The walls shuddered again as thunder rocked the basilica. Gritting my teeth, I tried to gather my composure. Desperation drummed an allegro beat in my head, swirling my thoughts into a murky mess. I clutched my chest as my scar burned as fresh and hot as the day I received it.
“Evie, we’ve got this. Don’t panic.” Gideon fired off another round and stepped diagonally, putting himself at my right flank, adding another barricade between Jackie and the Council’s sentinels. Le Poing Fermé would probably refuse to negotiate if I brought them their pet Magician riddled with bullet holes. As much as it sickened me, we had to protect him.
We hurried, turning from a backward plodding to an awkward lope, keeping an eye on our pursuers while searching for an escape route.
“You’re the Lady of Thunder,” Jackie said. “Queen of Inselgrau. You’ve defeated every foe who has come before you, including me. Twice.” He had the gall to wink. “Don’t tell me you’re going to let a few mundane guards get the best of you.”
Something about his wink broke through the raging flood of panic in my mind. I latched onto my memory of the basilica’s blueprints like a life raft. Tugging Gideon’s arm, I pointed down the corridor. “This way.”
I sprinted, bare feet slapping against cool stone tiles. Gideon and Jackie’s footsteps pounded behind me. How many guards followed?
Don’t waste time looking back, Grandfather ordered.
A huge orb of blue-green light whizzed over our heads and slammed into a column, inches from Gideon’s shoulder. Sparks and rubble flew. Gideon snarled. “That one packed a punch.”
“Keep moving,” I said. “I don’t think Brigette’s charms are going to protect us against whatever that was.” I wheeled around another corner. A long hallway, lined in arching windows, stretched before us. It extended toward a grand foyer ending in a set of massive doors. If my memory of the blueprints were right, those doors led outside to freedom.
Too bad we couldn’t use them.
A second cadre of Council sentinels in dark robes and hoods stood before the doorway—pistols raised, swords drawn. In two rows of three, they formed a double-layered wall blocking our exit.
I slid to a stop as despair wrapped tendrils around my iron heart and squeezed.
We were cut off. Boxed in. Where in the Shadowlands is Brigette?
Jackie shoved his cuffed wrists at me again. “Please, Evelyn. We’re open targets.”
Inhaling an anxious breath, I latched onto a lightning bolt and slung it into the windows behind us. They shattered. Shards of glass streaked through the air, cutting like knives, and our pursuers wailed and cried out behind me. I regretted their pain but not as much as I would regret my own if they captured me.
Another Magical bomb exploded at Gideon’s feet, spraying him with rubble. He stumbled and dropped to his knees. I grabbed his shoulder to steady him as he tried to stand, but another wave of ammunition pelted us. Jackie jerked, grunted, and pressed a hand to his shoulder. Red bloomed between his fingers.
“Flesh wound,” he grumbled between clenched teeth. “I’ll survive.”
I spun and faced Taviano, placing myself between his guards and Jackie.
Five sentries flanked the young Magician, and he gave me a victorious grin, as if certain he’d already won this fight. Wind streamed through the shattered windows, and the sentinels’ robes billowed. Taviano’s white hair danced. “You will never escape, Stormbourne. Not without casualties. Your Magician will not come to your rescue—you should never have depended on her.” He formed another glowing sphere between his hands. “This one is for your guardian. But if you give yourself up now, I will let him live.”
In reply, I hurled lightning through a broken window. But the bolt struck an invisible shield around the Magician and his guards. A crash, louder than a thousand cymbals, shrieked in my ears as the thunderbolt’s energy merely undulated across the Magical barricade like ripples across a pond.
The lightning had failed.
Oh no. My knees wobbled. My gut clenched. Oh no, oh no, oh no...
“Antonio!” Jackie roared. “Dammelo adesso!”
One of Taviano’s sentinels lowered his weapon and tossed something to Jackie. Before I could comprehend his intentions, Jackie had rid himself of his cuffs.
The fragment of calm I’d been clinging to shattered. A flash flood filled me with frigid, muddy horror, and I screamed for Gideon.
Jackie threw his arms around me and muttered something under his breath. Invisible bands as cold and hard as iron wrapped around me, squeezing, constricting.
Gideon roared and grabbed for me, but Jackie slashed his hand through the air.
Gideon crumpled.
Jackie waved again, and a blast of power blew down the guards like wheat stalks in a storm. Only Taviano remained on his feet, and he struggled to form another glowing orb.
I called down a pair of lightning bolts and slung one toward the basilica’s front doors, which shattered like kindling under an axe blade. The other bolt slammed into the ground at Taviano’s feet.
Light exploded, and a field of white filled my vision.
Someone screamed, and I prayed to the gods that someone was Taviano.
Jackie tightened his grip on me and howled a word in a language I didn’t recognize. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
The world spun, turned black, and disappeared.
BOOK THREE
RETURN OF THE QUEEN
Chapter 22
Reality returned in what felt like a blink, but my episode of incognizance must have lasted longer than that. The darkness cleared, and I found myself in a tiny, dim room lit only by sunlight streaming through a pair of round windows. No, not windows. Portholes. I sniffed, detecting odors of brine, fish, and starch. As I sat up, the room swayed and my vision swirled.
“Hey, girl, take it easy.” A woman wearing rumpled white trousers and a navy-blue jacket glanced over her shoulder. Hazy light crowned her short dark hair as she crouched in the narrow space between my berth and another one abutting the compartment’s opposite wall. She dipped a rag into a pail at her knee, squeezed it out, and dabbed the bare shoulder of the figure lying before her. Although I couldn’t see his face, I recognized her patient’s long white-gold hair and alabaster skin.
Ignoring my dizziness, I slid from my bunk and crouched beside the strange woman. She swabbed the open wound in Jackie’s shoulder, wiping away blood. “Since you’re awake, why don’t you help me?” She pointed at a bundle at her feet—a folded square of white cloth, a squat round tin, a packet of thread with a needle, and a pair of bent-nose pliers. “Hand me that needle and those pliers.”
