spot where the people had gathered.
“There’s no reason to kill more people! They’ve been through enough!”
“Enough? They haven’t been through enough if someone dares to throw a rock at a warlock!”
“Are you saying we haven’t earned it?” Stepping forward, I got up in Gideon’s face, my temper shredding each word I spoke.
I could feel the weight of my own past with the Towers come crashing through my pain like a rhino. Broken bodies, screams echoing through the long, lonely nights, and the blood on my hands that would never wash off—it was all there in vibrant Technicolor in my brain.
Even after I had left the Towers, there were more deaths I had done nothing to stop. Dolan had been tortured before me because he’d been cutting into the Towers’ magical-ingredients supply with his drug trade. Part of Low Town had burned when members of the Towers tried to lure me out. I was sick of it all and ready to rip into anything I could get my hands on.
A cold grin spread across Gideon’s lips as he glowered at me and I knew I wasn’t the only one. “Let’s do this.” The warlock clapped a hand on my shoulder and the world went dark.
CHAPTER 2
The vast flat plain was filled with knee-high grass and weeds, while the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, painting the cold winter sky alternating shades of pink and orange. Gideon had been kind enough to move us at least a few time zones west for a little privacy. The warlock gave me a hard shove away from him as he whipped his wand from his left sleeve.
Stumbling a couple steps, I regained my balance and fought through the wave of nausea that hit. The travel spell, combined with the head wound, was doing a number on my stomach and equilibrium, but I was still too pissed to pay any of it much attention. Rather than grabbing my wand, I held my hands open and out to my sides, my fingers slightly curled as if they were dug into globs of magical energy just waiting for my use.
“I’ve been waiting so fucking long for this,” Gideon muttered under his breath as he slung his first spell at me.
Yeah, me too. We had been at each other’s throats for the better part of ten years. Ten years of this asshole harping about not using magic. Ten years of listening to how the council wanted to remove my head because I was a worthless excuse for a warlock who didn’t deserve the air in my lungs.
Pulling up the energy around me in the form of a shield, I blocked his attempt to turn me into a box turtle and reflected it right back at him in the hopes of cramming it down his throat. The warlock brushed the spell off and came back with a second before I had a chance to formulate my own offensive strike.
“Why fight back?” Gideon taunted as he began weaving another spell. “This is what you wanted, wasn’t it? You want to be the whipping boy for the Towers.” A trio of long thick icicles formed in the air around him, dancing in the air like crystalline daggers. With a flick of his wrist, the first one whistled through the air before shattering against my shield.
“You want to be a martyr, dying for the sins of the Towers.”
A second icicle sliced through the air, exploding in a fine mist just inches from my heart.
“Dying might ease your conscience but it won’t save a single soul.”
The third icicle screamed through the air and stopped in the air just an inch from my forehead. It had gotten through my defenses because I’d let his words distract me. I gasped, my heart freezing in my chest as I stared at the weapon that very nearly killed me.
“Time to get off the cross, Gage, and find a real answer to our problems.”
I wanted to scream. In that moment, I hated him, but I hated myself more. Rage pumped through my veins, but Gideon didn’t give me a chance to unleash any of that anger on him because he quickly continued his assault. Each time, I managed to block his attack or unravel the spell, but each one was growing more and more complicated.
Any idiot would have known that I would be outmatched if I had to actually fight Gideon. He had more training, more experience dealing with other warlocks, making him better equipped. But