It seemed my mind stepped back and away from what it was witnessing as I carefully mixed the spell’s ingredients into the basin, following its instructions to the letter. “I need fire,” I muttered, and élise held out her hand, silver flames blossoming from her palm.
I stared at it for a minute. “Real fire,” I said. Tearing a blank page from the book, I rolled it tightly then held it to her troll-fire, nodding with satisfaction as it flared up with yellow and orange flames. Holding the burning paper above my mixture, I turned my attention to élise. “Are you sure you can do this?”
She licked her lips, and I could see her hands were trembling. “If this doesn’t work, he’ll bleed to death in moments.”
“If this doesn’t work, I’m dead anyway,” Tips said. “This isn’t the time for you to turn prissy on me, élise.”
“All right,” élise whispered. “Then I’m ready.”
Tips twitched slightly as her magic bound him to the bed and the ambient sounds of the house faded as she blocked us off – the last thing we needed was for Tips’s screams to draw attention down upon us.
“Bite down on this,” I said, putting a spindle we’d broken off the chair back between his teeth. “Close your eyes.”
“When I put my hands in the basins…” I broke off and gave élise a hard look. Her lips tightened, but she nodded.
Touching the burning paper to the mixture, I jerked back as it burst into flames. Then I began the incantations. Eleven times I repeated the words, and on the twelfth time, I plunged one hand into the burning mixture and the other into a basin of water. Power flooded up my arms, filling me, and then spilling over. I nodded at élise.
Troll magic sliced through flesh and bone like a surgeon’s scalpel, blood spraying in all directions, and Tips screamed once. Leaning forward, I grasped hold of the bleeding limb and said the incantation for the thirteenth time: “Heal the flesh.” At the touch of his blood, I could feel a faint hint of his alien magic, but I passed it by, knowing instinctively that he was a child of this world. The earth’s power drained out of me and into Tips, recognizing him. Amazed, I watched as pink skin sealed over the wound, paling and hardening into tough scar tissue before my very eyes. Then exhaustion hit me, and I fell backwards to lie on the cold, wooden floor.
“Cécile!” élise’s face appeared above me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I croaked, although I was not entirely sure that I was. “Is Tips alive?”
She moved out of my line of sight. “He’s alive,” she exclaimed. “Unconscious, but alive. And the wound is healed over as though it were half-a-lifetime old.”
Coming back over to my side, élise helped me to my feet, releasing the magic blocking sound as she did. Screams instantly attacked both our ears.
“Stones and sky,” I said, clinging to her arm. “What is going on out there?”
“I’ve no notion,” élise said, her eyes wide. “We would have felt it if there had been another earthshake.”
We both jerked at the sound of an explosion, followed up with more screams and the sounds of running feet.
The door burst open followed by one of the miners. “Lord Roland is on the loose,” he panted. “He’s tearing apart the Dregs. You need to get out of here now.” His eyes fixed on Tips, who was only now rousing. “How in the…”
“There is no time for that now,” I snapped. “Take Tips with you. Get him somewhere safe. élise, you help him.”
Not waiting for their answers, I bolted down the stairs. Roland was hunting half-bloods, I knew it. And who knew how many he would kill before someone powerful enough arrived to stop him. I needed to distract him, buy Tristan or Ana?s enough time to get here and for the half-bloods to flee. Roland wouldn’t hurt me – insane or not, he’d know that harming me would harm his brother. I was the only one close enough who had a chance of stopping him.
The lower level of the house was empty, but the streets were full of panicked half-bloods running for their lives. I fought against their flow, jostling against their greater strength while I ran towards the sound of screams. Then abruptly, I was alone, their footsteps fading into the distance behind me.
A young troll stood in the center of the road ahead of me, an older half-blood pinned to the ground at his feet. The half-blood screamed and thrashed, trying to escape, while the boy watched with interest.
“Your Highness!” The words were out of my mouth before I could think. “Lord Roland.”
The boy looked up, and the blood in my veins turned to ice. It was not the resemblance to Tristan – I’d expected that. What made me want to run as far and as fast away from this creature as I could were his eyes: they were cold, completely devoid of empathy or compassion. Or sanity.
“Hello, Cécile.” He cocked his head to one side, watching me with undisguised malevolence.