Page 12 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

On the other side of the alleyway, a rotting carriage lay toppled on its side. Most of the wood had decayed away. The leather leads were buried beneath snow patches and the fallen wall from the next cottage over.

The tingling disappeared.

Bone-chilling cold soaked her body. She gasped.

Niels put a hand on her shoulder. “Hal, what—”

A blazing blue fire zinged above Hallie’s head, blasting out the remnants of the broken window on the decrepit home beside them.

Before she could process anything, Niels dove on top of her.

He pressed her against the aging wood of the home next door.

The wood groaned with the impact, threatening to splinter.

Niels’ heart pounded against her back. She recoiled as he growled and turned, firing the flashpistol in the direction of the blue fire and pushing her out of the way with his good arm, the other one working to keep his aim as steady as possible.

All of it happened in less than three seconds, but time seemed to slow as Hallie pulled herself off the door. She looked toward their attackers.

No. No. No.

While hard to tell specifics with only the moonlight and a discarded, broken lantern, she knew General Correa’s eyes, even with that crazed look. His uniform was torn and dirty like those of the soldiers that had attacked the cavern.

He’d survived Achilles.

And he would never let her free.

Just looking at him now made her body explode with phantom pain. She fought her body’s response. He hadn’t touched her. She wouldn’t let him torture her again. She had the power now. She could make him suffer.

In the scuffle, Hallie had dropped the electropistol.

Niels retrieved it and fired bolts in Correa’s direction.

He wasn’t used to the lack of recoil; he missed by several feet.

Correa fired his Cerl pistol back. Hallie and Niels dodged just in time as the blue fire raced past, striking some other bit of the ruined house beside them.

Niels went to fire the flashpistol once more. Nothing happened. “Blast!”

In a moment of insanity, he tossed it aside. The pistol skidded across the mossy cobblestones and under the overturned carriage. Ice-cold fear thrummed in Hallie’s veins. The weapon was merely jammed, presumably, and he’d just— thrown it without a care.

Regardless, she scrambled after the discarded weapon as Correa skirted behind the half-wall of the home across the street.

Some of the roof had caved in, and most of the front wall was missing.

Golden light from Secondmoon glinted on the dirty window in the nearly intact front door.

Correa fired again, but his aim went even more awry.

“I only need the girl!” he shouted as he fired once more. This time, his aim was better. Niels lunged in time to avoid it, barely, but landed on his injured shoulder.

He let out a scream through clenched teeth as he pulled himself back up. “Run!”

Hallie grasped the handle of the flashpistol, trying to cock it, but like she suspected, the mechanism didn’t budge.

Jammed. She peeked around the side of the carriage as Niels edged around the doorway and shot an electrobolt at Correa.

It hit the cottage door. Sparks engulfed the entire thing, jumping out and catching on the drying overgrowth.

A small flame budded where the spark had hit. Surely it wouldn’t grow. Not with the lingering snow. Surely not. Nothing was dry enough.

But maybe they’d get lucky.

Heat flared inside her chest when that flame did indeed leap to life. As the fire climbed, so did her power, rising higher and pushing harder and growing more and more unbearable by the second.

Hallie whimpered involuntarily as she pushed the heat into the jammed pistol in her hands, unsure what else to do with the power begging for release.

Fire ravaged her veins and flooded into the metal weapon. Someone screamed—it might have been her.

In a blink of an eye, the feeling abated, but her hands tingled. She looked down at the flashpistol.

Despite the discomfort in her fingers, she cocked it with ease, no longer jammed.

Holy blasting stars.

She leaned out from behind the carriage and aimed toward Correa’s hiding place. She hovered her finger over the trigger, breathing deeply to calm her racing heart.

She could do this. She could—

Tingling pain lanced through her hand, releasing her grip on the pistol.

Being old technology and not as reliable, it fired. The bullet nailed an upturned cobblestone, blasting it apart, and ricocheted sideways, hitting Niels in the leg. He shouted and fell against the wall. He slid to the ground, blood smearing on the moss and staining the sludgy snow.

“No!” she shouted. Her hand ached. She stumbled toward him where he tried to fire at Correa. His face was drawn into a pained grimace, his aim wilder than before.

She fell beside him, dodging a bullet. An orange glow grew on the other side of the street, but all she could really see was the blood soaking Niels’ trousers.

She fumbled around for her pack, for anything that could help as his shaking, uninjured arm kept the electropistol trained on where they’d last seen Correa.

“I don’t know if—I’m sorry—I just—” She couldn’t find the words as she leaned back onto the threshold. Her good hand touched something that felt like fire.

She hissed and pulled it back. One of the bricks, the one she’d touched, wasn’t covered in moss or decay. It shone with a bronze glow, a soft light glimmering from its surface.

Hallie pressed both hands to the Zuprium brick. Fire raced through her fingers, into her hands, and up through her arms.

The Passage. It had to be. It didn’t look like the archway in her mind, but the power was convincing enough.

She reached for her power again, closing her eyes and drowning out the sounds of the firefight. She needed to focus. She needed to hone this, to tame it into whatever it needed to be to get them out.

Her power moved stubbornly as sweat poured down her face and chilled in the mountain air. Tendrils of golden light in her mind’s eye coiled and spun, but each time she tried to force them into the brick, they escaped her grasp.

The brick still burned the pads of her fingers. She could feel it—but the power wouldn’t obey.

“I’m not sure what you are attempting to do, but I’d say bargaining with us is a better bet,” a voice murmured above her.

Two hands found her shoulders and squeezed. Cold like ice flowed through her veins, dousing her power like a match tossed into a snowbank.

The night was silent save for the crackling flames nearby. She opened her eyes and tore herself from the brick. The hands didn’t leave her shoulders.

A gurgling noise.

She looked up to find a pair of golden eyes amidst a perfectly proportioned face and framed with silky golden hair. Unkempt at the moment, but still shimmering in the soft moonlight.

King Filip was beautiful, even in such a bedraggled state.

The days since Achilles had been unkind to him.

She’d only heard horror stories about the king who allowed his people to starve so that he could live in luxury.

It was hard to reconcile this Adonis of a man with the greedy, greasy king she’d imagined in her University courses.

Worse, he was an Essence wielder.

Hallie’s heart sputtered weakly, and she swayed on her feet. It was three against two, and Niels was bleeding from a pistol shot she’d unwittingly inflicted upon him.

They were both going to die, and it was her fault.

King Filip held Niels under his chin. The newest bloodstain on his knee grew like a puddle of spilled ink on his trousers. He clawed at Filip’s fingers with one hand, but the harder he tried, the more King Filip’s grip tightened.

Another voice spoke in her ear. Female, with a rasping lull to it. “Come with us, and your friend lives.”

Lies.

Hallie wanted to scream, but she couldn’t find her voice. She’d been in this situation before…except this time, it wouldn’t be the Yalvs who rescued them in the ruins of the old city on Tasava. Yarrow’s final moments and death-scream echoed in her ears.

This time, it would be Niels.

No.

Hallie tried to stoke her power, but nothing pulsed or flared. The tendrils, though merely evasive moments before, had disappeared completely.

No!

The voice spoke again, power zinging through each word and tingling up Hallie’s spine. She caught a glimpse of long, dark hair. “You have little choice.”

It was the woman. The one from Achilles, the other half of King Filip’s Essence power.

Hallie abandoned her pursuit of her magic and eyed the discarded flashpistol instead. She must have used the last of the power she’d regained fixing it. Or maybe it just liked to rebel against her whenever it could, like it had a mind of its own.

She had no control. She needed someone to teach her. She needed to get to Myrrai and find a way to rid herself of this curse.

She needed to find her way back to Kase. She would not die here.

Hallie straightened in the woman’s grip and looked King Filip in the eye. “Why should I believe you now?”

“We both work for the same goal.”

Hallie shook her head. “Then why the demonstration at Achilles? Correa tortured me, and you—you’re threatening my guide even now!”

King Filip loosened his grip, and Niels collapsed to the ground in a heap, gasping for breath. The moon paled the crimson blood leaking from his wound to scarlet. His face was too pale. Held fast, Hallie couldn’t help him.

“My uncle and I both harbor hatred toward your people,” King Filip said.

He wore simple clothes very much like what the Jaydian elite would wear daily—a button-down shirt, blue vest, trousers, and a leather traveler’s jacket.

He was only missing a bowler hat. Judging by the dirt and occasional rip, the clothes had seen better days.

Hardly appropriate for a fight. “It is not easy to keep in check.”