Spellbreaker (Spellbreaker Duology, #1)(85)

Bacchus stumbled forward when the magic released him. “Perhaps you should go first.”

She nodded, fearful to run, but too anxious for caution. They didn’t get far before she felt a crackle in the air, just like with Nash’s lightning staff. Turning the corner, she saw a bead of lightning shoot out from the right edge of the ceiling.

“Go under it.” She hugged the wall. Avoidance would be quicker than asking for a boost so she could reach the rune. The lightning zipped through the air again, causing her hair to stand on end, but it didn’t hit her.

Bacchus followed without question.

She heard a door slam ahead and took off running, only to smash into the wall to her left.

“Damn it, Ogden!” she blurted as the wind sputtering up from the floor pinned her in place. Air swirled around her like she was in the eye of a cyclone. Bacchus used the exact same spell to push the wind in a different direction, allowing Elsie to push past the trap. He followed.

“I don’t suppose,” she managed between breaths, “that you can do that in reverse? Suck him toward us?”

“No.”

Elsie made out the outline of a door up ahead. She searched for runes but saw none—

“Stop!” she shouted, digging in her heels. Bacchus ran into her, nearly bumping her into a wooden crate against the wall. Elsie had just recognized the symbol glimmering atop it.

“A mobile spell. This would have crushed us.” She crouched and pulled the rune apart, then pushed past the bin unscathed. She cursed. “We have to find another path. He’s getting away!”

Her toe hit something metal on the ground—a crowbar. Elsie considered it for only a moment before snatching it up. She couldn’t cast spells, but she could certainly swing this.

“It will be easier once we’re outside.” Bacchus moved past her and grabbed the door handle, opening it just as Elsie spied the slightest glimmer of a spell.

The ground shifted upward like a giant mouth, knocking Elsie into the crate. Cement, stone, and wood contorted and surged up and around Bacchus—a giant version of the spell he’d once laid for her at the duke’s estate. The one that had seized her shoe.

But this one swallowed him clear up to his neck.

“Bacchus!” she cried, finding her feet and rushing toward him. He might as well have been trapped in a mountain! She ran her hands over its uneven bumps, searching for the rune.

Bacchus grunted, trying to move, but he was pinned completely, his limbs immobile within his close-fitting prison. “Bloody . . . ,” he began, but didn’t finish whatever foul thing sat on his tongue. “He’s getting away!”

Elsie spied the slimmest glimmer in a crack. Her skeleton seemed to puddle inside her. “I found it, but it’s on the other side of the rock. Your side.” She tried to push her fingers through, cutting them as she did, but she couldn’t chip the cement. Stepping back, she wedged the crowbar in. It chipped away at the cement a little more, but it wasn’t hard enough to break the stone. Elsie put her weight on it, but it seemed the crowbar would break before the concrete mound did. Panicked breaths tore up and down her throat. “Maybe I-I can find something else. A hammer—”

“Elsie, leave me. Go.”

She shook her head. “I’ll get you out—”

“You’ll lose him!” he barked. “Go!”

“Can’t you melt it?” Desperation squeezed her voice out an octave higher than usual.

Bacchus shook his head, though he was barely able to do so. “This is stone. Do you know what the liquid version of stone is? And it’s too large to shift to gas. I’ll kill myself and you.”

Her breaths became rapid. “Can you try to change just a little of it? If I can get through—”

“Go, Elsie, before it’s too late!”

“I don’t leave people!” she snapped, hands fisted against the bespelled mound. She panted, seeing red, feeling as cold as Bacchus’s aspected ice.

Bacchus hesitated only a moment. “No, you don’t.”

Swallowing, she glanced up at him.

“Elsie.” His voice was firm yet somehow melodious, his Bajan accent slipping through. In the moonlight streaming from the open door, his eyes glowed. “You’re the one who can stop him. Who can get past his spells. He might listen to you. You need to go now, or you’ll lose his trail, and this will all be for nothing. I believe in you.”

“But—”

“I’ll know you’ll come back.” His eyes were intent, bright as emeralds. “Elsie, please. Go.”

She held his gaze for a heartbeat, cradling her injured fingers against her breast. He was right. She needed to go. But she could only undo spells, not create them. She was armed, somewhat, and after what had happened with Nash . . . she might be able to get past Ogden’s spells if she focused. But what if she couldn’t? She’d die, and Bacchus would be trapped here until a worker found him . . .

Her own possible demise flashed across her mind. Was she ready to die to stop Ogden?

It was what Robin Hood would do.

She started for the door. Paused. Glanced back to Bacchus.

She rushed toward him and, stepping onto one of the crags of his cement cage, lifted her face to his and kissed him on the cheek. His half beard was rough and startling against her jaw. Her nerves sparked, but it was done.