“She’s weakening,” Lucian observes dispassionately to the strafeling. The dragon releases a grating shriek that scrapes painfully inside my head. The creature rises up and swipes its claws at the shield, the soldier astride it pulling the reins in tight. A great ripping sound, like canvas tearing, rends the air as the dragon hooks its claws into the shield and mauls it, creating three gaping slashes.
Hooks of magic catch inside me, burning hotter, and sweat cloaks my back. I cry out, struggling to pull in enough tendrils of power to close the holes, but my magic is dissipating to a papery wisp of energy.
The Keltic soldiers call to each other jovially as they drop down into a line and nock flaming arrows to bows. They wait, their eyes trained on me with bright, predatory interest.
“Fire!” Lucian commands.
A flaming barrage assaults the shield. They aim for the holes, but the holes are swirling around too fast, and the arrows just glance off the glowing surface. The dragon takes another swipe at the shield, tearing at it, the dome quickly rendered a flimsy net with ever-widening gaps.
“Here’s a new sport,” one of the Kelt soldiers jests as he lets loose another flaming arrow. “Roach fry!”
His arrow flies straight through a hole and lands on the barn’s roof.
“No!” I scream as the roof catches fire. I fumble and try to keep hold of the wand, almost dropping it.
Jules’s hand moves to clasp tight over my fingers, but my magic is depleted, my fire diminished to flickering embers. The numbness of my feet and lower legs spreads toward my knees as the shield-strands begin to cave in.
Stars prick at my vision, my sight blurring at the edges, my body trembling. I want to run into the barn. Jump into the flames to rescue my family. But I can’t move. The numbness has spread over my knees, and I’ve broken out in a feverish, light-headed sweat.
“Wren!” I cry out, choked by tears, my vision growing mottled and hazy.
Jules’s arm comes tight around me in a fiercely protective embrace. I can’t move my limbs. The magic is burning me out from the inside. Consuming me.
The white wand falls from my hands to the ground.
The remnants of the shield collapse and dissolve into the dirt with a steaming hiss.
“Stand back!” Lucian orders.
The soldier astride the dragon dismounts and pulls the creature back as it bares its hideous teeth at me. The Icaral is right beside the dragon, growing a tight fireball that rotates above his palm. He glances pointedly at the barn, then grins maniacally at me.
“Blessed Mages, cowering in the dirt,” the demon hisses mockingly. “The Wingeds are triumphant. We have kept our wings. And our power. And now you will burn.”
He flings the fireball, and it collides with the barn’s roof, exploding the entire top half of the structure into churning flames.
A raucous cheer erupts.
A wail of despair escapes me as I’m jerked backward, rough hands pulling me away from the barn as Jules fights to cling to me. Brandon comes up behind him and wrenches his broken arm backward. Jules cries out, wild with pain as he’s pulled free of me and dragged off.
I hunch forward, weeping as a pair of Kelt soldiers drag me back from the inferno. Jules calls my name, but I can’t bring myself to move, to fight. The world seems to tilt, everything going in and out of focus.
Wren. He’s just a child. Oh, Ancient One... Wren!
“The Roach bitch is mine!”
Through a veil of tears, I see the ax-paladin stalking toward me, a triumphant snarl on his face.
I let out a strangled, high-pitched cry as he grabs my hair and yanks me up. I dangle in the air, helpless, pain spearing my scalp.
Then a giant explosion thunders around us, and the ax-paladin’s head snaps up. The shockwaves pulse straight through me, the very ground shaking, the world lit up by powerful orange lightning. The soldiers flinch away, instinctively shielding themselves with hands and arms. All heads turn to the mountains and stare, slack-jawed and silent.
“What in the Ancient One’s name...?” a young soldier croaks out.
Another deafening explosion sounds, this one closer. Soldiers shield their eyes, blinking toward the mountains in confusion as the barn fire flares and spreads, flames licking at the door, beams cracking and falling to the ground.
My eyes water with pain as I’m wrenched farther up, forced to look right into the murderous eyes of the ax-paladin.
“What. Is. This?” he grinds out, low and fierce, but I can sense a sliver of desperation clawing around the edges of his words.
Another flash of orange just past the mountains. Alarm horns sound.
Commander Lucian barks out commands, then glances up at the flames rapidly consuming the barn, his jaw set tight. “Karver,” he orders the soldier restraining the dragon. “Guard the barn. Set your dragon on any Gardnerians who live.” He turns toward the remaining troops. “Take the men down to Crykes Field. We have to get off this high ground. Now!” The strafeling echoes the command in Uriskal.
An organized formation of dragons rises up from the central field, soldiers astride. The riders are mere silhouettes from this distance, flying toward the mountains and the orange explosions beyond.
Thunder shakes the ground as soldiers scramble toward the field. Lucian mounts his horse and the strafeling leaps astride his hydreena, both leaders taking off after their men at a furious pace.
The ax-paladin jostles my head, sending waves of agony down my spine. “Answer, witch! What dark magic is this?”
A black flood of rage and despair crashes through me.
I don’t care what’s coming for you. Wren is dead. Burned in your fire.
I suck in a breath and use my last shred of energy to spit in his face.
He snarls and grabs up his ax with lethal ease.
My heart falls straight through my feet as the world slows around me. My mouth falls open, and a low moan escapes my lungs. He pulls back his muscular arm, ax in hand, ready to impale me on its curved edge.
A streak of crackling, blue lightning hurtles in from my right and slams into his chest.
His body bucks from the impact, eyes bulging, ax falling. His hand releases my hair, and we fall hard to the ground—me, crumpling into a useless bundle, and him...
Dead.
I gape at his body, stunned.
Brandon’s eyes fix on mine, enraged. He lets go of Jules and stalks toward me, shoving aside the fleeing Kelt soldiers. But before he can take more than a few steps, another streak of blue lightning hits him in the chest, killing him instantly before it lashes sideways to take out a whole row of Kelts and the soldier restraining the dragon.
I lie on the ground and blink in disbelief, trying to clear my unstable vision.
A Mage strides into the clearing, slashing blue lightning from the tip of his wand. He’s young, with severely angular features and black hair, his expression fierce. His uniform is dark and marked with a single silver sphere. A black cloak edged with five silver lines flows out behind him like dark water.
The uniform of a powerful Gardnerian Mage.
One of ours.
My hazy, magic-battered mind sharpens and focuses in