one of these blood mages was a shredded puddle of their former selves, lying on the floor.
“Let’s go find Kalama and the queen,” I growled.
Turns out that was easier said than done.
Chapter Seventeen
Blood mages swarmedthe high mage library, coming in from all of the doorways: fire, water, earth, air, spirit, even the front entrance that faced the pathway leading toward the butterfly atrium.
As our group poured forth from the corridor, we were met by a force nearly as great as our own.
Time to level the playing field.
“Noble! Ozark!” I shouted, and together, we lobbed the magic-canceling powder bombs toward our enemies.
Large clouds of the fine particles plumed in the air, followed by several screeches and coughs.
“Earth!” Carson yelled, and the ground in front of us rolled like waves. Dozens of the blood mages scrambled to remain upright as the ground shifted, opening a wide crevasse.
The alpha heirs and mages with air magic created tornadoes, and the water elementals added their powers so the blood mages faced a typhoon.
The bookshelves tumbled and crashed into one another; the heavy tomes pelted the now magicless blood mages.
The wind and rain stopped all at once, and in the breath of silence that followed, King Ozark bellowed, “Attack!”
