Horsemen's War (The Rebellion Chronicles #3) - Steve McHugh Page 0,118

said. “So because you were always that great hope, you’re going to get to watch as everyone and everything else burns. Only then will I kill you—only when you’ve realized that I am better than you.” He dropped me to the floor.

Demeter kicked me in the ribs. “That was because you always were a little shit,” she said.

Demeter passed Arthur his spear and a second band, and he put the latter on his wrist while she put one on hers.

“You want to know what those buildings were?” Arthur asked. “They were the destruction of Shadow Falls. Have fun watching it die.”

Arthur and Demeter placed their hands over their bracelets, and the two vanished; the bracelets clattered to the floor a second later.

I picked one up. It was almost identical in appearance to a batch of similarly used bracelets that Chloe’s mum had been making for Merlin several years earlier. These were better quality, and Chloe’s mum was very dead at this point, so it couldn’t be her. But it could be any human who knew dwarven runes.

I pocketed the two bracelets and staggered to the hole in the wall just as the building moved. It was like an earthquake that never ended, and after several seconds I’d made it to the destroyed throne and found my mum and Judgement, both seriously hurt but healing, and a critically wounded Lucifer, who looked pale and needed urgent attention.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I said. “No magic for me, so try not to get me to do anything stupid.”

“Define stupid,” Lucifer said as I helped him up, blood drenching his torso, his arm draped over my shoulder.

The four of us made it out of the throne room as the building began to make the noise of metal being twisted.

“Stairwell—now,” Judgement said.

She helped me carry Lucifer down the corridor as an almighty crash from above became a constant stream of noise; the roof above us was caving in. We’d only just reached the stairwell door when the entire ceiling collapsed, and the stairwell began to fold in on itself.

Judgement and my mum shoved me and Lucifer to the ground and dived on top of us, keeping shields of necromancy and magical light above us as the entire citadel caved in.

All the air rushed from my body as we free-fell for an untold number of feet while the shield around us stopped the worst of the debris from smashing into us and more than likely killing us.

Lucifer wrapped his arms around me and held me close, twisting us both in the air so I was on top when we smashed into the ground at high speed. The breath was taken from my body in one rush of pain. The shield of light took a lot of the impact, but the onslaught of rubble eventually caused it to collapse, while Brynhildr’s shield of necromantic power forced her to her knees as she strained to keep us from being crushed.

The sounds of the citadel’s destruction rang in my ears, and I blinked, noticing that Lucifer had wrapped me in magical power to ensure that I wasn’t killed in the fall.

I rolled off Lucifer and lay there beside him, my breathing shallow, despite all the help I’d been given to survive. I eventually rolled onto my side and saw the blood pooling under Lucifer’s head.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Skull fracture,” Lucifer said. “I think. Don’t have enough power to heal at the moment; the spear hurt like all hell.”

“He got hit in the chest,” my mum said, exhausted. She’d managed, with Judgement’s help, to push aside the majority of the rubble above us. “It’s lucky we weren’t further down the citadel, or we’d all most likely be turned into goo.”

My mum knelt beside Lucifer and examined his wounds. She looked at me and shook her head.

“I’m dying, right?” he asked.

“I think you took more of an impact than is survivable,” my mum said. “Arthur’s spear may have pierced your heart.”

“It’s Arthur’s blood magic,” Lucifer said. “It infested my heart. I can feel it making its way around my body, killing pretty much everything. The silver in the spear means my magic isn’t as powerful as it should be.”

“Arthur compromised Lucifer’s immune system, and then Arthur poured his own blood into him,” Judgement said. “I doubt even Mordred could heal him.”

I shook my head. “No, you can’t die here, Lucifer.”

“I can die somewhere out there if you’d like to carry me out,” Lucifer said with a smile. “But I