“It’s the last stand,” I heard Reagan say. She was on her knees to my right.

Emery looked from her to me, and I knew we were thinking the same thing.

She was done. We had to end this.

Without a word, we were running in opposite directions, charging toward the remaining mages and mercenaries.

Pulling at everything I had left, I yanked energy up from my toes, still feeling the balanced bubble connecting my magic to Emery’s despite the fact that we were getting farther and farther apart. I mixed two vicious spells together and stopped short, remembering the balloon searching spell that attached to us last night.

I started to back up, which caught the attention of the three mages left in my vicinity.

They paused their weaving for a second, staring at me. It was that pause which sealed their fate.

I closed my eyes for a moment, pulling the wildness and rage of Emery’s magic and the complex mixture of fire and ice of Reagan’s powers into my spell. I sent that up into the air. Instead of ballooning, it merely opened up like a parachute before drifting down.

The three mages went back to work, but I had already turned away and was running toward an injured mage attempting to escape. A quick spell to his middle ended that right quick, and I lost some of my breakfast.

Screams reached my ears now that the false reality had completely faded. I turned back in time to see the three mages’ throats exploding, and realized I’d confused the weaves. I hadn’t intended it to be so violent.

I lost the rest of my breakfast.

Someone on the periphery ran for it.

And maybe that was the reason for the false reality. Since Reagan had helped us create the spells for the protective walls—she had actually trapped them in instead of just keeping outside eyes and ears from seeing what went on inside. She’d forced them to remain. Forced them to keep her secret.

With her magic gone, that was no longer the case.

I took off in hot pursuit, pulling together my pumping arms to get a weave going. Then I realized I could do a one-handed weave with the pumping arm. So I lessened the complexity of the spell and gained on the cowardly man in the stupid hat. In a hundred more feet, I let the spell loose. My spell dragged him to the ground and started to shred through him.

I spun, breathing heavily, and my stomach rolled again. I needed less heinous spells. Killing someone didn’t have to be so colorful. There was no point to it besides being gruesome for gruesome’s sake.

Jogging back, I saw a line of fire in the distance, beyond the warehouse, spreading in front of someone attempting an escape. It grew, now chasing that person back toward Emery. He shot off a spell, knocking the enemy to the ground.

My boots made crunching noises on the burned ground. The breeze whipped at my hair. My breath sounded loud in my ears.

But that was because all the other sounds had died down. Quiet rang as loudly as the battle had minutes before.

I swept my gaze around the area, searching for anyone left standing. Debris and bodies were littered all through the field, unmoving. Three people were still on their feet.

A sob choked me and tears of unbelievable relief rolled down my hot face. I couldn’t believe it.

Reagan and Emery were two of the three. I was the last.

We’d done it.

The three of us had gone up against a host of nearly two hundred or so mages and mercenaries, and somehow, we’d survived.

As I continued toward the ruined warehouse, I caught sight of Reagan swaying on her feet. She pulled down the lingering fire, completely in control of it despite her empty power tanks.

We would’ve never been able to do this without her. Not with all the vampires, shifters, and mages who were friendly to us in New Orleans. She was our ace in the hole. More powerful than anyone in the Brink, I had no doubt.

And the only way we’d have a prayer of taking down the Mages’ Guild permanently.

Emery and I owed her our lives and our freedoms, and if we made it out of the next leg of our battle with the Guild alive, we would be forever indebted to her.

My mother’s haunting words came back to me:

Her path has been set. Her journey is in motion. He will complete the pyramid of power. The curse breaker will join the oath takers and forge a bond in blood. It is in this union that the way forward shall be writ. That they shall all learn their highest level of power, and balance the kingdom.

Reagan’s was the path that had been set, because it was my journey in motion. Emery completed our pyramid of power.

I stopped and scanned the field littered with enemy bodies.

Emery and I were still learning to work together. We hadn’t even boosted our power by officially joining as a dual-mage team. Reagan, too, was still learning, if what she’d said earlier was true. And together we’d downed an army.

Shivers coated my body. Pyramid of power, indeed.

Reagan fell to her hands and knees.

46

Emery made it to Reagan at the same time Penny did, so he stepped back, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process. Weariness made weights of his limbs, dragging at him. He could barely keep his spine straight within the bone-weary fatigue.

Penny, not looking nearly as ragged as he felt, knelt next to Reagan and put her hand on the other woman’s back. “Are you okay?”

“Tired,” Reagan said, her head drooping. “Very tired.”

Penny nodded and took a knee, looking out at the deathly still fields around them. It was an eerie comparison to the flurry of activity that had come before.

Emery staggered back another pace and Penny’s gaze fell on him. He could tell she was assessing the damage. How she could still function was beyond him. But then, his brother had always said women were stronger in the field, their strength of will hardier than the roots of an oak, pushing them past their own distress to help those around them.

“That’s why God gave the gift of birth to woman,” his brother always said, “because he could trust in mothers the most.”

“Just…so I’m on the same page,” Penny said, dropping her other knee and sitting on her heels. “You’re the one who created that false reality and those weird elephant creatures, right?”

“Yes,” Reagan said. “Neat, huh?”

“No. It was awful. I hated it.”

“Never go to the underworld.”

“Well, that’s the plan.” Penny bit her lip. “And you did that…why? I mean, because you probably could’ve just fire-bombed the whole place.”

Reagan sucked in a deep breath before twisting around and sitting hard on her butt. Emery joined them and took a knee, still in absolute shock. His brain had yet to process the strange alternate reality. The battle. The hard-won victory.

“I had a few options,” Reagan said, looking out over the field before her gaze landed on the wall of the warehouse, resting haphazardly on the crushed car beneath it. “Darius will never let me near one of his cars again.”

Penny followed her gaze. “But, I mean…that’s fair, I feel like. You ruin every one of them.”

Reagan sighed. “We need to get a cleanup crew out here.”

“Yes. But you were saying, about the mind chaos?” Penny said, her voice carrying an edge.

“Mind fuckery, yeah. Well, I could’ve just stopped at the walls to keep people in, but since they were invisible, people would’ve tried to get out, run into them, and bounced off. Once they realized it was magic holding them in, they’d work to bring it down. Which would drain my energy and steal my focus.”

“Hmm. Mhm.” Penny’s agreement didn’t sound convincing. Emery had a sneaking suspicion she didn’t really want to understand Reagan’s incredible magic, which was so far above and beyond what she was already struggling to understand. Emery honestly didn’t blame her. He was more or less used to what magic could throw at him, and yet…Reagan had created an entire alternate reality. And not just an illusion! Those strange flying creatures had come to life. They’d killed and maimed.

“But, with that wall, I could have just fire-blasted everyone, like you said. See what I’m saying?” Reagan said. Penny shook her head, her eyes glazing over. Reagan ignored it. “So that made the wall an attractive option. But there are dried grasses all around us, and I worried the whole place would catch fire. So then I’d need an additional wall to suck out the flames, right before the solid wall. See?”