Nazhivēr’s arms as his glowing eyes focused on Zylas. A spell building. A lethal attack.
I pressed my palm to the back of Zylas’s hand, waiting for red magic to light up our skin. I waited to feel the searing heat of his power inside me.
Zylas!
Nazhivēr launched for us, wings snapping out to propel him forward with greater speed. Zylas’s fingers twitched convulsively, and red power flashed over his hand—but not mine.
He began a cast, but his magic wasn’t fast enough. We didn’t have three or four seconds—we had two, and only a cantrip was that fast.
But his magic didn’t touch me, didn’t reach me.
Spear-like blades extended off Nazhivēr’s fist as he closed the final few feet between us.
“Impello!”
On her knees, Zora had one hand thrust toward us, a round medallion squeezed in her grip. The simple hex hit me and Zylas, throwing us backward, and Nazhivēr’s piercing blades flashed above us as we fell.
We hit the ground yet again. Nazhivēr landed almost on top of me, but he didn’t swing those lethal blades down into me or Zylas. Instead, he pivoted on one foot.
Changing direction. Switching targets.
Zora was halfway to her feet as the unstoppable demon turned on her. Three lightning-fasts steps. The glowing blades adorning his fists, an attack meant for Zylas—meant to shred his unbreakable armor and snap his inhumanly strong bones—blazed with power.
My terrified scream rang through the night as the demon slammed those blades into Zora’s body. Driving her down. Smashing her into the ground, the spears of power piercing concrete as easily as they’d passed through her flesh.
Her limbs thudded into the ground, unmoving. She hadn’t even had time to cry out.
Nazhivēr lifted his fist, his spell shimmering away. He turned back to us, ready to continue now that he’d dealt with the human pest who’d dared to interfere.
Zora! Zora! I was shrieking her name in my head, but my voice had disappeared.
Zylas shoved off the ground and braced his feet. Magic sparked over his hands—dim, weak. Frost sparkled across the ground as he drew in the faint warmth from the air, seeking every vestige of power he could get.
Nazhivēr’s glowing eyes shifted, focusing on something behind us.
He gave Zylas a slashing look, then whirled away. He strode past Zora to the crumpled albino sorcerer, still out cold from Zylas’s strike to his gut. The demon grabbed the mythic, spread his wings, and leaped into the air. His dark silhouette blended with the night.
A crackle in my ear.
“A team is coming your way,” Amalia warned me, her voice hushed and shaking. “They saw the light from Zora’s spell.”
Noise behind us. Thumping footsteps. A low call—one mythic signaling to another.
“Zylas,” I croaked, pushing onto my knees. “Heal … heal Zora. Please.”
He turned. Dark eyes, gleaming with the faintest hint of scarlet, gazed at me without emotion. His magic was too depleted. He didn’t have the strength to heal such terrible wounds—and had too many terrible wounds himself.
The approaching footfalls grew louder.
Red light flared across his extremities. He dissolved into power that streaked into the infernus. The pendant buzzed against my chest, then went still. I stared at Zora, blood shining on the concrete around her, as my vision blurred with tears.
The combat team arrived, their ruckus surrounding me. Someone yelled Zora’s name. Mythics surrounded her.
“She’s alive!” someone shouted.
My head came up.
“Sin, dose her, quickly! Bryce, get the nearest healer over here!”
I blinked my vision clear. A woman with a kit of potions was pouring liquid over Zora’s wounds, colored steam rising as it touched her. Another was holding her wrist to count her pulse while a third elevated her legs. More mythics rushed around. Dark shapes. Blurred shapes.
“Robin? Robin?”
The voice penetrated my daze, and I realized a woman was crouched beside me, squeezing my shoulder. She seemed familiar. They were all familiar, but I couldn’t remember a single name.
“Robin,” the woman asked, “are you hurt?”
Hurt? No, I was fine. Bruised and aching and totally fine. I wasn’t the one lying in a pool of blood, my life slipping away while a crowd of my friends desperately tried to keep me alive.
Tears spilled down my face, and I crumpled forward, shaking with sobs.
Chapter Eleven
Sitting on my bed with my knees pulled up, I watched Zylas. Spirals of magic patterned the floor all around him, and he stiffened with pain as crimson power pooled in the gouge in his shoulder. He’d been healing his injuries for ten minutes now, the dark slashes disappearing one by one.
Before beginning, he’d