Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(41)
For whatever reason, the sight of this particular resistance enraged me where the boulder and freeze failures hadn’t managed to, tipped my mounting dread and frustration into full-blown rage.
“You shitty little motherfucker!” I shrieked at the coin, my hands clenching into helpless, furious fists by my sides. That trapped dragon inside me reared up again, scaly wings rasping at my lungs, its vast length battering against the scaffold of my ribs. “Why won’t you just melt? Why won’t you just be gone and let me be?”
“Uh, Nina?” Gareth said, a new, sharp note of panic to his voice. “Nina, what—”
The streams of flame flowing from his hands doubled, and then tripled—and then magnified so many times over that any measure of their scope lost meaning altogether.
They spread across the room like an infernal brush fire, engulfing everything but us. The tiny piece of me that wasn’t entirely raging registered a slight concern that I could now feel an uncomfortable rising heat—as though the shield surrounding me might be weakening at the onslaught.
All around us, I could see the overwhelmed web of wards flickering wildly in the blazing walls. Working overtime, frantically channeling magical energy away to keep that conflagration from bringing the entire structure down. But there was so much fire around us, so much. Too much. I could smell it now, the stench seeping even through the shield, its acrid scorch triggering a scrabbling, atavistic fear of being burned alive. I could hear Gareth screaming my name in genuine terror, tinged with something that wasn’t quite pain but dangerously close. My own skin suddenly warmed even further, the fine hairs on my arms and neck sizzling with new heat.
And then with a terrible, blinding flare, a roaring whoomp like a gale all around us, everything went white.
14
An Echo of Morgan Herself
We survived.
The Cell did not.
Fortunately, it had expended its last warding efforts into making sure the shields stayed put around me and Gareth, enough to protect us from the tumbling, fiery wreckage of the building’s collapse. From what we’d gathered after—even with the wards’ last-ditch efforts to protect us, both Gareth and I had passed out from sheer shock and the impact of that final implosion—Lyonesse and Igraine had portaled over and put the fire out in short order between the two of them. Together with some of the rest of the family, they’d easily levitated the charred ruins out of the way and excavated our sorry selves.
And by that time, Gareth and I were feeling extremely sorry about our recent life choices.
“Starting to think it might’ve been easier if we’d actually bought it,” Gareth muttered under his breath beside me, as if reading my mind. A scrawl of soot like some deathly rune unscrolled from his forehead all the way down to his jaw; his hair was a ridiculous ruckus, sticking up in a nest of ashen and blond spikes. Lyonesse hadn’t even given us time to clean up before marching us over to Tintagel’s War Room for a “debriefing” that had all the classical hallmarks of an interrogation. “?’Cause this has the makings of a colossal cluster.”
“Did you have something to say, Gareth Aurelius?” our mother inquired witheringly, perching her chin on one palm. She and our grandmother sat across from us, on the other side of the massive oak round table that dominated the room. Bas-reliefs of knights on horseback galloped across the walls around us, while four massive Corinthian columns surrounded the table, each entwined with a circling dragon, their roaring heads coming together at the dome-vaulted ceiling to breathe painted fire into the burning-sky fresco overhead.
The War Room always did give such casual, low-key vibes.
With their near-identical tasteful pantsuits and blond chignons—Igraine’s just a touch frostier—our mother and grandmother looked like two beautifully kept and extremely sinister modern Fates. They hadn’t even bothered to include our father in what was sure to be an epic dressing-down; as far as our mother was concerned, Merritt was more window dressing than person. The human equivalent of a tasteful set piece that had the good sense to yield to her opinions and otherwise stay out of her way. He was probably spending the afternoon in the stable with his beloved Thoroughbreds, which, frankly, sounded like where I’d rather be myself. And I didn’t even care for horses, not since one of his prize stallions bit me when I was five. I still had the scar on the inside of my left forearm.
Still. Preferable.
“You must be terribly hoarse from all the smoke inhalation, my darling, as I didn’t quite manage to catch that,” Lyonesse added, pursing shell-pink lips and tilting her head delicately to the side. That porcelain finish of hers could be so deceptive; she didn’t look half as dangerous as she was.
“No, Mother,” Gareth replied, ducking his head, his throat working as he swallowed hard. “I don’t have anything to say.”
We’d often found ourselves in this exact scenario throughout our childhood, but back then he used to reach for my hand under the table for courage, confident that I’d be able to tow him safely through to the other side. This time, neither of us was quite so sure. We’d never, between the two of us, managed to bring down an entire bastion of Blackmoore architectural and magical history before. There wasn’t really a precedent for this kind of catastrophic screwup.
“Just, uh, clearing my throat,” he finished, his jaw clenching.