Page 84 of Turncloak

But then Auria was on him, finding her fight, her own brand of fire, the word sen forming on her rosebud lips, and Levan launched himself at her, tackling her to the ground so hard her head slammed back against the floorboards, and her eyes rolled in her head, and everything was spiraling out of control, and without his magic or his compelling, he had no idea how to wrest it back.

Auria went limp beneath his body, and panic coursed through him like a current. Saffron would never forgive him if either of these mages died in the pursuit of her father’s letter.

But Marriosan was still breathing, albeit shakily, too dazed to stand.

He grabbed her wand—an elegant thing, sapphire-studded willow—and swiveled back to face Nissa, who looked rather deranged as she held a snake-shaped curl of flame above her wand like a lasso.

As Levan climbed to his feet, Nissa loosed the tongue of fire, and though he tried to dodge, he stumbled on Auria’s supine form and the flame licked at his side, just above the ridge of his hip bone. Burning pain scorched through his skin, his flesh, and he felt it char and bubble, and his vision pitched sideways.

He could abide all manner of hurt, but not fire.

Not fire, when he had been branded as a boy.

Not fire, when it reminded him so deeply of his own failings, of the terrible trappings of his existence.

His lungs tightened into fists, and he could not catch his breath.

In a second film layered over reality, Porrol Vogolan held a glowing branding stamp, a look of grim determination on his face. The pieces of an abandoned board game lay scattered on his bedroom floor. Levan’s trousers were damp with piss.

More fire lurched toward him, stronger than ever.

He rolled away.

How was Naszi still so powerful when she’d been in a hospital bed for almost two months?

He reached desperately for his compelling magic.

Stop throwing fire at me.

And somehow, somehow, she stopped. Let the flaming snakes dancing above her wand return to the hearth, so that only the gentle breeze from the smashed window remained.

Relief flooded Levan. His compelling had worked, because he was only trying to save the scarred little boy at the heart of himself.

He and Nissa glared at each other, both gasping for breath. The common room was obliterated, burned and sooty and coated with ash, the air coarse with smoke. The scorch mark across his side burned all the way to the bone, and his well glowed bright with the pain.

“Sen exarman,” he incanted, a disarming spell, his first attempt at the sen prefix in weeks, but arguably an extension of the self-defense.

His magic shuddered then obeyed, and the wand flew from Nissa Naszi’s hand and into his own golden palm.

But he had forgotten the other Silvercloak in the room.

Auria lunged at his back.

Since he was still mostly invisible, she took the leap at an awkward, imprecise angle, and he threw her off like a steed rejecting a jockey.

In the heat of the moment, he stabbed his wand in her direction and cursed, “Sen debilitan.”

The magic exploded from the end of his wand in a puff of black smoke, failing to find its mark.

Then Nissa was on him too, jabbing and twisting and attacking with a fighting style he had never encountered. He bellowed “sen vertigloran” in her direction, reasoning that disorientation was a less outwardly offensive curse than debilitan, but that too failed.

As he took an elbow hook to the cheekbone, pain exploding across his face, he tried once more to use defensive compelling.

Stop attacking me. Stop fighting.

But this time, Naszi did not obey.

His rewoven magical connection was faltering, like a broken bone that hadn’t been given long enough to heal.