Page 34 of Brought to Light
When I stuck my hand in my pocket, no paperclips appeared—but I found the flashlight. Not a weapon. But just as deadly as a weapon, if you were me…and plastic wasn’t forged.
Evalt flung his arms wide, clearly preparing for a magical crescendo. His men froze, hands on their weapons but obviously trusting in Evalt’s magic to take down the human intruder.
I sprinted at him. Evalt’s men shouted and burst into motion at last, but before they could get to me I pulled the flashlight out of my pocket and thwacked the butt end of it directly through Evalt’s right eye socket with the heel of my hand. The meaty, sickening squelch and crunch echoed through the room, even over the soldiers’ footsteps and belated cries of alarm.
Evalt swayed, his arms slowly windmilling and then dropping to his sides, and then he listed and started to topple, his remaining eye rolling back in his head. A little, shrunken woman who’d been on a footstool nearby leapt to her feet, flinging her arms around Evalt and letting out an earsplitting shriek.
And the magic that’d been building up in Evalt’s hands detonated like a grenade. The shockwave struck me right across the chest and hit his men as they grabbed for me, knocking us all back like bowling pins. The seer’s scream cut off as she melted into a spray of purple light and body parts, and Evalt went up in a spout of sparks, his robes disintegrating and his face, and my flashlight, warping and sliding down his body like they’d been—disassembled.
I collapsed to my knees, my hair standing on end, my extremities burning, and everything in between hot and bright and too tight and too hot—
I slid to the ground, gasping, my lungs solid lumps of fire. No air in. No air out. No fucking air.
If I’d predicted the top ten ways I’d expected to die, getting my physical form disassembled by a purple-sparking sorcerer in robes wouldn’t have made the list.
Linden. Linden had been right behind Evalt. Far enough to be outside the blast radius? It’d been aimed at me, not him. Maybe a shorter radius, in Linden’s direction.
That would be good enough. Saving Linden would be good enough. Wasn’t there some book I’d skimmed in high school, a better thing I do today, or something? I’d fucking hated that book.
Air. I needed it, but couldn’t get it. Couldn’t feel my hands anymore, or my face. The floor vibrated under me. More screams.
Fuck, I hoped Jesse had survived somehow. I’d never know. But Linden—
And that was all she wrote.
Chapter Sixteen
Callum
“I think he’s waking up!” Linden’s voice?
“He absorbed too much magic, Linden. I think that’s his nervous system overloading. I’m so sorry. I have no idea how to counter it. I don’t know if he’ll survive.” Probably Kaspar, there.
Me? Were they talking about me? I blinked, catching a quick glimpse of a circle of faces leaning over me, sort of like the viewpoint a zoo animal might have if it also got stuck at the bottom of a well.
Another blink. Linden knelt beside me, and I’d started to get back enough feeling to know he had my hand in a death grip. I’d be able to tell the touch of his skin from anyone’s. Warmth spread up my arm, and it had nothing to do with his fingers themselves, which felt ice-cold. I tried to squeeze them.
The floor didn’t feel as hard as I expected. Right, not a floor. I lay on some kind of sofa, probably one of the pieces of furniture that had been along the walls of the room. Nice of them to move me.
One more blink, and this time I managed to keep my eyes open. Right beside Linden, with her hand on his shoulder, stood his mother, her blonde hair an exact match for her son’s and her blue eyes nearly as beautiful. Kaspar hovered near my feet, with Oskar standing right next to him and glowering down at me. The woman I assumed to be Lady Lisandra stood on the other side of me from Linden. She’d been all bedraggled when she’d been Evalt’s captive, yet somehow she’d already managed to get her long hair piled up on her head in some sort of complicated bun, and the rest of her looked pristine. Magic. Jesus.
No threats in the immediate vicinity.
I flicked my eyes back to Linden. He had tear-tracks down his cheeks, the whites of his eyes were mostly red at this point, and his eyelids had swollen to twice their normal size. The bruises still marred his skin.
I’d never seen anything so beautiful.
And then he smiled.
I wasn’t a poetic kind of man. I’d hardly ever read an entire poem, even in school, except a couple by Emily Dickinson. They were like ten lines, short lines at that, and I could handle that much.
They hadn’t prepared me to try to describe Linden’s smile, not even a little bit. The sun came out, the room faded away, and his eyes glowed like stars.
I could see why Evalt thought Linden fit some kind of prophecy about the bringer of light.
And then it hit me, as blinding as Evalt’s ridiculous purple magic sparks, and I started to laugh. Score one for petty theft. I’d brought a light, all right. A cheap flashlight with no batteries, with a circumference that fit perfectly in a homicidal maniac’s eye socket.
“Is he having a seizure?” Oskar demanded. “Is he going to die after all?”
