Protect the Prince (Crown of Shards #2)(65)

The nobles would say that Vasilia had killed Frederich and that I had come here and killed Dominic. The people would scream for blood—my blood—and no doubt Heinrich would be happy to give it to them.

Maeven had set a clever trap. Killing Dominic and then letting the Andvarians kill me would be almost as good as murdering me herself.

I tightened my grip on my sword. That wasn’t going to happen. None of it.

Dominic spotted me creeping up behind the assassins. He flicked his eyes to his right, telling me to focus on the men on that side. I nodded back, then raised my sword and rushed forward.

In front of me, the assassins attacked Dominic, who hit one of them in the face with his lightning. That man dropped to the ground, shrieking and clawing at his burning eyeballs and melting skin, but the other assassins kept coming at the prince.

The assassin in front of me snapped up his weapon, but I closed the distance between us, grabbed his shoulder, and yanked him back toward me—and the point of my sword. The weapon plunged into his side, making him scream. I twisted the blade in deeper, then yanked it out and shoved him away.

Another assassin whirled around in my direction, but I was already moving toward him, and I slashed my sword across his chest and kept going, heading toward Dominic.

The prince blasted the remaining man with his lightning, then faced the final assassin—the blond woman.

She had been hanging back during the fight, but now there was no one between her and Dominic. He yelled and raised his sword, but the woman lifted her hands, and a wave of air blasted out of her palms and slammed into the prince, throwing him back against the wall.

My eyes widened. She was no ordinary mutt assassin—she was a weather magier who had just been waiting for the right moment to unleash her magic.

Dominic’s head snapped back against the wall, cracking the glass and leaving a spray of blood on it. His sword dropped from his hand, and he hit the floor alongside it.

Fear squeezed my chest, and for a moment, I thought he was dead.

Then Dominic let out a low groan of pain and slowly pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, although he was clearly dazed.

An evil smile spread across the magier’s face, her eyes lit up with power, and a ball of purple lightning crackled to life in her palm. She was too close to miss, and Dominic wasn’t going to be able to avoid the strike or fend her off with his own magic.

I sprinted in that direction, with my free hand stretched out in front of me, even though I knew that I would be too late to close the distance between us and that I wouldn’t be able to touch the magier in time to snuff out her magic and keep her from killing Dominic.

“No!” I screamed.

The magier whipped around to me. Her eyes were the same eerie, electric purple that Libby’s had been, and the caustic stench of her magic was the same as well. She was another member of the Bastard Brigade.

For a split second, I thought—hoped—that the magier would toss her deadly lightning at me instead of Dominic, since he was already down on the floor, and I was still upright and the greater threat. But instead, she whirled back around, determined to kill him first.

Desperate, I yanked my dagger off my belt and threw it at her, but my running stride spoiled my aim, and the blade sailed wide and thunked into a bookshelf instead of her back.

The magier didn’t seem to notice my flying dagger. She reached for even more of her magic, and the lightning in her palm burned bigger and brighter.

I forced myself to run even faster and stretch my free hand out as far as it would go, hoping that I could at least get a finger on her. One little fingertip on her skin was all I needed to unleash my immunity and throttle her magic. I still wasn’t close enough to touch her, but something strange happened.

Her magic vanished anyway.

Well, perhaps vanished wasn’t the right word. The purple lightning crackling in her palm wavered, just for a moment, as though it were a candle flame being threatened by a strong gust of wind. Surprised, the magier glanced down at her hand, as if she didn’t know what was wrong with her power.

I didn’t know what was wrong with her power either, and I didn’t care. Her one second of hesitation let me close the distance between us, and I knocked her away from Dominic and down to the floor.

The magier screeched, and her lightning flew out of her hand and slammed into my chest. I screamed in pain and surprise, and I couldn’t stop my hands, arms, and legs from convulsing as the lightning sizzled through my body. Her power was so strong that it knocked my tearstone sword out of my hand, and the weapon slid across the floor out of reach.

The magier realized that she had the advantage, and she locked her hand around my right wrist and sent another wave of magic scorching through me. This time, the horrid stench of my own singed hair and fried flesh filled my nose, and I could feel my skin burning, burning, burning from her intense power.

It wasn’t enough that the members of the Bastard Brigade were determined to kill me. Oh no. Every single one of them had to be a bloody magier too who wanted to incinerate me with their fucking lightning.

I was really starting to hate the Mortan royal family, bastards and all.

The magier shocked me over and over again. The rest of the library fell away, and all I could see, hear, feel, smell was her damned purple lightning slamming into my body.

I tried to fight it, tried to push back against her magic with my own immunity, but I couldn’t even catch my breath long enough to scream between the bolts of lightning, much less grab hold of my own power. Her magic was seconds away from completely overcoming my immunity and frying me to a charred crisp—