Protect the Prince (Crown of Shards #2)(66)

Suddenly, the magier let out an angry shriek and flew backward, away from me. For a moment, I didn’t understand why, but then the scent of cold vanilla with just a hint of spice swirled through the air, overpowering everything else, and a blast of blue lightning streaked through the air above my head. My heart lifted.

Sullivan.

He strode forward, his long gray coat snapping around his legs, and put himself in between me and the magier. While the other woman scrambled to her feet, Sullivan glanced down, making sure that I was still alive. Murderous rage filled his face, and his eyes gleamed like electrified sapphires. Without a word, he focused on the Mortan magier, lifted his hands, and blasted her with his lightning again.

The weather magier was strong, but Sullivan was stronger, and he cut right through her defenses and knocked her back down to the floor, hitting her with his blue lightning. The magier screamed and convulsed just like I had.

For several seconds, all I could do was lie still and suck down breath after breath, trying to slow my racing heart and stop the twitching in my arms and legs. The whole time, Sullivan kept blasting the magier with his power, as if he never wanted to stop hurting her for how she had hurt me.

And I realized that Sullivan wasn’t going to stop—not until he killed her.

As much as I wanted the magier to suffer for what she’d done to me, and Dominic too, her death wouldn’t give me any answers about Maeven. So I forced myself to roll over onto my hands and knees and then stagger to my feet. I stumbled forward and grabbed Sullivan’s arm.

“Stop!” I yelled, although my voice came out as a low, croaking rasp since my throat was a bit charred, along with the rest of me. “Sully, stop! We need her alive!”

Sullivan looked at me, dangerous blue lightning crackling in his eyes, just like it was still hissing and spitting on his fingertips. I tightened my grip on his arm.

“Please,” I rasped.

His gaze traced over my face, as if he was double-checking to make sure that I was really standing next to him, and not a dead, burned husk on the floor. He shuddered out a breath, let go of his power, and dropped his hands to his sides, although pale blue smoke wafted off his fingertips, bringing his heady vanilla scent along with it. I wanted to step forward, bury my face in his neck, and just breathe in that scent—his scent—over and over again, until it blotted out everything that had just happened.

Down on the floor, the magier finally quit screaming, although her arms and legs kept convulsing as the last bits of Sullivan’s power streaked through her muscles. She finally got her breath back, sat up, and glared at us with hate-filled eyes.

“You idiots,” she sneered. “Do you really think you can stop the Bastard Brigade? Do you really think you can stop the might of Morta? You might have thwarted us tonight, but we’ll keep coming and coming until all of you are dead. Do you hear me? You’re already dead! All of you! You just don’t know it yet—”

I stepped up and kicked the magier in the face. Her nose broke with a loud, satisfying crunch under the toe of my boot, her head snapped back, and she dropped down to the floor.

I loomed over her, making sure she was truly unconscious. Good. I didn’t want to listen to her crow any longer.

“Highness!” Sullivan said. “Are you okay?”

I wiped the sweat off my forehead with a trembling hand. “More or less. What about Dominic?”

I looked over at the crown prince, who was still slumped up against the glass wall. His eyes looked unfocused, but he was blinking, and he drunkenly waved his hand at the sound of his name.

“You’re not okay,” Sullivan said. “You’re hurt.”

He gently took hold of what was left of my tunic sleeve and lifted my arm up where we could both see it. I immediately wished that he hadn’t, since my entire right arm was a blistered mess of flesh, except for a ring of smooth, perfect skin around my bracelet. Even now, I could still feel the cold, hard power pulsing through the crown crest. I shuddered. Those seven blue tearstone shards were the only things that had kept the magier from burning me alive.

But it was still a gruesome, painful injury, and the magier’s lightning kept crackling through my skin like it was never going to stop. I drew in a ragged breath, and the acrid aroma of my own fried flesh filled my nose again. Given my mutt magic, I could literally smell my skin melting, melting, melting.

My stomach roiled. I forced down the bitter bile rising in my throat, but white and gray stars started winking on and off in front of my eyes.

“Evie!” Sullivan said. “Evie!”

He hardly ever called me Evie, which made it even more special when he did. I started to tell him how much I loved the sound of my name on his lips, but those white and gray stars darkened to an ominous black.

Try as I might, I couldn’t stop those black stars, and Sullivan’s concerned face was the last thing I saw before the darkness pulled me away from him.

*

Hands grabbed my shoulders, pulling me away from my father’s body.

I dug my feet into the floor and stretched out my hand, but I couldn’t reach him. A sob rose in my throat, but it didn’t matter that I couldn’t reach him.

My father was dead.

The hands turned me away from that awful sight, but I was greeted by another one—my mother’s panicked face.

“Stay behind me, Evie!” she yelled, although I could barely hear her over the screams and shouts filling the dining hall.