had to free Damiel and Leila before the dragons killed them.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
I met Starfire’s eyes. “If you were me, you wouldn’t have betrayed the Legion.”
“Because the perfect Cadence Lightbringer would never step a single toenail out of line.”
“You can mock me later, from the inside of a Legion prison cell.”
“That’s not going to happen. You can’t break those glyphs. The spells are interconnected, linked. So if you break one, all of its magic shoots into the other glyph. And the resulting explosion will kill the unlucky person trapped inside that glyph. So the question remains, Cadence Lightbringer: which of them will you sacrifice to save the other?”
Starfire’s laughing words cut right through the middle of my plan, splitting it in two. He was trying to force me to choose between Damiel and Leila. He was as sick as he was crazy.
Well, I didn’t follow rules set by psychopaths. There had to be another way. I just had to find it. Soon. The dragons looked hungry—and I had a feeling Starfire had designed the glyphs so the beasts could pass right through them.
I tried to think through the problem. The glyphs were interconnected. If I broke one, the other glyph killed the person trapped inside. But there had to be a loophole.
“Tick tock,” said Starfire. “Choose now, or they both die.”
I glared at him.
“You’re trying to think your way out of this,” he said. “Here’s a tip: you can’t. My design is infallible.”
Even angels weren’t infallible. In fact, an angel’s greatest weakness was ego. That had to be it! Starfire’s ego had made him miss something. Something I could use to free Damiel and Leila.
That’s it, said my voice of reason. This time, it sounded like Damiel.
“Give it up, Lightbringer,” said Starfire. “I was a master of elemental magic long before you were born.”
While the angel was waxing poetic, glorifying his own genius, I prepared to initiate my plan.
“I don’t believe in choosing between the people I care about,” I told Starfire.
“Yes, you always do the right thing. You are so clever, so righteous. A champion. A heavenly hero.” His voice was mocking, his expression crusted with disdain.
“What I am is optimistic,” I replied. “I have faith. And I know how to use my imagination.”
“How nice for you.”
There was no helping some people. Oh, well. No matter. He’d fallen too far already anyway. And actions spoke louder than words.
Following that mantra, I kicked out my leg and tripped the earth dragon as it lifted its foot. It crashed into the sky dragon. Then they both crashed against the magic barriers made by the glyphs. They might not have been real dragons, but they were still pumped full of magic. Starfire’s four elemental spells—sea, sky, fire, and earth—collided in a storm of turbocharged magic, shredding all the spells to pieces. And freeing Damiel and Leila.
“When both your glyphs break at the same time, neither can shoot magic into the other.” I smirked at Starfire. “And your big, magic explosions fall pitifully flat.”
“As does your ego,” Leila added, shaking off the lingering shreds of the spell that had held her.
The four broken spells still flickered. Magic sparked on them like a whole bunch of severed electrical wires.
Idris Starfire’s laughter cut through the sizzle and snap. The angel clearly wasn’t annoyed by my save. He was amused. And that was worrying. He must have another ace up his sleeve.
“A time will come when you have to choose,” he told me. “Your cleverness can’t get you out of everything.”
His ominous words echoed off the stormy sky.
Then he tapped the tip of his glowing dagger to the flickering mass of broken spells. Fire, sea, sky, and earth slammed together in one blinding, deafening explosion.
The sky burned. The cacti froze. Lightning slithered across the sandy desert ground. Quakes ripped the clouds apart.
“He’s thrown the Earth’s elements out of balance!” Leila shouted over the howling, burning, freezing wind.
Being a former Dragon, Starfire understood how the magic of the Elemental Expanse worked—and how to throw it into complete disarray. If his spell wasn’t stopped here and now, the wild storm would quickly spread to consume the world.
5
The Storm
Elemental pandemonium swirled all around me. The wild, raging wind whistled in my ears. Icy snowflakes bit my skin. The earth shook under my boots. Lightning crashed. Thunder roared. Everything was on fire.
It was pure magical chaos.
“We have to fix this now!” Leila called out over the storm that had swallowed us. Visibility was dropping with