Page 104 of Kingdom of Locks

Then, with a shout, he brought his fists shooting out in front of him. An invisible wave seemed to sweep the room, and Aurelia braced herself for its impact. But she felt nothing. It was only the fourteen guild members who were struck, each freezing for a painful moment, then toppling one by one to the ground.

With a cry, Amell leaped forward to kneel by Bartholomew’s side, rolling the old man onto his back.

“Bartholomew?” he gasped, and to Aurelia’s relief, the enchanter’s eyes fluttered open.

“So much…power,” he muttered.

“Are you all right?” Amell demanded in alarm.

The enchanter grunted. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. My magic is…utterly depleted. It’s just…gone. And until it replenishes…” He lifted his head and groaned, immediately letting it drop to the floor again. “I’m so sorry, Prince Amell. We gave it everything we have, but we cannot stop him.”

“That’s not the point,” Aurelia said, her clear, steady voice surprising even her. “It doesn’t matter if we can stop him. What matters is that we still continue to defy him. That we don’t stop fighting.”

She looked up, certainty blazing inside her as her eyes locked on Cyfrin’s. She knew the words to be true with all her heart. She had never accepted Cyfrin’s plans when she was in the tower, and she didn’t intend to start now she was free.

The enchanter wore the smug look she hated so much, the one that said everything would always work out according to his plans, do or say what she might.

“You see what you could have been part of, Honeysuckle?” he told her, running a hand along her detached hair with indecent enjoyment. “But you were too lost in your daydreams to take hold of the power that could have been yours.”

Aurelia narrowed her eyes, stepping over the rubble toward him.

“Aurelia!”

She ignored Amell’s warning, her eyes still fixed on Cyfrin.

“Enough,” she said, and her quiet voice seemed to echo throughout the still library. “You need to stop, Cyfrin.”

“Look at you,” he scoffed, with a shrill laugh. “Playing at being all grown up. You have no power in this situation, Honeysuckle. You’ve never had any power, and you never will.”

“A strange thing to say, coming from the man who chose to give me access to half of the seventeen years’ worth of power he’d been collecting,” said Aurelia calmly. “I imagine it still irks you to know that I gave it away to someone else instead of to you.”

Cyfrin let out a growl of fury, advancing toward her.

“But you’re wrong, anyway,” Aurelia continued. “I had power long before you gave me that key. I had the same power I have right now. The power to choose to defy you. And I will, until my last breath.”

“An excellent choice of words, my dear,” said Cyfrin smoothly. “I have come to begrudge the effort and expense I went to, providing for you all these years. My plan was initially to simply overpower the guild. But having done so, I find that I have unfinished business. I would have had more than twice the power if it weren’t for your duplicity, and I was too generous when I allowed you to walk away unscathed.”

Amell let out a cry of anger, launching himself at the enchanter. Aurelia heard the king’s warning shout to his son, fear swirling in her own heart. But Cyfrin didn’t even look at the prince. With an almost lazy wave of his hand, he lifted multiple heavy chunks of masonry from the debris on the floor. At a gesture from the enchanter, the rubble began to circle around him, flying through the air with increasing speed. Clearly smart enough to realize that attempting to get through would only lead to him being bludgeoned, Amell fell back.

Within a moment, it was difficult for Aurelia’s eyes to even make out the individual chunks of rock. She gritted her teeth at the smirk on Cyfrin’s face. The rotating shield protected him from physical attack as surely as his incapacitation of all the guild members protected him from magical attack. If only Amell had the aptitude to wield the power Aurelia had unknowingly given him!

“Now where was I?” Cyfrin asked pleasantly, his eyes lingering on Aurelia with malice in their depths. “Ah yes. You were a satisfactory vessel, Honeysuckle, but you’ve served your purpose. It’s time you were disposed of.”

With less fanfare, and more deadly purpose, he placed one hand on the hair at his chest, and raised the other in a graceful arc.

Aurelia heard Amell’s frantic cry, and Mama Imelda’s gasp from beside her, but she didn’t look at either of them. She closed her eyes, bracing herself. But instead of pain, she felt the comforting reassurance of arms going around her, first her mother’s, then Amell’s, as the prince threw himself between the two women and the enchanter, wrapping them both in his embrace.

Aurelia heard an almighty rushing sound, and had the imperceptible sense of something powerful racing toward her. But whatever it was never touched her. She opened her eyes to see Cyfrin, standing in the middle of the damaged room, struggling with some invisible force. His eyes were screwed shut, and his grunt of frustration grew steadily to a scream of rage. Amell stood strong and silent between him and Aurelia, his body convulsing slightly, and his face tight with strain. His shoulder was once again bleeding freely, but his arms remained firm around her.

Aurelia had no words to articulate what was happening. But she could sense an unseen, silent wrestle rising suddenly to fever pitch. Then an explosion went out from the enchanter, reminiscent of the one that had blown her from the tower. Just as on that occasion, there was no smashing stone, no splintering wood. Nothing physical was destroyed, but suddenly, inexplicably, Cyfrin collapsed to his knees.

Aurelia could feel no more struggle. She was looking at nothing more than a loveless man, an enchanter with middling power that was currently utterly spent, sagging weakly on his knees in the middle of a ruined library.

The guards, apparently freed from Cyfrin’s magic, raced forward, binding him expertly, and gagging him for good measure.

“Given how much you admire power,” King Bern said coldly to the incapacitated enchanter, “I think you’ll be quite impressed with the new high security wing we’re building at our prison. It’s being structured with some truly impressive magical innovations.”

Aurelia stared at the man she’d seen every day of her life as he was dragged from the room. She supposed she should feel jubilation at his defeat, perhaps satisfaction at the knowledge that he was about to discover what it meant to be locked away against his will. But all she could muster was a weary kind of relief.

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