Farrendel’s magic crawled over him, sizzling against the troll magic and snuffing it out.
Farrendel grasped for his magic, but it burned through his fingers. A storm built above, flickers of magic dazzling across black clouds. Power poured through him, consuming him even as it threatened to tear him apart.
“Last chance. Surrender. Or I will raze your entire kingdom to the ground.” Farrendel channeled as much magic as he could control through his body. Blue lightning coated his skin, coalescing into a massive, glowing sword. With a growl, he drove it into the stone courtyard.
The stone cracked, a jagged crevasse opening as it zigged and zagged across the courtyard of the once mighty fortress of Gror Grar.
The ground shook, laced with glowing blue magic spreading outward from Farrendel. With a rumble, the mountains surrounding Gror Grar shattered, rubble tumbling to earth with ear-splitting cracks.
Still pinned, Prince Rharreth glanced over his shoulder as best he could, his eyes widening. “Please, Laesornysh, pull your magic back. I surrender. Please. I don’t care what you do to me, but don’t destroy Osmana. There are women and children in there.”
Farrendel followed Prince Rharreth’s line of sight. With Gror Grar nothing but rubble, the lights of the city of Osmana were now visible, huddled behind a wall farther in the gorge that Gror Grar had once guarded. The wave of Farrendel’s magic swept through the ground, opening fissures and leveling the mountains, heading in the direction of the troll city.
In moments, Farrendel’s magic would utterly destroy that city, killing every troll male, female, and child huddled inside.
Farrendel tried to yank back on the crashing tide of his magic, but it tore from him, bursting behind his eyes and building into an inferno of magic. He collapsed to his knees under the force of it, feeling the tremors in the ground beneath him.
“Please, Laesornysh!” Prince Rharreth thrashed against the bonds of magic holding him against the stone. “I said, I surrender. Please. Just spare them.”
Farrendel shook, magic blazing beneath his skin and sizzling deep into his bones. He could not breathe for the force of it, the stone inside him tearing deeper as it reacted against his magic. He braced a hand against the stone of the courtyard, his body too weak to withstand much more of this.
“I cannot.” He shuddered, his senses shredding with the force of the magic coursing through him.
He could not draw his magic back. He had lost control, and now he was going to kill as he had never killed before. Not just enemies on a battlefield. But women. Children. His own family and friends huddled behind him.
Essie. His magic was going to kill Essie.
He had been wrong. This—not the weeks of torture—was his worst nightmare.
ESSIE CLUNG to Edmund, bracing herself against the whipping wind so filled with magic it hurt to breathe it, even for her. Her skin prickled as her hair stood on end with the power crackling through the courtyard.
In the courtyard, the fighting had stopped. Escarlish soldiers huddled on the ground, gaping at something to Essie’s left. Elves knelt in front of them, raising their hands as if to shield themselves from something. And the remaining trolls...it was hard to tell the dead from the living. All were pressed flat to the ground, bolts of blue power coursing over them.
Another rumble shuddered through the ground. High above, dark clouds gathered, streaked with blue lightning.
Farrendel stood in the middle of a blaze of power, swirling like a tornado of magic around him. The shortened ends of his hair whipped around his head.
The troll prince was pinned to the wall with cords of shimmering blue magic. His jaw was hard, even as sweat dripped down his gray skin. He said something to Farrendel, though Essie couldn’t hear it over the roar of Farrendel’s magic.
The dark clouds above swirled, lit with blue magic within. Magic flared like a lightning bolt around Farrendel before he drove it into the ground.
Essie staggered as the ground shook, then stumbled as Edmund yanked her back. A foot-wide fissure opened where they had been standing a moment ago.
Magic glowed in the stones of the courtyard. Cries of pain came from the trolls already pinned with Farrendel’s magic. Roars filled the air as the surrounding mountains crumbled into dust.
Farrendel dropped to a knee, as if straining under the weight of all the magic.
“He lost control.” Essie pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the way his searing magic tore through him. At that moment, he was truly