Crown of the Queen (The Wardbreaker Book 3) Read online

  “What the hell do I do?” I asked.

  “Get to safety,” Ifrit said, “You’re in no condition to do anything else.”

  “What about the Elemancer?”

  “There’s nothing you can do.”

  I stared at the shard of glass in my arm and clenched my jaw. “Like hell there isn’t,” I said, pinching the glass with my thumb and forefinger.

  “I seriously don’t recommend you do that. The glass is wedged in deep and you’re already bleeding from your leg. If you pull it out, you’ll be unconscious within minutes, and dead soon after. Dead, Isabella.”

  “How many minutes?”

  Ifrit seemed reluctant to answer, even though he knew exactly how bad the injury in my arm was, how much blood I had left in my system, and how quickly it would exit an open wound. Unfortunately for Ifrit, he was compelled by the bond we shared to answer any question I asked of him as truthfully and as accurately as he could.

  “Maybe four minutes,” he said.

  “Good enough,” I said, grabbing a blanket and biting down hard on it. Without even considering just how much what I was about to do was going to totally suck, I pulled the glass shard out of my arm. All it took was one hard yank and it came out. Trembling, I tossed it across the room. The pain was like fire, blinding, white hot, but I wasn’t done.

  As soon as the shard of glass was gone, blood started gushing out of the wound. My vision quaked, darkness creeping in around the edges of my eyes. I summoned more magic from the Tempest, this time rolling a fireball of my own into the palm of my hand. Biting hard on the fabric again, I slapped the palm of my hand against the wound on my arm.

  The skin sizzled and burned, the pain so intense my brain didn’t know what to do with the information. It felt cold, instead of hot—like I’d applied a frozen ice-pack to my arm instead of fire. But it was the only way to cauterize the wound and buy myself more time before bleeding out.

  The shock was almost enough to put me out of action, but it didn’t. I spat the fabric out of my mouth, fought to get back onto my feet, and approached the broken wall. Cool, night air reached my face, the cold blessedly cool against my already battered body. I couldn’t see the Elemancer zipping around the house and throwing fireballs at it, but I could see fires licking out of the windows directly beneath mine and along the side of the building.

  This was Becket’s house, and it was on fire.

  I felt a surge of magic reach my skin, and with Ifrit’s help, I was able to home in on its source. The Elemancer was there, a vaguely humanoid shape all wreathed in black, almost invisible against the night sky. His, or her, hand flashed bright orange as they prepared to fire another fireball at the house.

  This time, I wasn’t going to let that happen. I stood right at the edge of the broken floor, my hands balled into fists, my own magic surging through me like adrenaline.

  The Elemancer waved a hand, and a fiery meteor came hurtling toward the house. I thrust my hands out, erecting an invisible barrier directly in the path of the ball of fire. The fireball exploded in mid-air with a thump and a shockwave that trashed whatever windows were still intact. The explosion ignited the night sky like a fireworks display, but it was dealt with, and now it was up to me to respond.

  I responded with lightning.

  Streaks of lightning screamed from my fingertips and hurtled toward the Elemancer, whose body was now plainly visible in the air. The impact was solid, but it was like hitting a brick wall. They were protecting themselves from my magic. As the white light from the explosion turned to amber, and then to nothing, I saw the Mage on the other end of my lightning whip, their arms crossed in front of their chest, my lightning curling around them but not quite hitting them.

  I pulled the magic away and prepared myself to attack again, but before I could, the Elemancer turned around and took off into the dark night beyond. I was about to leap off the edge of the building and go after them, when I felt the floor underneath me start to buckle and crack. I turned around in time to see a line of splintered wood start appearing all along the floor.

  Puffs of smoke and tiny tongues of fire billowed up from the floor below me, and on the other side of that, was Axel. I rushed over to him, leaping across the splintering crack in the floor and blasting the bedroom door open with my magic.

  I didn’t even try picking Axel up under my own power. There was no way I’d be able to carry him out of here. So instead, I wrapped more of my magic around him and made him levitate off the floor. He’d fallen unconscious again, but that was probably a good thing. Carefully, I guided his limp form across the room, over the crack in the floor, and through the hole in the wall.

  From there, all I had to do was gently set him down on the grass in Becket’s backyard, but that had taken too long. All around me, the building was starting to collapse. The section of the floor I was standing on was moving, sliding, the supports underneath it melting, the fire around me growing.

  There was only one thing to do.

  Taking the best running jump I could, I leapt off the side of the building, using my magic to guide myself down to the grass. The heat was a lot more bearable out here, but now that I was outside, I got to see the extent of the damage done to the house. It wasn’t just on fire, it was an inferno. Flames were pouring from every window. There were holes in the wall where fireballs had struck, and beyond those holes there were only more flames.

  “RJ!” I screamed, my voice buckling, “Danvers!”

  “Karim?” came a voice from nearby. “I’m fine, by the way!”

  Despite being a little singed, he really was fine. I ran over to him and hugged him tightly. “I’ve never been happier to see you,” I said into his shoulder.

  “Alright, alright, that’s enough,” he said, pushing me away. “Where are the—bloody hell, woman, what happened to your arm?”

  “Nothing, forget about it. Do you know where the others are?”

  “Danvers is around the front of the house, RJ is up there, making sure there’s no one else around.”

  “Thank the Gods… what about Becket?”

  Karim shook his head. “No idea.” He turned his attention toward the house. “But he’s not in there, either. At least, his ghost isn’t, so that’s a good sign.”

  A section of the house collapsed into itself, sending a shower of sparks and flames high into the night. I heard sirens closing in; distant but drawing nearer by the second.

  “We need to go,” I said, walking back over to Axel.

  RJ landed nearby and rushed over to us. He was sweating and a little cut up himself, but he looked to be okay.

  “He’s hurt,” I said, pointing at Axel.

  Without asking any questions, RJ stood Axel up, turned around and started moving quickly around the house, toward the front. I followed, Karim trailing behind me. The house was gone. There’d be no going back there now, nothing to salvage. All of Becket’s possessions, his paintings, his furniture, his demons.

  Holy shit.

  “The scroll!” I yelled, stopping in my tracks.

  “You don’t have it?” Karim asked, his eyes wide.

  My heart gave a sudden and powerful thump. “No… shit, no! I don’t have it…”

  “You mean, it’s in there?” he pointed at the inferno.

  “I need to go back in there and get it,” I said, heading for the house.

  Karim grabbed my injured arm and squeezed. I didn’t think he’d meant to, but the pain was enough to root me to the spot. “There’s no it to get!” he yelled. “It’s gone, alright? It’s gone.”

  I stared at the house, watching it disintegrate in front of my eyes. There was something beautiful about the way the flames would rise and fall, the way beams would collapse and kick up a wave of fresh sparks and embers. I’d never seen a fire devour an entire building before, and I was transfixed, now.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off it.

  Underneath the awe and the shock of it all, though, was a cold, creeping dread. The
scroll was gone, burned, and with it, the drowned Queen’s secrets.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  No, screw that! I fought to break past Karim and sprinted toward the mansion again, throwing up a wall of wind to keep the fire from touching my skin. The front door loomed ahead, flames flickering behind it and between the cracks. I wound back my arm and hurled a blast of telekinetic magic at it, causing the door to shatter into a million pieces and sending the fire behind it roaring out into the cold.

  The heat was what I imagined being on the wrong side of dragon’s breath felt like. Instincts flared and I shielded my face, even though I had magic around me to protect my body from the fire. Behind the wall of fire burning where the door used to be, the foyer was ablaze. A wooden beam engulfed in flames fell from the ceiling and smashed into the floor, sending sparks and embers flying.

  “You can’t go through that!” Ifrit yelled.

  “Sure I can,” I said, ignoring my Guardian. With my head down, I made a dash for the front door, whipping even more magic around myself to keep the fire from touching me.

  Just as I reached the door, reality itself tore apart in a crackling display of wild, red lightning. I stopped running, shielding my eyes again. When the light settled, a perfect circle of darkness with a glowing red rim remained—and Becket emerged from it.

  “Becket…” I said, “The scroll is in there!”

  He stretched his hand toward me and shook his head. “No, it isn’t,” he said, “Come quickly—we can’t linger here for long.”

  “What? Your house is on fire, man! Can’t you see it?”

  “Ignore the house. It’s not important.” He shut his eyes, and a moment later, Karim, Danvers, and RJ came up beside me. Axel was still unconscious. “We need to leave. Now.” Becket said. “Follow me.”

  “Could you please tell us what’s happening?” I asked.

  Becket paused. “Maybe when we’re not surrounded by an inferno.” He gestured to the portal he had stepped through.

  RJ moved through it first, then Danvers, then Karim. I was the last one to go through. I wanted to believe him when he had said the scroll wasn’t inside the house, but part of me didn’t. Not because I thought he was lying, but because this didn’t seem real. What if it was a trick? What if this wasn’t really Becket?

  Becket nodded, and frowning, I stepped through the portal. I had to believe he had the scroll, otherwise all was lost. But even if he had it, the house was gone. The house, our stuff, our safety net. For a long time, Becket had assured us his place was impenetrable; totally safe. Had that been a lie, or had someone better than him come along and broken through his defenses? And what did that mean for us?

  That Elemancer knew exactly what he or she was doing. We were totally outmatched, off-guard, fish in a barrel.

  It could’ve been a massacre.

  Travelling through the portal turned my stomach inside out, but I had done it once before, so I had been able to brace myself. The portal spat me out onto a dark, quiet neighborhood—quiet by New York’s standards, anyway. It was bitterly cold, with crickets lending their song to the distant sirens blaring somewhere in the night.

  Having been secluded in a mansion for a while, the noise was welcomed.

  I turned my attention to the house ahead of me. It looked like all the others on the street; semi-detached, two floors, unassuming façade, but tasteful. A perfectly middle-class home where you were likely to find a perfectly middle-class family unit living their middle-class lives. RJ, Danvers, Axel, and Karim were already on their way to the main gate.

  What the hell were we doing out here?

  Becket walked up beside me. “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said, trailing off. “I tried to stop them from destroying your house, but I couldn’t.”

  “No one expected you to,” he said, nodding. “In any case, only material items were destroyed. There was no loss of life, and we have what’s important.”

  “Where are we, anyway? Is this Queens?”

  “It is. I picked a quiet neighborhood, with many houses similar enough to each other that it’ll help us keep our cover.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Karim said, “But the last time I checked, your house was full of demons. What happens to them now that their reliquaries have been destroyed?”

  “My reliquaries are fine,” Becket said, gesturing to the house, “I was able to save them before the attack.”

  “Wait, you knew?” I asked.

  “I did, and I’ll explain everything, but let’s please make sure all your wounds are tended to.”

  Karim shook his head. “Just can’t get away from those demons and that bloody cold, can we?”

  “Suck it up like the rest of us,” Danvers said.

  RJ moved through the gate with Axel in tow, making his way to the front door of the house where someone else was waiting for us. Someone I hadn’t seen since the night we had raided Asmodius’ compound.

  Jones.

  He stood by the door like a sentry, holding it open for RJ as he made his way inside. Karim eyed him up and down as he walked past, maybe enjoying the view, or maybe sizing him up. I wasn’t sure. Jones was a big guy, though. Muscular, and broad shouldered. An enforcer I had thought was working for Asmodius, but in fact was a Magistrate Legionnaire.

  Now he was here.

  I moved past him, nodding, but not stopping to talk. My arm throbbed like it was getting stomped on by guys wearing boots made of fire, my head wasn’t faring much better, and I was still worried about Axel, even if he’d regained consciousness. He had taken the brunt of the hit for me. He had almost killed himself for me.

  How had it come to this?

  Becket was the last of us to come inside. RJ laid Axel down on one of the couches and, with a touch of magic, was helping him recover. No one had a word to say. Not even Karim, who usually had an opinion about everything. Instead, he was sitting on a chair by a large dining table, staring at his shoes as a grandfather clock ticked the seconds away.

  “Well,” Becket finally spoke. “Tonight has been… something.”

  “What happened tonight?” I asked, “Why were we attacked, and where were you?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t exactly know the identity of the Mage who destroyed my home, but I know he was sent by Asmodius.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I have been expecting retaliation for what we did to him.”

  “Wait,” Danvers said, “Expecting? What do you mean by expecting? Is this guy still working as a double agent?”

  “This guy has a name,” Jones said.

  “Not relevant. Answer the question, please?”

  Becket frowned at her, his red eyes brightening. “As long as you live under my roof, you will direct yourself to those on your side of the battlefield with respect, is that understood?”

  The room fell silent. No one had expected Becket to chastise Danvers like that. I’d never seen it before. None of us had. Danvers scanned the room with her eyes, then turned her attention back toward Becket. “You just lost your house, so I’ll give you that one,” she said, “But we were the ones in the flames. You’ll forgive us if we want to get to the point.”

  A pause. “Are you familiar with demons, Miss Danvers?” Becket asked, his tone returning to something a little… calmer.

  Danvers shrugged. “The possess people, things, they like to inflict pain. They’re kind of dicks.”

  “Those things are true, but many—the more powerful ones—have access to an incredibly valuable resource. Of course, the more powerful the demon, the harder it is to wrangle it into submission. Demons are incredibly dangerous creatures. If they manage to possess you, exorcising them isn’t as easy as the movies would have you believe. Most Mages avoid the powerful ones, but I’m not most Mages.”

  Becket pointed at the stairwell leading to the next floor up, and I almost swallowed my own tongue. It was the doll, and it was way too close for comfort.
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br />   “Crap!” I yelped. That creepy thing that had almost thwarted my escape from his place the night this whole thing started was sitting upright and staring right at me. “What the hell, man? Why is it there?”

  “There’s no need for alarm,” Becket said, “I can assure you, the spirit within the doll is not interested in inflicting harm right now. In fact, it has been helping me.”

  I shook my head. “How is that thing helping you?”

  “To a certain extent, this demon can peer through the veil of time and into the future. It warned me of the attack that would be taking place tonight. What it couldn’t tell me was who the attacker was.”

  “Remember how Danvers asked you to get to the point?” Karim asked. “Yeah, you really went the long way around, there.”

  “As Miss Danvers quite rightly pointed out, my home burned down,” Becket said, staring directly at Karim, “I think you can forgive my desire to indulge in theatrics.”

  “Yes…” Karim said, nodding, “I actually can, and on this occasion, I think I will. Continue.”

  “So, this demon told you Asmodius was going to attack,” I said, “Why didn’t you tell us? We could’ve escaped before we got hurt.”

  “I did not want you to get hurt,” Becket said, “You must trust me on this. But I needed Asmodius to think he had hurt us. I needed him to believe he had gained the upper hand, or at the very least satisfied his need for vengeance.”

  “If you think my father is satisfied,” Axel croaked, “Think again.”

  Axel was trying to sit up. I placed a hand on his chest and urged him to lay back down. “Rest, please,” I said.

  Axel nodded.

  “I know your father very well,” Becket said, “You are right. He will not be satisfied, but if he thinks he has dealt us a mortal wound, and I believe he feels that way after tonight, then it will give us a little more time to finish our mission.”