Breathless and panicked, I made frantic eye contact with Constantine, who whirled to meet another pass of the praetorian.
Greene was throwing devices, Ramirez was fading in and out of the shadows himself, and as a dozen new figures appeared, Axer began lighting the street with colored flame. I could do nothing to help. I grabbed a rock from the ground and hammered uselessly at the steel mound securing me. But it was an inviolate substance created by my own magic.
I tried to pull the location data back to mind, searching for my mistake. The ground had felt strange. I had sent all the information to Axer through the device I had given Dagfinn, and anything registering as my magic would be registered only with my signature.
An intricate trap. Stavros had plenty of my magic. I gave it around freely on campus, and he had been collecting it. The Department oversaw the First Layer grid and safety. He had waited until I was hopped up, like Constantine had said, and laid a trap—one he had obviously had up his sleeve—spreading my magic over the wide expanse of an area that would meet whatever Awakening area parameters he set.
Because of course he knew I would channel magic when answering an Awakening.
I pounded harder at the restraints.
The one thing Stavros hadn't counted on was me securing outside help. I was never going to hear the end of it from the others.
Please, please let me never hear the end of it. That would mean everyone would survive.
I frantically searched for a way to free myself.
Constantine's back was to me as he fended off the shadow again—but he had limited options in the First Layer when not pulling magic from me. As he fumbled for something in his cloak, his right arm snapped under a barrage of spells.
The praetorian thrust a knife into his side and Constantine arched. Electricity lit against the praetorian’s neck. A glowing piece of Stavros sparked on the praetorian’s deadly shadowed claws.
One swipe with those talons and Stavros would be inside of Constantine.
My arm drew back and with a thousand tossed balls in my muscle memory, I chucked the rock straight into the praetorian’s eye.
The praetorian stumbled backward, taking the embedded knife with him. Blood gushed from Constantine’s side, but using his broken arm he awkwardly pulled out the box of magic I had given him at the hut. In a less than smooth kneeling motion, he smashed it against the steel encasing my feet. Splinters of metal lifted on winded wings as the crow-shaped shadow of the praetorian zoomed upward, banked then rocketed toward us.
While looking directly at me and seeing through my eyes, he lifted his palm to meet the attack, leeching magic from me through the fingers hanging from his broken arm that were touching my ankles, and up his body into his raised palm. My magic formed a sphere around the shadow as it hit, forming a dark, malevolent ball that Constantine tightly gripped.
It swirled darkly in his grasp. His other hand shook unevenly on its broken axis as it clasped my foot. My magic surged through him to keep hold of the praetorian.
“Don't move. God, your magic is everywhere,” he said, voice strained. “It will grab you again as soon as you step free, and I can't do this a second time. Just...just wait.” His eyes tightened in pain.
But the arrival of praetorian scouts meant more were minutes, seconds, away. Praetorian warriors who weren't mere scouts.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered. His fingers became as immovable as the steel had been, held there by my own magic.
“No,” he said, raised fingers tightening around the ball of shadow. “They will be.”
Axer, Ramirez, and Greene crushed the hunters with speed and stealth, leaving only two remaining hunters and two praetorian scouts. Fortunately, neither praetorian was Kaine.
“Do it,” Constantine yelled to them, his hoarse voice grim.
I looked at him in question.
He shook his head. “Hold on,” he whispered to me.
Axer’s movements shifted, and rather than repelling the aggressors, he drew the hunters and praetorians closer to us.
As the deadly steps of the combat mages danced closer, I could feel only guilt. They were risking their necks to save the ferals and to save me. And while Camille Straught had thought I deserved a boon for saving campus, I'd probably used it up by now. And she’d never been a fan of feral mages, or any she deemed as less in control.
But following Axer to his grave? Of that, there was no doubt for any of them.
My magicless fingers trembled.
It had been weeks since I'd left campus, since my possessed fingers had tried to kill Axer. But I could still feel the echoes in my hands, where I had gripped the lines of his life and choked the air from his throat. I could hear Stavros cackling about the Dares' only weakness. I could feel Stavros' exultation at finally, finally, getting the Dare scion under his control.
He had wanted Axer's powers for longer than I'd had magic, but Axer had been untouchable. Until me. I was his albatross.
Axer slaughtered the last two hunters, then Ramirez and Greene used their remaining magic to thrust the shadows toward him. Axer grabbed them as if they were rag dolls and flung them into the ball in Constantine’s hand.
With the magic in one of his last containers, Axer slid forward and encased the ball in a layer of magic that reverberated through all three of us.
Breathing heavily, he tied the magic and released it.
But he didn’t relax. In fact, he appeared unusually vigilant, a strange look appearing in his eyes as Ramirez closed in.
And I could see it—what they sensed as the ground beneath all of us started shaking.
Ramirez immediately became a shadow at Axer’s back, watching the street with easy, dark sweeps of his eyes as Greene helped the Awakening mage to her feet. Axer's shoulders tensed. He stared at my neck, my chest, then the hand still gripping my ankle, keeping me anchored. I could feel a single emotion radiating from him that couldn't be hidden—a deep longing to step forward and complete the circle. My heart ached as we made eye contact.
He looked to the distance, then to the ground at my feet, expression pinched as if a set of unpleasant options had presented themselves, and he needed to choose one.
“We need to leave,” Constantine said, his grip on me not easing, the three praetorian shadows in his grip steadily growing darker. His gaze met his roommate’s. “But not from here.”
Something passed between them—a stream of conversation that I wasn't privy to.
Axer reached forward and gripped Constantine’s side, knitting it back together then resetting Constantine’s broken arm with half a container of magic.
Shadows shrieked in the wind indicating Kaine was on the move. Only this time, the sound seemed to emanate from Constantine's palm.
The magic around me suddenly went dormant. Constantine hissed as my magic flooded him, forcing him to loosen his grip on me.
My freed magic started sucking back down to my feet, reforming chains.
Axer flung his last half-container of magic straight at us.