“Oh crap, she’s really going to do it,” Penny said, dragged out through the gaping side in the building.
Fire blasted out all around Reagan, the heat forcing Penny to duck away and throw an arm over her face. Glass crackled under her feet. Shouts rang out outside. A roar reverberated off the building. The shifters were outside.
“Go toward the shifters,” Emery yelled. “Penny, come on! You can’t help her now.”
Penny looked back one more time. Reagan stood within a bonfire, holding elves with her air magic and burning them alive while she cut down the top floor and punched at the walls and the ceiling. She was going out in one hell of a fight, and Penny doubted there’d be anyone left. Not in that room, anyway.
“We could’ve stayed,” she said, pulling to go back. “She can handle them. All by herself she can—”
But the fire was being pushed back on one side by unseen hands, the powerful elves now fighting back. The hellfire lost potency, winking out. Reagan sagged but didn’t stop. Spells were next, and she started throwing them before faltering, sinking to a knee, fighting what Penny knew had to be powerful waves of magic. Reagan hadn’t held anything back. She’d started with everything she had. She didn’t have the energy to keep going—she only had the energy to give her friends a chance to escape.
Resolve hardened, and then Penny was running for all she was worth, throwing spells, hurling insults replete with the worst actual swear words she knew, all while blinking back a stream of tears.
“I will avenge her,” she said as she turned a corner and tore down three elves trying to stab a lion. “I will avenge her and make the elves pay for this!”
“First, you need to live.” Emery pulled her toward the pack of wolves organizing, Roger at the front. They were clearly under attack too, but they’d made it out of the castle. “Callie, Dizzy, get into the Brink and tell Karen what happened here,” Emery said as they ran, moving much slower with the older dual-mages. “Do not get caught.”
“What do you think we are, stupid?” Callie clapped back.
“Penny and I will get Darius. We’ll call you when we can.”
“Good.”
Emery put on a burst of speed, and Penny caught up. He glanced at her as they ran. “The shifters will get the fae out, or they’ll bring in more people who can. I still don’t think the elves will try to kill the fae. They’d be incredibly stupid to do that. If I were a betting man, I’d say they were keeping the fae contained, and the shifters out of the way, so they could grab Reagan. And us. They’ll probably try to talk Romulus around. We need to get out of here. We need to let them handle it.”
“Are you sure they won’t kill Reagan?”
“If they do, there will be war.”
“There’ll be war anyway.”
“Not if they can talk the fae around and make some sort of deal with Lucifer. They are ten times more conniving than the vampires, Penny. Their best interest is to keep Reagan alive and use her as collateral.”
Either way, their friend would be lost.
“We need to get Darius,” Penny said.
She hoped to hell he’d be enough.
Twenty-Three
Lucifer stared down at the blueprint for the new resting area without really seeing it, his mind churning. There had been a lot of turmoil in the Dark Kingdom of late.
Time rippled out behind him, a river of it, and over the many, many centuries, there had been natural rises and falls in activity as various factions or individuals fought for placement or peace, but this was different.
The traders across the river had suddenly become much more sophisticated. Squabbles for goods or power had turned into organized plays for strength and power in the Edges. The quality of trade had risen, and in turn, the riches had quadrupled. Because of that, those in the kingdom looked outward with interest, making more frequent trips, staying longer, and returning with a heightened sense of ambition and purpose. His people were fighting for larger territories, requesting larger sporting battlegrounds and leisure sex huts, and seeking more robust entertainment…
Something had stirred them.
He tapped his charcoal stick against the parchment, leaving dots of black along the edges.
Magic had worked its way into the kingdom as well. Hardwearing, complex, powerful magic, the likes of which Lucifer had rarely seen. It was being brought in through the Realm, but sources said it was created in the Brink and transported through a series of intricate steps that had completely slipped the elves’ notice. Rumor had it that a mastermind elder vampire was behind the scheme.
Lucifer dropped his charcoal and stood, strolling across his workroom, watching the play of light against the marble floors. He stopped at a large window that overlooked the garden dedicated to his most recent love, a woman who could bloom flowers with her laugh and wilt men with her glare.