Page 102 of Storm to Victory
The crackling sense of Fieran’s magic grew closer, even as more explosions tore through the air and vibrated into the ground beneath her feet. The men manning the guns on the wall top were peering outward now, hurrying to swing their guns back over the wall once again instead of at her.
Fieran was right there. She could sense it. She just had to get to him.
A blaze of blue magic swept over the wall and washed over the men assembled around her. Soldiers yelped and howled, dropping their guns and shaking their hands as if burned. The guns on the wall tops exploded.
But where the magic touched her shields, it danced and twined through her magic with the same alacrity it always had, bolstering her power.
Grinning, her heart lifting, Pip lurched the last few yards. The men at the machine guns threw themselves out of her way, even as the machine guns ahead of her exploded, clearing her path.
Only the massive gates of the castle barred her from Fieran. Large wooden locking bars had been set into their brackets on either side, three of them in total, holding the gates shut. She would never be able to lift those by herself, and doing it individually with her magic would take longer than she had the patience for at the moment.
She shifted the shields so that they covered her back. Since she was going to need both hands for this, she lifted Prince Edmund’s arm from her shoulder and propped him against the remains of one of the machine guns.
“Sorry, I need both hands free. Watch him.” She jabbed a hand at the crown prince, who had pressed a hand against the stone wall beside the gate, his legs shaking so badly that he looked about as unsteady as Prince Edmund.
Prince Edmund hugged the machine gun wreckage, a hint of a smirk playing across his bruised and battered face. “Gladly.”
With that done, Pip faced the massive wood and iron gates rising before her and dug deep within her magic, letting it build within her chest. While she had always wielded her iron magic like an elf, it was time to think like a dwarf.
Closing her eyes, she stomped her feet, setting up a rhythm even as she grounded herself with the solidness of the stones beneath her boots. She hummed along with the rhythm, even as she pictured what she wanted to do with her magic.
Inside her, the magic built and grew, shaping and forming, until her chest ached with it, her mouth tasting of iron.
With a shout, she shoved both hands forward even as she thrust her magic in its purest form at those blasted gates that were the only thing standing between her and Fieran.
Ripped from their hinges, the gates blew outward under the force of her magical shield, tumbling and toppling onto the causeway. The stone arch over the gates exploded with the force of her shield and a whole portion of the walls on either side ofthe gates tumbled outward and collapsed under the sheer power she’d unleashed.
Oops. She hadn’t meant to be quite so destructive. All she’d wanted to do was break the locking bars and shove the gates open. Instead, she’d absolutely destroyed them.
In the haze of the slowly settling dust and debris, two warriors of the magic of the ancient kings stood in the maelstrom of their combined magic, bloody blades in their hands. Magic dripped down their swords and poured from their bodies onto the cobblestones below, as if they were more magic than man.
Yet the magic only highlighted the red of Fieran’s hair and the wild grin on his face as his gaze met hers over the distance between them.
“Go on.” Prince Edmund had struggled to his feet and was using a gun barrel as a cane. He limped over to where the Mongavarian crown prince was cowering against the wall and pulled out a knife. When he’d gotten a knife, she didn’t know. “I’ve got him.”
Taking one more moment to make sure she had Prince Edmund and the crown prince securely ensconced in a shield, Pip turned and ran toward Fieran.
Chapter
Thirty-One
The moment Fieran saw her, framed in the wreckage of the destruction she’d wrought with the dust in the air glittering around her in the light of his magic, he caught his breath and fell all the more in love with her. How could he do anything else when she stood there, petite and strong and wielding magic capable of blowing a castle door off?
Then she was running toward him, and he was still so love-stunned that he forgot he probably should run toward her too until she was only a few feet away. He shook off his paralysis in time to drop his swords, take two steps to her, and sweep her into his arms just as she threw herself into his embrace.
He held her tightly, burying his face against her hair, and that knot in the pit of his stomach finally eased.
She was safe, and they were together.
And then they were kissing. Little breathless kisses punctuated by just as breathless words between.
“You blew off the castle gates!”
“I know!” Her squeal ended in a kiss. “And you’re blowing up…everything else!”
“Isn’t it great?” Another kiss. “I love you.”
“Good. I love you too.” Pip’s words were a murmur before she kissed him, this one less frantic and more lingering.
