Page 17 of Silver (Shunned Mages #2)

Wilston

They’d found us.

“Fuck!” Xarius yelled. “We forgot about your magic!”

“What?” we asked in unison, getting ready for the attack.

“When we got our magic, the leaders knew and that’s when they came after us. We forgot to shield your magic in the wards, so they found us!” Xarius was right, we should’ve added our own magic to secure the wards and us.

Our familiars surrounded us, protecting all our sides. We’d just discovered our magic, but we’d had no time to truly practice. I was glad Niam could remove pain, because I feared I wouldn’t be able to get out of this without issue.

I took Silver’s hand in mine, fearing this would be it. I’d gotten my soulmatch and finally felt happiness for the first time in a long while. True happiness. Was it too good to be mine forever?

One of the stone walls started to crumble, but we knew they could be trying to distract us, so we kept our eyes on every direction, making sure we weren’t caught by surprise. This would be good practice, but I’d rather have played some more with the trees.

Five mages stepped inside the wall, but since Xarius was the one facing that direction, I let him have them and he did, knowing the quicker they died the better.

He sucked the air out of them quickly, leaving them on the ground.

In front of me a tree swayed on the other side of the wall, then two mages appeared, having used earth magic to make the tree branches catapult them up over the wall.

They jumped down from the stone wall and just as they hit the ground, I used my magic to swallow them up, knowing exactly what Xari had done several times before and mimicking that, burying them alive.

They tried to fight my magic with their own, but I was stronger.

With them taken care of, I looked around assessing the situation.

Snowflake was swiping his fire claws at anyone he passed, leaving them screaming in pain. The open wounds on them continued to burn, proving Niam and Xarius’s theory that Snowflake did in fact have magic.

Niam had ten men huddled together and writhing in pain, then blazing fire on them, burning them to ashes in seconds.

Silver was using both his powers at once it seemed, drowning people with his water and suffocating others with his wind magic.

I got what Xarius meant now. Silver had never looked sexier, with his hair blowing in the wind as he stood there using his powers to make the mages crumble in defeat.

Snapping out of it, I couldn’t make the mistake of losing my focus on the fight.

I saw King impale several mages on his antlers, moving gracefully between them.

Leon was right behind him, kicking and pecking mages.

Shamus was fucking feral, yipping and then ripping the mages’ throats off, flying from one mage to the next in graceful movements.

Then came the dogs. Ten mages walked into our enclosure with what I guessed to be around twenty dogs in front of them.

They looked highly trained and fast. But just then, I realized something, something I could use to our advantage.

I could sense the dogs in a way, something I recognized as my specialty magic.

What it was, I had no idea. But I was going to try either way.

I raised my hand straight up in the air and all the dogs stopped moving, sitting down and awaiting my command.

The mages’ eyes widened with what I could only guess was fear. I smirked, then willed the dogs in my mind to attack the mages standing behind them. And they did. Turning around, they began attacking all the mages.

I struck a few mages with my fire, others I buried alive, you know, to keep things interesting.

A mage was faring better than the others against us, a rather powerful one.

I didn’t have to ask Silver for his help, he seemed to know I needed him, taking my hand in his and fusing our magic together.

The mage was an older woman and she appeared to think she had a secret we weren’t privy to, smirking at us as she appeared.

Xari and Niam were battling five other mages so we had the pleasure of her company on our own.

No other mages were left unattended so that was at least a relief, since it meant we could give her our full attention.

I squeezed his hand but before we could use our magic, the woman spoke.

“The leaders want you dead, no matter how many you kill, your time will come. You think you can steal magic from other mages without consequence?” she laughed, clearly believing whatever lies the leaders had spun to get the mages to die for them in battle.

Both Silver and I knew it wouldn’t help to say our piece.

She wouldn’t believe a word we said anyway, we could only hope fewer would die before we faced the leaders ourselves.

I raised my hand, and Silver did the same. Then, using my fire magic together with Silver’s water, the water and fire mixed in the air, combining and shooting straight to the mage, boiling her alive.

She fought our magic for a few seconds, proving she was stronger than any of the other mages who’d come. But still not stronger than us. She died, her reddened skin steaming with smoke. We looked around seeing no other mages were left alive.

“Don’t bury them!” Silver quickly yelled, stalling Xarius in his movements. We all gave Silver a quizzical look, waiting for him to elaborate.

“Let the familiars eat them. We need all the magic we can get and Snowflake is a badass!” Well, my darling Silver did have a point.

Niam gagged and ran for our makeshift outhouse, clearly not liking the thought of our familiars eating dead mages. I just shrugged, looking to King to gauge his reaction. I knew deer could eat meat when in dire need of food, but I also wasn’t planning on forcing him.

“It’s up to you if you want the powers,” I told him. He looked at me for a few seconds and then slowly walked over to a dead mage and started munching on her arm. Okay, I got what had Niam gagging now. Turning around I saw the rest of the familiars going at it like it was an all you can eat buffet.

Grabbing Silver’s hand, I dragged us over to our teardrop trailer, wanting us away from the massacre and into some clean clothes. Silver could give us a quick hose down with his water and I could add warmth to it with my magic.

As we stripped, hiding partially behind the trailer, Silver said, “So, you can command animals?”

I hadn’t really had the time to process it, but I knew that was what I’d done.

I nodded, then decided to elaborate for my bonded.

“I felt their presence, it felt different than what I was used to, so even before I tried, I knew I had some kind of magic that affected animals. Not our familiars, though. I can’t feel them in the same way. ”

He nodded, taking our dirty clothes and moving them out of the way. “It was amazing to watch,” he laughed. “Their faces when the dogs all sat down.” He laughed harder. “Best sight ever!”

We washed with our magic, then dried, too, before changing into some clean clothes.

The others didn’t keep their bloodied clothes, likely because they couldn’t be salvaged.

Even with our distance from the fight because our magic had worked as long-range attacks, we’d still ended up getting sprayed because of the familiars and their brutal ways.

“We’ll find you a new baby pink hoodie,” I promised, looking at the pile of clothes we needed to burn, then at his ruined white sneakers. They weren’t the best choice for a life on the road, but they were pretty. “Shoes, too,” I said, mentally adding them to the list in my head.

“If we weren’t in such a hurry, I would drop to my knees right now,” he winked.

“No time!” Niam yelled from wherever he was, ruining my idea of a quickie as soon as I’d thought about it.

“Baby!” Niam yelled. “Someone left a letter for you!”