I know, his voice was a sorrow-filled pang as it moved into me, his jaw tightening as he continued to fight, desperate to save his home, to save the humans that he counted as his people, even if they didn’t know he existed. The emotions that accompanied that knowledge gripped him, and with only those two words, he took my breath away.
I moved away, my back pressing against his as my magic surged, igniting around us in a destructive orb as I gave us enough room to run through them. As much as we both wanted to stay, to fight, we didn’t have a choice anymore.
Dragging Ilyan away from the street, we ran. Vil? after Vil? dropped from the sky as I we bolted toward where Wyn had been only moments before.
Burned remains of at least a hundred of the beasts littered the ground, the white stone of the building beside it burned away as if someone had thrown acid on the glistening surface.
I looked around in panic, trying to understand what could have caused such destruction, but Ilyan only laughed, his grip around my hand tightening as he pulled me away from the blackened space and down a narrow alley that lay all but hidden in the shadows.
They will be at the clock, Ilyan said as we continued to run. The echoes of our footsteps were loud in the claustrophobic depths of the alley, even over the ever-increasing screams of the massacre we were surrounded by.
What was that? I asked, the scorched street still imprinted in my mind, despite knowing we were surrounded by much bigger issues.
Wynifred. It’s the fire magic.
I didn’t even dare ask for clarification as Ilyan pulled us into another wide road, the buildings here a rainbow of stone, the street a river of red.
It was all I could do not to scream.
All I could do not to destroy every last beast that littered this road.
The mortals screamed as they ran from the things, trying to escape into the seemingly safe buildings we were surrounded by. Most were already infested by the Vil?s, their wings flapping against windows and breaking through glass as they went after their prey.
I tried to stop, but Ilyan pulled me on, the message in his mind clear even if he could not find the words to express it.
There were more here, more Vil?s than humans. If we were to stop and fight here, we would be lucky to escape alive.
Right now, we needed to get to the clock.
The clock.
I could see it perfectly in his mind—the old building with the massive round clock faces placed against its fa?ade. I could see the door off to the side that would take us to the top story where the tiny safe house lay that Ilyan had kept since the fifteen hundreds.
I could see it, but I could also see the door from my sight. I could still feel the pull of that door and whatever was hidden behind its marred surface.
I knew the clock was safe, but the pull to that door was stronger.
I needed to find it.
Ilyan towed me along as he turned toward yet another alley, only to find a wall of black wings, the mortal screams that echoed behind it wrenching through me in a powerful vice that wrung my gut into a tense ball of pain.
I stared at those wings as I felt my magic flare, felt the heat in my body grow and heard a child scream for his mother from somewhere beyond that endless wall that was closing in on them. The wall that would kill them.
I didn’t even move as my magic erupted out of me, a wall of wind and power spreading from somewhere deep inside of me and rippling over the alley, over the street like it was nothing more than a rock thrown in a pond. The ripples of magic moved an explosion of destruction that tore through the street, shredding the wall of Vil?s into strips of flesh and smoke, sending them all crashing to the ground in troves as the bomb that I had become ripped through them.
In a way, it was beautiful, watching the once beautiful creatures fall from their prison, their broken bodies free from the poison that ran through them. The humans that surrounded us were now free from the death that they would have certainly found.
I knew what I had done.
The magic that had flown from me had been an explosion that had ripped the sky apart with the light that the Vil?s had blocked out, showing millions of them our exact location.
Ilyan exhaled beside me with a chuckle, his hand running up my arm as I turned toward him. I expected to find his face hard with the frustration he normally held when I acted out of turn, but he only smiled, a pride I was sure I did not deserve shining from behind his eyes.
“I don’t care what anyone says,” he whispered; “you were made for me.” His lips turned up in a tiny smile as the light from the blast faded back into darkness.
The temporary silence was cut with the shrill shriek of the Vil?s, a warning of what was coming reverberating off the stone we were surrounded by.
I should have been scared.
However, I couldn’t be, not anymore. Not with Ilyan’s magic flowing through me, not with his lips pressed softly against mine.