Page 78 of Anchor

Do what Taland said and pretend,a part of me said.

And the guards said so, too—again, they told me to step aside, and again, Taland kept blinking his eyes like that, his smile faltering because I was refusing to move away. I was refusing to betray him a second time. I was refusing to sit back and do nothing, watch them take him away again, just so I’d be out here and safe from my grandmother’s wrath.

No.

In a split second I had the epiphany of my life, something that had been so painfully obvious to me every second of every day, but I’d been too afraid to even acknowledge it.

No. I was not going to sit by and watch them take Taland away because I would rather be on the run with him, living underground or on a mountain or in the ocean than be here livingthislife. This life that was no life at all. I didn’t care about being an agent or the good guy or a fugitive wanted by the IDD. Fuck them and fuck Madeline and fuckeverything.

I winked at Taland.

He swallowed hard. I could see his Adam’s apple clearly before I turned to the guards.

“Of course,” I said, fingers on my temples. “He just hit me with a confusion spell back there, fellas. Sorry if I’m a little slow just now, but no need to panic. I’ve got everything under control. I’ll take it from here.”

The guards looked at me. At each other. At Taland, then back again.

“We’ll have backup ready to pick him up on the other side,” said the one in the middle, except he wasn’t moving, like his body didn’t quite believe what I just said, even if his mind did. Orwantedto.

I knew the feeling well.

“No need,” I said. “I have his feather—he can’t use magic, and he has no weapons on him.”

Will they believe me?

The answer wasno.No, they would not, and could you blame them? We’d walked out of there, Taland and I, side by side, and maybe they even saw our hands were linked before we let go.

I couldn’t blame them, but Icouldstart calling for a spell to ruin anything electronic they had on their person, so that I would be done by the time they turned their weapons toward me, and thought to speak in their small microphones.

That’s exactly what I did.

“Move!”said the guard in the middle, eyes wide and skin pale because he knew it was too late. Even before he pressed on the microphone attached to his uniform right there on his chest, he knew it would be useless.

Redfire magic shot from my hand to his face as he screamed, “Code Red, Code Red, the Vault has been breached!”

I was tempted to spell it out for him—don’t bother, it won’t work. His tasers wouldn’t work. His phone wouldn’t work, either—only his magic.

Everything turned chaotic so fast, but half my mind was on the pain that third-degree spell had left me with, like someone had poured hot lava all over my arm, and I was still burning from the inside. My bones were fucking melting, if this pain was to be trusted.

And that’s why I was still holding my arm instinctively while the guards shouted and guns fired and magic—Blackfire, wild and powerful—slammed against them like it was a concrete fist to their faces.

Two fell down, while the one on the right remained on his feet, and he was shooting his gun, but his bullets couldn’t reach us—Taland had already called up a shield. There was no time to even be glad that he hadn’t died, that I’d seen his magic with my own eyes, and it worked. There was only time to run, while the Bluefire guard chanted his spell and waved his wand at me.

I slammed onto him with a scream and took him to the ground while the other two were already trying to get to their feet. Taland was on them, black flames on his hands, teeth gritted as his magic came out of him.

The guard underneath me knew how to fight just fine. He was trained by the IDD, but I’d spent a lot more time fighting than he had, so when I slammed my forehead to his nose, he couldn’t move away in time. And when he moved his body to the side to get me off, I was already rolling on the ground while I whispered a spell to knock him out—the most powerful one I knew because I wasn’t taking any chances, even though it was going to hurt.

My back hit the wall just as the spell finished. Another scream left me, this one extra painful, while the magic tore itself from me and shot forward, slamming onto the guard just as he made it to his knees. He fell to the ground again with his eyes closed, breathing slowly.

He was not going to wake up anytime soon.

Spells like this one were supposed to be used against animals or very dangerous people who were trying to kill you because you never really knew how the magic would affect the brain once it took hold of it. But this guy would have definitely killed me if given the chance, and I simply couldn’t afford to call a lesspowerful spell and have him waking up thirty seconds later. It was better than putting a bullet between his eyes, anyway.

“You shouldn’t have done that, sweetness.”

I held onto the wall behind me to make it to my feet, blinking fast to clear out that cloud of guilt in my mind, to push the feeling down with all my strength. And Taland was just a few feet away, hands on his knees as he breathed in deeply, while the other two guards were on the floor—both unconscious, too. Not dead, but the first one was bleeding on his chest. The wound looked deep.

Meanwhile the guard Taland had bribed was still out of it, right there by the wall. Who knew what they’d hit him with?

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