I can’t move.
I don’t see Bishop until he’s already tackled Ace to the ground. They twist left and right, a tangle of grappling bodies and grunts. Bishop delivers a punch to Ace’s cheek that knocks his mask clean off his head and throws him three feet. His body skids along the ground, sending up sprays of dirt in its wake. Bishop doesn’t let him recover before he yanks him up by the front of his robe and hurls him at a nearby tree. There’s a loud crack as he smacks into the trunk, but he stumbles up again and levels a glare at Bishop.
There’s a whistling noise behind me. I spin around to find four more sorcerers advancing in the air.
A blast of fire shoots toward me. I leap to the left just in time—the fireball whizzes past me, so close it singes the hair on my arms and I taste smoke at the back of my throat. I’ve barely registered that I’m not dead before the sorcerers launch another. I duck this time and it whistles over my head, striking the earth just behind me. The ground rumbles so hard I’m knocked off-balance. I stumble backward, thudding onto my ass. The sorcerers close in above me, the vacant, dead eyes of their animal masks staring me down. Sense comes flooding back and I throw my hands up, but before I can unleash my magic, the sorcerers drop from the sky. One lands right on top of me, knocking the wind out of me. I see a dagger lodged in his back.
I shove the dead weight off me and scuttle backward. Bishop reaches down a bloody hand to help me up. Sweat glistens on his forehead, but his face is the picture of calm.
“Sorry I took so long. Dude just wouldn’t die.”
I grasp his hand and pull to my feet.
“Thanks,” I say. “I—I don’t know what happened. I just choked.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he answers. “Heads up!”
I turn just as more sorcerers flash through the sky toward me. I throw my hands up, flinging people away without discretion. But they come at us relentlessly. A long sword appears in Bishop’s hand. The blade arcs over his head, then brutally slashes at the people in front of him. Someone slams into me from the side. I’m blasted off my feet, my head smacking into the dirt so hard my ears ring. A sorcerer stands over me, grinning, but Bishop lands the sword in his gut. The color drains from the sorcerer’s face and he spits blood. Gritting my teeth, I roll out of the way before another dead body can fall on me. I detect movement from the stone formation and snap my head up.
The Chief holds up another teenager, who kicks and screams against his grip. The other teens howl and scream uncontrollably—I guess they’ve figured out from the pile of bodies on the ground that they’re not going to become sorcerers and go home.
A torrent of anger courses through me, and the ground rocks so violently under my magic that one of the massive stone pillars rattles backward with a boom. Some of the teenagers try to run out of the circle, but they’re snagged back by their shirts and easily overpowered by the sorcerers without even using their magic. The Chief’s ox mask flashes toward me.
“Stop her!” he bellows. Dozens of masked sorcerers turn to face me.
Six of them leap from the ceremony, the rest continuing the chanting.
They circle around Bishop and me, caging us in.
“Bishop, behind you!” I scream.
Bishop spins around just in time to dodge a dagger hurtling toward his head. While he ducks, I send a blast of wind over his crouched body. The sorcerer skids backward, his body digging a trench in the dirt. Bishop pops up and delivers a roundhouse kick to another sorcerer’s face while simultaneously slashing out with his sword. I blast two more sorcerers back, then another two. A sorcerer noticeably larger than the rest approaches us, shuffling side to side like a boxer getting ready to strike an opponent. Candy—Ace’s accomplice from the rebel camp. She launches a dagger at me, but Bishop reverses its direction so that it lands in her own gut.
We fight back to back, killing sorcerers in tandem as if we’d trained all our whole lives to do it. Teens break away from the stone formation and run in all different directions across the blazing mountaintop like headless chickens. But the sorcerers keep chanting, the sphere of light above them glowing brighter and brighter. I head straight for the Chief.
Sorcerer after sorcerer intercepts me, but I blow them off easily. Someone steps out from the crowd. She pulls off her wolf mask, revealing a shock of too-white hair and skin so pale she looks albino. I can tell from the confident way she carries herself that she’s the Chief’s sister, Rowan.
My aunt. The person responsible for kidnapping all these teens, for kidnapping Paige. It isn’t lost on me how ironic it is that I’ve got one aunt trying to kill off a bunch of innocent kids while another is selflessly trying to save them. To save me.
Rowan sneers at me, like the prospect of killing me is fun. Rage sinks its ugly teeth into me. I look just left of her face, at the giant stone pillar behind her. It lifts from the ground, casting a shadow over her. She glances over her shoulder just as the stone tips forward. It happens too fast for her to move. The stone smashes her into the ground, a boom echoing through the theater.
“Indie,” Bishop breathes. And I can’t tell whether it’s respect or fear I catch in his voice.
I step around the pillar.
That’s when I see her. Paige has been herded into the middle of a panicked group of humans. Tears flood down her cheeks, her bangs are plastered against her damp forehead, and her glasses are askew on her nose. She looks at me.
My heart squeezes hard.