out a pained sob.
I flexed my wrist.
Did I kill him?
It felt like it should’ve been harder to kill a dark mage.
Hopefully it wasn’t, because the other three mages spun to look at me and Mira, their inky eyes swirling with anger.
I cursed and reached for as much magic as possible—both my fire and earth magic.
I’d never taken on a mage. There were no mages on Earth to train with.
But there was no time like the present.
“Blast them,” I said to Mira, and I blasted them with fire at the same time as my twin shot ice out of her palms.
The female mage—still on the ground—raised one of her hands and held off our elements with a cloud of black smoke. She screamed and pushed harder, and I strained against her magic.
Ethan was also sending fire toward the mages, but he was being held off by the other two.
I glanced to where the fae were standing—except there were no more fae standing. Ethan had burned them all to the ground.
But the mage aiming her magic toward me and Mira pushed harder, and I widened my stance, putting everything I had into holding her off with my fire. Mira was now using air, and holding off the other male mage, who’d joined the woman in trying to blast us down.
So much for them wanting to keep us alive. If that smoky magic reached us…
The strongest mages could use dark magic to kill on the spot.
It was closing in on us. And Ethan kept getting closer and closer to the ground.
The swords the fae had thrown into his wings had ripped through them. And while Ethan healed quickly, he didn’t heal immediately.
Fear descended upon me.
The mages were beating us.
Not even ten minutes after landing in Ember, and we were failing in our mission. Maybe Mira had been right, and Ethan should have gone without us.
But it wasn’t over yet. I needed to try using my earth magic again. Earth magic was trickier, because fire was my strongest affinity, and it was difficult to focus on using more than one element at a time.
Breaking from my fire magic—even for a second—could give the mage the time she needed to overpower me.
But I needed to try. Because what we were doing so far wasn’t working.
I needed to reach for more rocks on the ground with my magic, like I’d done to kill that first mage.
I felt the rocks at their feet. But trying to raise them was like trying to raise a giant boulder.
“Gemma!” Mira yelled. “She’s getting too close!”
Sure enough, there was only about a meter of fire magic between my palm and the black smoke, and she was gaining centimeters on me each second.
Suddenly, red light flashed in the corner of my eye.
Two plumes of dark smoky magic shot out from where the light had been and smacked into the mages who were attacking me and Mira.
They fell to the ground.
Dead.
The final mage must have been shocked, because Ethan cut through his dark magic and burned him to ash.
I wanted to jump in victory.
Instead, I pulled back on my magic and turned to see where the surprise dark magic had come from, ready to defend myself against whoever had wielded it if they tried to attack us.
Two people.
A girl around my age with long auburn hair, and a guy with jet black hair and skin so pale that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d grown up underground in Utopia.
Judging from the magic they’d used, they were mages. Dark mages.
So why did they help us?
“Gemma,” the girl said, as if we’d met before. “Mira. I take it the dragon is with you?” She motioned to Ethan, and I stared at her blankly.
Ethan lowered himself to the ground. Blood dripped out of the holes in his wings—I had a feeling it wouldn’t have been long until he needed to land, anyway—and he shifted back to human form.
He looked exhausted, but his human form wasn’t wounded. Thank God.
He hurried over to me and Mira and faced the dark mages. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Torrence,” the girl said, then she pointed to the dark-haired guy next to her. “This is Reed. Long story, but we’ve met the twins before. And we definitely weren’t expecting to see you when we landed in Ember.”
I stared at her, confused. Because how was Selena’s best friend here? And why was she acting like she knew us?
“We haven’t met before,” I said simply.
“Yes, we have,” she said. “Twin Pines Café.