Page 98 of Storm to Victory
Pip’s hands, too, were shackled to another metal ring. The guards probably thought that more secure than tying her to a wooden post, but she breathed a tiny sigh of relief. Only a tiny one. It was hard to feel too relieved or confident while staring down a line of rifles.
“Do you want a blindfold?” The guard next to Pip held out a black cloth.
Pip swallowed yet again, trying to get her voice to work. “No.” The word was a mere squeak of breath. She gave a shake of her head to reinforce her refusal.
She wasn’t particularly brave. Her heart hammered harder as she faced the line of soldiers with their rifles, although those guns weren’t yet pointed in her direction. Even knowing she could shield herself with her magic, she could barely breathe past the fear squeezing her chest.
But she needed to be able to see when it was time to escape, and she didn’t want to fumble around with trying to get a blindfold off.
Prince Edmund, too, shook his head, refusing a blindfold.
The guards retreated, leaving her and Prince Edmund standing alone in front of the wall.
Pip cleared her throat, her heart so loud she wasn’t sure she would even be able to hear his answer. “Now?”
Almost unbelievably, Prince Edmund’s mouth curved with a hint of a smile. “Not yet.”
How much longer would he wait? The sun was rising, the soldiers were ready, and she and the prince were standing with their backs to a wall. Any longer, and the firing squad would start shooting. Surely that would be pushing the dramatics too far, even for Prince Edmund.
More footsteps rang in the stillness of the early morning a moment before another group of guards rounded the corner of the buildings. In their center, Empress Bella minced along, leaning on the arm of her son.
Of course the empress wouldn’t miss the execution. She’d want to be here to witness the death of her spy nemesis.
This must have been what Prince Edmund was waiting for. Pip shifted from one foot to the other. “Now?”
“Almost…” Prince Edmund’s gaze sharpened, and he straightened somewhat. “Can you cast a shield around us and around the Mongavarian crown prince?”
Pip eyed the distance. It was harder creating a shield that wasn’t directly over herself, but in this case, the distance was short enough that she could do it. Besides, these were two tiny shields. Nothing compared to the large shields to hold off bombs. “Yes, I can. Over the empress, too?”
The empress sucked in a breath, her mouth opening as if she was going to start some kind of gloating speech.
“No, just the crown prince. She’d be too much of a hassle to take along, I think.” Prince Edmund didn’t even seem to notice the men who were lining up, their rifles pressed to their shoulders, their elbows resting on the straw bales in front of them. Instead, he glared at Empress Bella, his grin sharp. “Now.”
Pip reached into her chest and let her magic, finally, flare outward. A shield flashed around her and Prince Edmund. She had to concentrate harder to create a second shield around the crown prince, essentially imprisoning him in place.
The soldiers in front of them shouted. Several of them lowered their rifles and fired, the bullets pinging off her shield and ricocheting back into the courtyard. The guards surrounding the empress hustled her away, even while the guards who were supposed to be protecting their prince bumped and slapped Pip’s shield, trying to free him.
Then the soldier at the end of the line reached down and fumbled with something. Something whirred to life before it latched onto Pip’s magic andtugged.
She cried out, stumbling, although the shackle attached to the ring in the wall pulled her up short. “They got…it’s…”
Prince Edmund swore in elvish and rattled the shackle on his hands. “Can you get us free?”
Her magic was draining, as if sucked down a deep mountain shaft. The shield around the Mongavarian crown prince dropped, and his guards grabbed his arms, hustling him away as quickly as they could.
Gritting her teeth, Pip poured more magic into the shield before her and Prince Edmund. If that dropped, she’d die. The soldiers facing her wouldn’t hesitate.
Creating a tendril of magic that the machine hadn’t latched onto yet, she shoved it into her shackles, not trying for any subtlety in preserving the metal. Instead, she ripped the shackles off as the metal flexed and parted.
With shaking steps, black spots dancing across her vision, she stumbled to Prince Edmund, gathered another wisp of her magic, and yanked the shackles from his hand.
But that was all she could tear away from the relentless pull of the machine greedily gobbling up her magic. She pressed a hand to the stone wall, trying to draw strength from its solidness, as she held her shield in place with every last scrap of resolve.
Thanks to the draw of the machine, her shield had been pulled forward, its leading edge now covering the straw bales and across the front of the machine. Parts of it were becoming filmy rather than a strong shimmer.
Prince Edmund shoved away from the wall, half-scrambling, half-crawling across the cobblestones until he fell against the straw bales. The top bale toppled to the side, revealing the machine that had been hidden, the extending wires invisible in the cracks of the cobbles.
The soldiers on the other side of her shield beat at it with their rifle butts, only inches from Prince Edmund’s head. Any moment now, and one of them would break through her weakening magic.
