Page 155 of Winterfall Destiny

Her voice lowers. “About as stupid as Tobias is to think he can hold me.”

54

TOBIAS

I’m thrown from Gabriella in a repeat of the last time we met, her attack sudden and swift as I hit the floor. I swear, staggering to my feet and lunging at her mind, hitting the very centre of what controls her.

As I throw a barrier up against the spike of magic reflecting back at me, Gabriella screams out, dropping to her knees and gasping as she bends forwards, sleek hair falling into her face.

What? I snap my head around.

Not my doing. Andrei’s.

“I’ve had enough too,” he says, voice laced with intent as she screeches at him.

He’s no closer to Gabriella than moments ago but his eyes seer into the side of her head, as the magic that assaulted my mind that day radiates from him. I’m hit too, the energy screaming through me as Andrei’s magic slices at everything close to Gabriella.

As the power ripples through the air, a new panic breaks out, and those who haven’t made their way from the stalls cry out and collapse, their screams becoming all too familiar. I needn’t have worried about Andrei exhausting his power on the recruits—he’s barely touched his abilities.

Ash backs away from the piled bodies, swearing, hands on the side of his head. Through my fogging vision, Jamie’s face twists in pain too and Maeve clasps onto him with her shadowed hands gripping to stop him falling.

The magic could explode through us all.

“Andrei!” I move to intervene, but the closer I get, the more magic cuts into my body and mind, slowing me as if I’m walking through sludge. “You’re hurting everybody, Andrei!” I gasp out. “Pull back.”

Gabriella looks up and sneers at Andrei, and his furious response knocks her head back as if he punched her in the face. But there’re no injuries. No bleeding or scorch marks on her face.

“I’ve more of the First’s blood than my new members,” she says through gritted teeth. “I won’t fall as easily as the cowards I brought here.”

“Bad luck because the First created something stronger,” snarls Andrei.

She coughs out, and tiny specks of blood spray onto the wood. “Too strong perhaps? Look at your friends.”

“Andrei,” I urge. “We can help.”

“Gabriella has more of the First’s blood than her recruits, but not as much as me.” His voice—the one I heard in my mind the day he attacked me. “You have none of the blood. You can’t kill Gabriella. Only I can.”

“And the magnitude you’re using might kill everybody around you!” I shout.

“No!” I snap my head around when the word comes from Maeve and not Gabriella. “The First wants your attack on Gabriella to end us all. We can’t kill her, Andrei.”

“We don’t know anymore!” yells Andrei. “We don’t know what the First wants! But it doesn’t matter, and I want Gabriella to die. Destroy her whole fucking world.”

“And what about us, Andrei?” I shout out. “What if we die?”

The stage shudders as Ash falls forwards onto his hands and knees, lifting his head back and snarling at volume I’ve never heard. His dragon eyes glow, claws digging into the wood, scales glowing. The magic roaring around us like a typhoon stops any chance he’ll shift, because I’ve experienced the agonising paralysis in my mind that’s painted across Ash’s reddened face.

But I’ve more ability to resist.

“You’re hurting Ash,” I shout at Andrei. “This is more than shoving Jamie yesterday.”

But Andrei’s lost, as he was in the catacombs, absorbed in the woman kneeling in a pool of her victim’s blood. He strides over, transformed into the murderous thing from yesterday and stares down at the powerful woman prone at his feet. “Whatever it takes to end you and your fucking organisation, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Such as play into the First’s hands and kill your friends too?” Gabriella’s voice weakens. “I admire her strategy.”

Jamie stumbles against Maeve, losing his footing and sinking to the stage. She drops to knees with him, the shadows that circle her growing thicker, spreading along the arm she’s wrapped around Jamie. Maeve’s touch and the shadows protect him, but he’s still doubled over. There’s no sign that Maeve will falter against Andrei’s power, but her anguished face fills with the struggle whether to leave her bonded witch or intervene.

Is this up to me? How can I possibly take on the First’s Andrei?

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