“They are going to get them anyway,” Constantine answered, just as savagely. “You can’t tell me that your father doesn’t have measures against it in your wards. I know he does.”
“Of course, he does. But then we are stuck there. With Priority Five in place that means permanently—while the rest of the world burns.”
“Let it burn.”
Axer laughed without humor, straightening back up. “You never grow up.”
“And you don’t prioritize your friends.”
Axer’s nostrils flared, jaw tight, and gaze fierce. “No? Not all of my friends reside in this room. You are the one who has given yourself a single link in the world.”
“The best choice I’ve made,” Constantine said viciously. “You don’t deserve her.”
Axer’s magic flared around him before he did something internally that visibly buried the anger.
Axer took a deep breath. “We aren’t going to Itlantes,” he said, voice even, but firm. “The governments have to go through emergency measures, and the Department has to get buy-in. We need the governments to calm down, not to obtain the long-awaited evidence that the Dares are finally taking over the world. Taking Ren there will consolidate the governments under Stavros. We need them separated and questioning.”
“You will always protect your family over everything else,” Constantine spat.
“You were once part of that family,” Axer said tightly.
Energy angrily zinged between them.
“Go,” I said. Magic slipped unheeded from beneath my heavy cuff and pushed toward them in command before I even realized I’d channeled it.
Constantine pivoted sharply, slicing his hand through the magic and shattering it. “Your asinine desire for that cuff… It won’t stop you. Not even a null cuff will—it will just cause your eventual, utterly splattered death when your stoppered magic destroys everything in its attempt to escape.”
I touched it. “I know. More reason to—”
“To what? Leave you?” He magically tore the thought from my mind, leaving a blank space that quickly filled with the same reflexive cogitation. “Before you embed it in your thick skull that you are better off without us, no one is going to believe we aren’t with you or that you are without us now. There is nowhere to go.”
I had nothing to say to that that didn’t include a sob, so I pressed my lips together.
Constantine grabbed his head with both hands then wiped them outward, magic pulsing and flinging a wrench across the room so hard it stuck into the wall. “Stop! The only thing to feel guilty about is your stupid, self-sacrificing ways!”
There had to be a way to fix this—a fix without using magic—
A ribbon of magic lassoed around me, sealing my arms against my body as he towered over me suddenly. “If you go anywhere without us again, I will end you,” he said furiously.
Overwhelming streams of input from those still at Excelsine abruptly lit the air around him—becoming visible as they crashed into him in crazy waves and made his gaze wilder.
Axer’s spike of surprise at being included in Constantine’s spontaneous statement was nothing next to whatever emotion made him narrow his eyes at the magic streaming wildly into his roommate. He reached out a hand, but Constantine jerked backward. The lasso around me abruptly released, as Constantine prioritized getting away from his roommate’s concern over making his point.
Axer’s hand fell limply to his side, and he took a deep breath. “Death threats aside, we need a few days. The Department knows we are here without a doubt—they will know, eventually, wherever we go in the magic worlds—but this is a secure facility. I can fortify it further.” I could see his magic flaring out and touching different places in the wards, as if tagging what areas to strengthen first. “The First Layer is the only one that might truly hide us for a while—if Ren can stop herself from doing magic.”
Axer tipped his head at me in question.
I looked at my trembling hands and the cuff that was even now causing me a dull ache. “No,” I whispered.
He nodded, as if fully expecting the answer. “You are already part of these wards. They can sustain a few outbursts. We—”
The complex started to shake. Axer and Constantine instantly layered shields together five deep with me squashed in the middle.
But this wasn't an attack from without. It was from within.
I felt the magic in the complex start to shift. With regret and understanding I unlatched the cuff and connected myself to everything in the room—allowing my hungry magic to shift everything as a unit.
I had given the elders power over the complex. Given them the power of the wards I had put in place—even against me.
When they had said ten minutes, I thought that meant the time I had until they flayed me in a meeting. Na?veté.
I understood exactly their reasoning in this move. I closed my eyes and held onto the edges of my overwhelming magic.
Colors whirled, and I landed heavily on the ground, Guard Rock slamming against my stomach.
Axer and Constantine were immediately on their feet on the spiky grass, backs to each other and to me in 120-degree angles, magic ready.
The magic of the room formed an invisible dome around us in the bleak, unfriendly landscape of deep Outlaw Territory, but the dome would only last for half a minute.
Small additions of magic dotted various areas of the dome in small bubbles—apology gifts from two of the residents.
I closed my eyes and with the hand not holding the cuff, I fished a storage paper from an interior pocket and held it up. I hesitated for a moment, but there was no rage left within me, only sadness. Sweet bitterness curled, and I let calm descend over my hesitation. The dome’s magic abruptly swirled and funneled into the paper, pulling the papered edges inward to form a small, tightly folded cube. The action dispersed the dome's hold on everything within, including the extra bubbles. Their contents fell to the ground with everything else.
The worktable shook, then broke, scattering the projects and items Constantine and I had been collecting. Unnatural lightning blasted in the distance, then steadily began rolling closer in a 360-degree circle around us.
I looked at the barren landscape and the drooping, unfriendly skies, then at the eager death shift tumbling toward us from all directions. Even Rock Guard looked resigned to fate.
“I’ll kill every one of them,” Constantine vowed.
Chapter Twelve: Running
I pulled everything I could into the enchanted sack Delia, Constantine, and I had created on campus a week before my expulsion. The Third Layer death-shift thundered closer—only about three miles out now. I slung the bag around my shoulder and clutched the loose cuff with shaking fingers.
Swallowing, I nudged the layer, slowing the shift's roll.
Magic leaped toward me from all directions, painting the broken sky in twisted patterns.