demonic nor Arcana. It was both.
Zylas coiled his body, then sprang. I spun, already knowing where he was going, what he intended. The link between us was a bright line of instinct as he analyzed everything around him. The ground. The sky. The movements of his enemies. The subtle language of their bodies—darts of eyes, flares of nostrils, minute flexing of muscles.
He judged his targets, predicted their movements, and reacted without thought—following years of practice, of muscle memory, of experience.
As he closed in on the second twin, I stretched my hand out again. Another cantrip spanning five feet instantly appeared—right under the sorcerer’s feet.
Zylas slashed as the sorcerer barked an incantation. The demon’s claws raked the shield as he darted sideways.
“Rumpas!” I shouted.
The concrete under the twin shattered. He stumbled, arms pinwheeling. Zylas pivoted on one foot, grace and power. His crimson claws flashed.
The sorcerer fell.
“Braden!” the other twin screamed as his brother hit the ground, blood pooling in the fissured concrete. He flung a hand toward Zylas as his father shouted another spell.
“Ori quinque!”
“Ori novem!”
Daimon, hesychaze!
As Jaden’s and Saul’s incantations rang out, Zylas blurred into red power. It streaked to my chest and he reformed in front of me—but the sorcerers weren’t done.
“Ori septem!” they both shouted.
Blue rings flashed for him, and with a lithe twist, he evaded both. As they whipped past and struck the concrete, a thought flitted from Zylas to me, too fast for words, but I caught the meaning—his observation.
He sprang away from me, charging toward Jaden. I whirled in the opposite direction, toward Saul—just as Amalia crept up behind him, a long red scarf in her hands. She flung the cloth over Saul’s head and yanked it tight.
“Igniaris!” she cried.
The cantrip-embroidered scarf burst into flame. Amalia yanked her hands away as Saul howled in agony, clawing at the fabric.
I summoned a new cantrip, aiming it at the sorcerer as Amalia dove for the ground. “Impello!”
If anyone had asked me a few weeks ago if the simple “push” cantrip, the building block of all impello artifacts, could be terrifying, I would’ve laughed. It was worth a stumble, maybe a fall. After all, who could carry around a cantrip large enough to do real damage?
But who would’ve thought I could create massive cantrips in an instant?
The blast from the rune catapulted Saul into the air. Trailing flames like a rippling banner, he hurtled across the platform, out over open water, and splashed into the dark ocean.
“Ori unum! Ori duo! Ori unum!”
At the platform’s other end, Jaden spat incantations nonstop as Zylas darted around him, claws slashing. Voice rising with desperation, the sorcerer flung his hands out.
“Ori decem!”
Blue swords formed in both hands and he slashed at the demon.
A fatal mistake.
His abjuration was a nearly unassailable defense against a demon, fast and impenetrable. But in combat? No human could beat Zylas in direct combat.
With smooth grace, the demon ducked the wildly swinging blades. His phantom claws swept up, passing through flesh and bones. The abjuration blades spun away and disappeared.
The sorcerer staggered backward, gaping at his severed fingers, only his thumbs left. The crimson talons on Zylas’s left hand dissolved, and he grabbed the man by the throat. His other hand drew back for the killing strike.
Something midnight black and vicious burned through the link between me and Zylas, then the connection snapped off—the demon shoving me out of his head.
He rammed his claws into Jaden’s chest, bones crunching. Jaden’s agonized scream filled the air as Zylas twisted his hand, then ripped it back out. The man went limp, head lolling.
Zylas dropped him, then opened his hand. A fistful of gore landed beside the dead sorcerer with a wet thud.
My stomach heaved, but I stiffened my spine, remembering Yana Deneva, the aspiring actress, and the other young women Jaden and his family had destroyed. Kidnapped. Tormented. Raped. Killed.
Saul, Braden, and Jaden would never kill again.
The slosh of waves seemed so quiet after the cacophony of battle and death. Firelight from the four torches flickered across the platform and reflected off Zylas’s armor.
“Robin …”
Amalia’s whisper was almost lost to the breeze. Turning, I found her a dozen paces away, staring at a spot near my feet. Blinking, I looked in that direction.
Pink light glowed all around me, the spiraling lines and sharp geometric shapes of the array interspersed with foot-wide runes. The center of the spell, a few long steps away, wasn’t glowing. The core node, that eight-foot circle, had turned pitch black. So black it sucked in