“Do I? Good.” Magnus struck him again, this time with his left fist. His fingers itched to wrap themselves around the hilt of a sword, to plunge it into Kyan’s chest and watch the life leave his eyes.
Then, in an instant, those very eyes Magnus wished to snuff out turned from amber to a vivid, glowing blue.
Magnus took a step back, bumping into Cleo, who was now standing and waiting only a foot behind him.
“What are you?” he demanded.
His feet grew warm. He looked down, astonished to see a ring of bright, amber fire had formed around him. Cleo shrieked and leapt away from the flames.
“What am I?” Kyan repeated, cocking his head. “You mean, you really don’t know?”
“No!” Lucia grabbed hold of the young man’s arm. “Kyan, don’t do this. Not to him.”
“Apologies, little sorceress, but it’s already done.”
The flames grew higher, curling up around Magnus’s legs like fiery snakes. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think; all he could do was watch them slither around his body. But while he could feel the warmth of the flames through the leather of his trousers, they hadn’t actually touched him—hadn’t burned him—yet.
But they would. Magnus knew this, without a single doubt.
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me the first time, Kyan.” Lucia’s voice rose. “I said no.”
A ferocious blast of air magic slammed into Magnus. He flew backward, hurtling about twenty paces, to land hard right next to Nic’s unconscious body. He looked around, stunned. His legs had been freed from the flames, which continued to burn where he’d previously stood.
Magnus quickly jumped back up to his feet, exchanging a brief, pained look with Cleo, before his gaze landed on his sister. “Lucia!”
Her arm hooked with Kyan’s, and she dragged the young man away in the opposite direction. Shakily, Magnus began to run after them.
“Lucia! Stop!” he called. “I can help you!”
“Help me?” She gave him a bleak look. “My darling brother, it seems you can’t even help yourself.”
A wall of flames rose up to block his path and obliterated any sight of her.
CHAPTER 13
JONAS
LIMEROS
Finally, after a long, several-days’ journey, there it was: the Limerian palace, just visible in the distance.
As big and ugly as Jonas had always heard it was.
“Your job is to get something for us to eat and find us some rooms for the night,” Jonas told Lysandra and Olivia. They’d just stumbled upon a small village a little more than a mile away from the palace grounds.
“Fine,” Lys said as Jonas handed his satchel to her for safe keeping. “You’re still insisting that I stay behind while you go case the palace? Go ahead then, and lose your head all on your own.”
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “Jonas is quite notorious. After all of his alleged crimes, I believe they would throw him in the dungeon rather than kill him outright.”
“Good point,” Lys said flatly. “They’d want enough time to draw a crowd of spectators before removing his head.”
Jonas glared at them as he adjusted his eye patch. “Thank you both for your confidence in my abilities. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He left them without another word and quickly made his way to the palace. He’d been to Limeros before, but never to the palace itself, and he had no idea what kinds of barriers to entry awaited him there.
Unlike the Auranian palace, there was no wall surrounding the castle to separate it from the landscape. Instead, there was a tall watchtower about a quarter mile from the castle gates, along the single road leading toward the massive black granite structure. Any visitors or deliveries would first need to stop here, be questioned by the armed guards, who would log their names and purpose before giving or denying them permission to continue on.
Jonas saw just a sliver of all this from beneath a canvas tarp and between two large sacks of potatoes, in the back of the wagon he’d snuck onto.