“We need somewhere they won’t look. Or somewhere they can’t look.” His blue eyes pinned me like he already knew my secrets. “Make us disappear.”
“I meant you do it,” Constantine snarled, turning to him.
“They will search all the homes and installations of the allies I have made. We need those allies later. She can do it.”
“I know she can. But you would make her? Like this?”
“Yes.” Axer’s expression was hard. “She learns quickly. Even more so under strain when given a small amount of recovery, then another, harder challenge.”
“You would cause—”
“Don’t deny her who she is.”
“I never have.”
“But you will,” Axer said, intensity in his gorgeous eyes. “She won’t last in a gilded cage.”
“I know. Or she’d already be there,” Constantine said savagely. “You are ignoring the ramifications. This is a farseerstorm that you wish on your enemies but one you don’t want to see captured by a Level 10 container.”
“You, too, want her to be who she is.” Axer's gaze was mesmerizing. “Your fear can't deny your desire.”
“Fear can deny any desire,” he spit, and there was a loaded exchange of meaning between them. Communication that I was never privy to in their method of unbreakable communication.
I touched the marble again. It wasn't ready, and I had almost ended the world already today, but…
I looked at the boys, knowing that I was now responsible for their safety. There was no room for fear or failure.
“I can do it,” I said quietly, putting my hand on Constantine’s arm. “I won't...I won't end us. It will be creation. I can keep control.”
For their safety. For Rosaria and Carlos—Ren and Christian.
Constantine looked at me for a long moment. “Darling, I'm not one of your spineless Thirdies. You can ravage a thousand landscapes and twist everything under the sun into swirled lollipops and I'll just mock all those who forgot to bring their own stick.”
“I won't—”
Constantine rubbed at his temples. “Stop talking. I swear you were born with enough guilt for both of us. Just...don’t stick us in Flavel Valeris’ palace.”
“I won’t.” I breathed in deeply, feeling my other emotions bury themselves beneath. I could do this. I could be better than I’d been. I had to be.
I ran my right fingers along my pocket and left fingers over the cool marble, and let my fear join the other unhelpful emotions underneath.
Death. I looked at the drooping sky. What would Ori do in this situation?
It would lead a merry chase.
I pulled five small paper dragons from my kit. They fluttered excitedly.
I paused over the latch of the cuff, then unlatched it. Power flooded through me—all the greater for having been stoppered. I grabbed onto the lashing tendrils, but it was like roping a storm. Axer’s warm hand slid under my unbound hair and the power dimmed, siphoned away just enough for me to grab hold.
I knelt and concentrated. No rage, no anger of any kind—I submerged it all. Melancholy. Kinship with the layers and magic that flowed between all of them.
“First you.” I imbued the first dragon with a hefty dose of magic, and the broken layer crackled around me in response. If anyone hadn't known where we were, they did now. “Then you.”
The next dragon had less magic, and so forth, until the last of them held the barest amount. I then pulled out a sixth dragon and pulled the siphoned magic back, overloading the paper, pulling the freely extended magic from both boys, then encapsulated all of it in two vibrating fields around the distended creature.
I held up the first five. “Activate only when your predecessor is gone and your spell triggers. After that, you are free. Become a flower in the landscape, fly to new pastures, find each other—whatever you desire.” A small bit of trickery under their own control.
“Except you,” I said to the sixth. “Do you understand your task?”
It vibrated with swollen excitement.
I tuned the portal pad, imbuing it with timing parameters for six jumps. Each jump was spelled to one of the dragons.
“Three minutes,” Axer said, eyes fixed on a specific point in the landscape. “They’ll be in view soon.”
“Okay.” I swallowed. “Here we go.”
I activated the pad outside the dead space and the first dragon dove inside. The others followed, grasping the tendrils of each spelled jump. The last, bloated dragon eagerly zipped inside at the end, taking the pad with it—suctioned through the layer—our only external emergency escape.
We waited in agonizing silence as the layer shift rolled over and around the dead space, then Axer nodded. “Bait accepted. All crafts have changed course to the first of the pad’s points.”
A minute later, I felt the pop in my mind, and the layer rumbled. “Second jump initiated.”
I latched the cuff back into place. Immediately, Constantine’s dark emotions, and the crazed feelings emanating through him from Olivia, Neph, and the Bandits, dimmed.
Dimmed, but not completely absent. I could feel the brushes of the second dragon’s activation as the pad did its work at the second site a minute later.
Axer touched the metal. “A Level 9 suppressor cuff. It won’t last.” His fingertip touched a small, burned hole.
“I know,” I whispered. My very sweat glimmered with color these days. And paint had eventually eaten through every cuff I’d ever worn. “I’ll work through it.”
I shakily lifted the small black box that had splayed out with our supplies—a bubbled addition gifted from another source of magic in the compound as we'd been expelled—feeling the weight of it in my hands. I set it down on the uneven ground.
Constantine narrowed his eyes. “Is that—”
With a press against the sides, a large vehicle activated into the space in front of us. It was loaded with supplies and the inverted shielding wards I had helped create for the Ophidians' vehicles during free moments I had in the complex when I’d been trying to learn people's names and trades, and to help with whatever I could to make their lives better with the magic that I had.
Frost Viper—thank you.
“It is.” Constantine's darkness lifted the minutest measure with his own answered statement. As if his complete kill count had split to kill and “maim” counts instead.
“It's a non-magic way to get us to where we need to go as long as no one is following.”
I walked unevenly to the front of the bike, mounted the driver's seat, and mechanically checked the gauges. All magic, fluids, and evasive enchantments were topped. The spine of a manual on recycling spells peeked from the side of the vehicle where it was tucked.
Recycling spells. I'd become adept at the enchantments out of necessity at first, then interest later.
Still... I looked at the landscape outside the dead space, and touched my pocket again. Feeling his gaze, I looked at Constantine. He looked at the pocket I kept touching, then back at me, not even needing to read my mind, he knew me so well at this point.
“I'm driving.” He moved with purpose toward the front of the single, long seat.
“I can do it,” I murmured.