“Ren, stay down. I think you broke your wrist. It's okay. The police will be here and an ambulance.”
“What, who—” I looked up and my breath stuttered so hard that I started coughing, pain spasming in uneven spikes in my chest. “Christian.”
“Yeah?” He looked at me even more worriedly. “I think you hit your head. I'll never convince you to go to the dance with a concussion—I have a friend who promised upright behavior on pain of death—”
“No.” I grabbed him, my fingers unable to grip his shirt and sliding uselessly to the side. “Christian.”
“Holy...! Ren, fine, no Homecoming manipulations! What part of broken wrist did you not understand?”
“Any part. You're alive.”
He looked disturbed, then his gaze softened. “Of course I am. Two guys saved us. And we're magic. Look.” He held up his hand and I could see a ball of blue flame, so like Axer's.
“Axer,” I choked out.
“Yeah, he's right over there.” Christian pointed.
“No.” I shook my head refusing to look in the direction he was pointing.
“He’s right there, look. He and his uncle said we can go to a magic school. Learn all sorts of neat things. There is even a sport like football that I—”
“No.” I grabbed his shirt desperately.
“What?” He looked surprised, then grinned—and oh, it was the bright, mischievous smile just like I remembered. “Are you embarrassed because you took a hit?”
“No. I'm devastated.” I closed my eyes, then opened them to get a last view. “Because I wouldn't know Axer's name. Not if this were real.”
“Ah, a flaw,” said a different voice, and I woke, gasping on the tiles, paintings of Priyasha surrounding me. “Strong minds are the most challenging, but even they can be quieted, if the lie is tempting enough. Isn't the lie tempting, Miss Crown?”
I didn't respond. It wouldn't be truth to say no, it would only be bluster. But Christian wasn't alive, and, “I don't want to live in a world you create about my brother.”
Something lit in his eyes. “But that is the beauty of it. You create the world with a simple nudge to bring it into existence. I only interfere when things are going too well. The mind needs balance, after all.”
“Inject a little nightmare?” I asked spitefully.
“All for the best. The mind wouldn't accept it otherwise, at least not at first. I've been quite thorough in my experimentation.”
He moved.
“It was a little project I did with Sergei. Sergei was such a sensitive soul. And he created the most complicated story worlds. Though they were always so fraught with sadness and melancholy. He was far happier when I put him under.”
I licked my lips. “With your implanted emotions.”
He shrugged. “He accepted them for a while. Long enough to nearly complete phase one, but not long enough for the real cull.” He gave an exaggerated sigh. “He figured it out. Killed himself. People are always rushing to complete their life's work. And I am no exception. It is a flaw I have not overcome.”
“You sicken me.”
He smiled. “You think yourself above such acts? Let's go for a little stroll.”
He flipped us and suddenly I was looking through the left eye of a Spartine guard, with Stavros's presence riding next to mine and looking through the right. The guard moved with purpose down hallways and corridors to the cells made to hold murderers.
“No,” I said, trying to back away from the guard, but Stavros just pressed me harder against the man's mind.
The hunters who had killed my brother looked up from their cells and jumped to their feet. I wondered what they saw. My face and Stavros's linked together and overlaying the guard's?
Nausea rose.
“How do you feel, Miss Crown? Right now? Knowing the men who murdered your brother, under no orders of mine, stand before you?”
The one whose face I knew best scrambled, pressing himself against the back wall of his cell. “Prestige, Prestige, please.”
I could feel my emotions targeted. I could feel Stavros's fingers sifting through my head. “Kill him, Miss Crown. Go ahead. Have your revenge. I have no need of hunters who don't know what they have in their hands.”
“Prestige, please.”
“Go ahead, Miss Crown. Lift your hand.”
Instinctively, I let a finger rise, and watched as the guard did the same. I balled the fingers into a fist. “No.”
I stepped away from them, making the guard move back. One foot. Two. Then ten. “No,” I said to the guard. “You will rot. Somewhere I never have to think of you again.”
The expression on the man's face was one of abject relief.
“Pity.” Stavros waved a hand and the man started to choke. I reached out to stop it, but the hand no longer responded to me.
And then Kaine was next to us, watching with a dark smile. “I have them, Prestige.”
“One more moment while I torture the girl. Then you will present yourself at the portrait.”
Through the guard's left eye, I desperately searched behind Kaine, looking for the others, but there was no one there.
Kaine chuckled darkly, watching me. “I killed the one, and the other two will be my puppets soon.”
Stavros pulled us away and I dropped to the floor. This was my only chance. I had no magic to call, no devices, but I wasn't without. I wiped my hand against my tearstained cheek, then swiped it along the painted ground. The paint wasn't ultramarine. It wasn't violet. It wasn't green. It was silver-specked gold. I let my eyes shut and laughed. Of course it was.
The ground and world shook around us with the potion I had ingested.
Stavros grabbed me by the back of my neck. “Stupid girl.”
“Everyone keeps saying that,” I said, not struggling as he bound the paint within me and the painted wall in my mind fell. Don't look, don't look...
Stavros bound my wrists behind me, then looked at a painting where Kaine was prowling in a window behind Priyasha.
“Bring them!” Stavros bellowed.
He looked back at me, fingers curling around my neck. “You used up your only move to, what, dampen me? Your magic can't override Sergei's in the world that HE built. That I built. You think I can't fully regenerate in a matter of minutes?”
“I'm sure you can. But now you know I resist.” I bared my teeth.
Fury banked beneath a bland expression. He stepped backward. “You try me. I haven't been so tried in a long time.” Even with dampened senses, he still had full use of the world around him. An upright table formed from the floor. He started strapping me to it. “I will be the king. And you will be my sword.”
“No.”
“You want to rid yourself of your destructiveness, just like Sergei after he learned of Valeris, after he felt that he had somehow poisoned Priyasha, but it is part of you. Creation can’t exist without it. You must destroy something else in order to create. You must tear down worlds in order to build new ones. You must have dark ages, in order to have enlightenment.”
“No,” I swallowed, struggling. “I don’t believe that. Some of the most magnificent pieces have been formed by building on top of something else. By leveraging a structure already in place.”
“In so doing, you suffer all the original's faults.”