City of Spells (Into the Crooked Place #2) - Alexandra Christo Page 0,103
his shadow ear as it twisted into the air and landed straight in Zekia’s shoulder.
She fell back and Ashwood yelled with such force that the beams of the bridge clanged and shook.
Saxony started to run toward her sister, and Karam realized at the last minute that it wasn’t to help Zekia to her feet, but to keep her perpetually on her ass.
Magic against magic.
Tavia fell into Karam, who just barely held her footing, as the bridge shook with Ashwood’s anger. But Wesley seemed unmoved, unfazed, as though even the possibility of the bridge crumbling could not shake him.
Karam twisted her extra knives in her hands.
“You two take Ashwood,” she said. “Saxony and I will handle Zekia.”
Anything she could do to keep the girl occupied.
“Karam,” Tavia said.
She could see the fear on her friend’s face.
“I will handle it,” Karam told her. I will keep you safe, she thought. “Just finish what we started.”
Wesley and Tavia nodded, and Karam wasted no time in running toward Saxony and her sister, who were flinging magic at each other.
“Saxony!” Karam called out in warning.
Zekia lifted up a hand and a cable from the bridge snapped, flicking toward Saxony in a whip. It missed her somehow, but the bridge teetered with the force of it, dropping closer to the waters below.
Karam gritted her teeth and tackled Zekia to the ground.
She pressed a knife to the young girl’s throat.
Saxony would never forgive her if she did this.
Tavia wouldn’t survive if she didn’t.
“You can’t do that!” Zekia said.
She flung her hand out and Karam was lifted off of her and thrown backward.
She tried to walk toward them, but Saxony thrust her hand out, her entire palm engulfed in bright yellow flame.
“Get back!” she said. “I mean it, Zekia. Don’t make me do this.”
Saxony’s voice splintered on her plea and it broke Karam’s heart to hear it.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Zekia said. “We’re not going to do this.”
“Yes, we are,” Karam told her.
She stood and adopted her fighting stance, steadying any doubt in her bones.
“I’m doing what I have to,” Zekia said.
“So am I,” Karam said.
Karam was supposed to be a protector, she was supposed to be honoring her family’s legacy.
And she couldn’t do that if Zekia lived.
35
Tavia
THERE HE WAS, FINALLY.
Dante Ashwood, standing in front of Tavia and Wesley.
The man who had poisoned the poorest people in Creije with his dirty elixir long before this war, creating the magic sickness in a bid to be all-powerful.
The man who had destroyed Tavia’s home.
The man who had made her into an orphan.
Don’t cry, ciolo, the memory of her mother’s voice whispered.
“Two against one,” Tavia said. “I don’t hate those odds.”
Ashwood’s shadows shook with his laughter. “Just like a busker to be so cocky. I wonder if you’d feel the same if my boy came back to my side?”
Wesley straightened beside Tavia and she hated, truly hated, how the Kingpin’s words still had such a hold on him.
I know who you are, she thought, hoping that somehow he could hear. I love you and nothing can change it.
Then, miraculously, as though Wesley really could read her mind, he squeezed Tavia’s hand in his and she felt her heartbeat steady.
“You’re not going to make me into your little lapdog again,” Wesley said.
“You were never my lapdog,” Ashwood told him.”You were my family.”
Wesley’s jaw tightened, but it was only for a second, and then the rigidness was replaced by a smile, so quick that Tavia was sure only she had caught it.
It was one of her greatest talents—seeing the parts of Wesley that nobody else could.
“I already have a family,” Wesley said.
He threw his hand out and black smoke curled from his fingertips, just like it had back in the forest.The flames were fast, sliding across the bridge and toward the Kingpin without mercy.
Hope shot into Tavia’s heart.
She had seen Wesley use those flames to decimate a tornado.
She knew the power he had and maybe, just maybe—
Ashwood held up his hand as if to say stop and a barrier of light slid in front of him.
Wesley’s flames hissed against it, like it had burned them. They retreated and then faded into smoke.
His magic couldn’t get through.
Wesley tried again, slinging both arms forward and hurling a tunnel of images toward the Kingpin.
Tavia recognized the magic.
It was the same magic Zekia had used back on Ashwood’s island to try to attack her sister.