Page 86 of Magic Betrayed

I leaned closer. Looked her dead in the eye and smiled. “You have no idea what’s in that house,” I said softly.

She just laughed. “Poor calculation on your part. Because obviously you think you do, and I can just make you tell me.”

Awfully fond of torture, this one. Or at least fond of talking about it. Maybe it was time to see if she’d make good on her threats. Because the more tangents I could distract her with, the better.

“Okay.” I shrugged again. “If you think you’re better at this than the last people who tried, go ahead.”

The woman’s lip curled as she folded her arms and called up her magic. As if to say that I was so weak, she didn’t even need to lift a finger. Instead, she shaped the blue glow of her power into a long, narrow blade that hovered in the air directly in front of my face.

“You don’t need your eyes to talk,” she informed me in a sing-song voice. “And all we need from you is information.”

The blade moved closer—bright enough to make my eyelids slam shut.

But she was right. I didn’t need my eyes for what came next.

The last time we met, they’d seen me use my elemental power, but they’d been stuck in the sinkhole when I infused the ice with fae magic. It was a good bet that only the goblin actually realized I had it. So when the dagger darted for my face, I created a thin, glowing shield of fae power and slammed it between my eyes and the blade.

The blade shattered. The bounty hunter recoiled, slapped by the backlash.

“Oh, you aresogoing to regret that,” she muttered viciously, and gestured to the drus.

The pressure on my feet and ankles tightened like the coils of a snake—as if the roots were attempting to draw me straight down into the ground. I reached for water, but it was too deep, and I wasn’t fast enough.

I heard a sound—a faint, almost inaudible snap from my left ankle—followed by a stab of pain so sharp it took my breath away.

“Still feel like being a smart-ass?” A sneer twisted the fae woman’s lips, as the goblin laughed softly to himself and the elemental began juggling tiny balls of flame.

I won’t lie—the pain wasn’t awesome, and the roots held me so tightly that I couldn’t transfer my weight to my right leg.

“It’s not like I woke up and chose to be one,” I gasped out, fighting to keep my tone as breezy as possible. “The smart-assery chooses you.”

“So you’re a dual.”

The cool thing about being considered an abomination by most Idrians? The ones who knew what I was didn’t want any of the others to find out I existed. So the fact that I had four different magics wasn’t commonly known outside the highest echelons of Idrian government.

And these jokers? They were operating on incomplete information. Blake might have hired them, but he wasn’t going to throw his secrets around for free, and he clearly hadn’t told them everything about their target.

Which meant I still had two aces left to play—I just had to pick my moments carefully.

All while giving no hint to those watching from the house that I was in pain. Because if Kes knew I was being tortured? Nothing and no one would be able to stop her from giving herself up to save me, and I would never, ever risk that.

“Yup, I’m a dual,” I said matter-of-factly. “Just not your lucky day, I guess.”

“You think that was my only option?” The woman laughed in my face. “Oh sweetheart, I have so many other ways of making you scream.”

Sure she did. And I had so much practice with not screaming even when I wanted to. Wonder which of us would give up first?

This time, she didn’t bother with magic, but pulled an actual blade from her belt and tossed it into the air a few times before it brightened with a blue glow.

I could stop her magic—only because it turned out mine was stronger—but an actual metal blade was a different story. Maybe if I was fast enough with ice, but this soil was dry, and even if I could pull up enough water, I wasn’t sure my ice was sturdy enough to block a determined stab with some muscle behind it.

“I’m willing to give you a fair chance,” she said conversationally. “Tell me about their defenses, and I’ll only take one of your eyes.”

Somewhere behind me, I heard a grumbling sound from the bear, but she ignored it. The goblin was watching avidly, as if he couldn’t wait for the screaming to begin, and the drus was picking at his nails. While to my right, the fire elemental was still juggling, each time lofting the tiny orbs of flame higher and higher. Spinning them in competing orbits. Throwing them further and further from himself…

The trouble was, he was clearly not from this neck of the woods. Anyone who’d lived in Oklahoma for longer than a week could have told him that the wind reallydidcome sweeping down the plain, and it could do so at pretty much any time—without any warning or any need for magic.

So he was caught completely unprepared when a freak gust slammed into us, at maybe thirty or forty miles per hour. Nothing scary or damaging…unlessyou happened to be juggling balls of fire during the dry season.

---