Page 44 of Iridian

“Our war with them hasn’t ended,” Zach continued, his voice low now. “Right now, we’re in a truce because of David Hill because, unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to take him down ourselves, and he’s already gone too far. But this is not permanent.”

“As soon as this is over, as soon as Hill is dead, we disappear. There’s too many of them and I have people moving in closer when the fight begins to take us out. Do you understand?” Radock’s eyes stopped on me. “As soon as Hill is dead, we destroy everything he had, the scripts and the spells and the vessels he prepared for the Army, and we get out. There’s no telling what they can do once we win.”

Shivers down my back because he was absolutely right. When David Hill was no longer in the picture, we had to make sure that any scripts or spells to bring back the Delaetus Army were destroyed, just in case someone else in the future decided it was a good idea to try to conquer the world.

Or…someone from the Council.

Because I’d seen the way Helen looked at that video of Hill working on the soul vessels. The curiosity in her eyes—thegreed.

No, we definitely could not trust the Council with any of what Hill had here. We had to destroy everything before we left.

Assuming we even won against Hill.

“Let’s focus on one thing at a time, though. Let’s focus on David. He will be hard to kill,” Aurelia said.

“But not impossible. Not with all of us together,” Radock said, then looked at me. “Not with that bracelet. If it ruined the Regah screen with a single spell, it can kill Hill, too.”

“He could be protected. He could have wards about him—” I said because the fear, thepressureof having to chant that final spell almost crushed me under.

But Taland was there to squeeze my hand when Zachary said, “And we’ll break down all the wards he has if we have to. But wewillkill him.”

“A single kill spell,” Taland whispered to me, and when I looked at him, he winked. “What’s the shortest one you know?”

“Cheining,” I whispered with half a heart, as the words of the spell came back to me like my mind was trying to make sure that I remembered it right.

I did—it was a curse created by Apollo Cheining some four hundred years ago, and it was the shortest spell that they taught at the training academy. It made the heart basicallyexplodein someone’s chest.

“Good one,” Taland said. “Use it.”

“I will.” On anyone that got in my way, I’d use it. At this point I wasn’t going to even bother thinking about remorse.

“We’re here now,” Radock said. “And we’re all powerful enough to survive this—I know it. So, keep your eyes open and your ears sharp, and do whatever you have to do.” He looked each and every one of us in the eye, and I couldn’t believe that that actually worked. It calmed me down, if just a little, to know that they were all in on this, too. “Everything else, we’ll figure out after.”

So, we went back to the car, and I used the bracelet to call the most powerful wards I knew on both Taland’s clothes and mine. They were not IDD uniforms by any means, but they would do just fine. I had a pair of leather pants and a leather jacket zipped up all the way, and Zachary gave him a thick leather vest to puton over his shirt. The magic that wrapped around us was what mattered the most.

“That’s enough. Save your energy,” Taland said when I considered doing a third spell, too.

“I’m fine. I feel great.” Which wasn’t a lie. Physically I felt great—save for my twisting stomach. My limbs were strong. My leg didn’t hurt at all. I was fed and hydrated, and even though we hadn’t exactlyrested, I was full of energy. More motivated than ever because Taland was with me.

For now, I was happy that I had the chance to be here for real. As much as I hated to agree with anything Madeline said, I was happy that I got to be here and fight,tryto win. Not a good guy or a bad guy—no, just a girl fighting a mad man who wanted to bring back a dead army and take over the world.

That’s all I wanted to be right now.

That’s all I was when we followed two dozen soldiers around the mountain together and made it to the other side.

Chapter 11

Rosabel La Rouge

Not ready, I am not ready; not ready, I am not ready—my mind spun with the thought, and by the time we were on the other side of that mountain, the voice in my head screamed it until Ifeltthose words on every inch of my body.

I was not ready to be here.

But that was nothing new, was it? I wasn’t ready; of course, I wasn’t. I’d been an agent for a year and a half and none of the missions I’d been on even came close to this. None of the people we’d had to fight against even came close to Hill and what he was trying to do—of course I am not ready!

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t win.

That’s what I told myself. I wasn’t ready for the training academy or to take on the job of an agent when I did; I wasn’t ready to be Mud; I wasn’t ready to survive and win the Iris Roe, or to undo the Devil’s Regah chamber. And most importantly I was never ready to lose Taland over and over—but I did. I did all of those things, and here I was now.

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