Page 73 of On Brutal Thrones

My voice comes rushing back with a painful gasp. “Get him!”

I don’t even know if the plants understand the words, but they seem to understand the feeling.

Vines explode from the grass. Magnus blasts one apart. Another wraps around his ankle. He burns through it. Two more replace it, twisting around both legs and yanking.

Magnus crashes onto his back.

I stagger as the force of the connection tears through me. Every instinct tells me to release it. My head feels like it’s splitting apart, and my legs are trembling so badly I can barely remain upright.

But Magnus raises his hand again, and anger surges through me. After everything he’s done, everything the Vultures have done, they deserve whatever I can do to them.

I stop trying to calm the field. For one terrible moment, I let the plants feel exactly how much I hate him. The response is immediate. Vines crawl higher, wrapping around Magnus’s thighs and waist and pinning him against the ground.

His expression changes, and the arrogance disappears. A bush opens beside him, and I know what’s coming.

“No.”

I try to pull back, but it’s too late. Acid sprays. Magnus screams. The sound cuts through everything. His robes begin dissolving almost instantly. The beautiful fabric shrivels against him, and where the acid reaches exposed skin, flesh reddens and blisters.

The smell hits me a second later. Burned cloth, chemicals, and flesh. I gag and turn my head.

Stop.

I tighten my hold on the vines, dragging them closer around Magnus as he struggles against them. Acid eats through several strands, but I force the others to hold. He’s tried to kill me too many times. If I let him go, he’ll only come after us again.

Magnus screams as the acid splashes across his arm. His robes begin to smoke, and he twists wildly, trying to pull away from the vines while more of the burning liquid drips onto his skin. His eyes find mine, wide with pain and panic.

“Get them off me!”

I hold on.

He slams both palms against the ground. Dark magic erupts beneath him, splitting the soil and tearing through the vines wrapped around his body. I reach for more, but he’s already scrambling free, clawing at his smoking robes.

He rips the fabric away from his arm, revealing blistered skin beneath. Another flower crashes toward him, and he throws himself aside with a strangled yell. He staggers through the final stretch of the field, stumbling as he tries to escape both the flowers and the acid still burning his skin, before disappearing into the trees.

“Nyx!”

I spin.

Talon reaches me first, blood streaking one side of his face. Thorian and Fenric are only seconds behind him, all three breathing hard and searching the plants around us for another attack from the Vultures.

“Are you hurt?” Talon demands.

“No. We have to move.”

Another flash of magic erupts farther back in the field. The other Vultures. They’re still here.

I grab Talon’s arm and point toward the trees. “Go!”

This time, nobody argues. We just run together. The last stretch is the worst. The Vultures keep firing from behind us, even as the flowers lash out at them. A massive bloom snaps toward one of the warlocks, but he blasts it aside with a spell and keeps running. Another uses a shield of magic to deflect a whipping vine before hurling an attack at us. Their magic gives them an advantage, but the field is fighting them every step of the way. I can’t spare enough magic to hold the entire field away from us anymore, so I stop trying.

I only control what matters. The flower directly above Fenric. The vine reaching for Talon. The bush opening beside Thorian. The stalk bending toward me. One threat at a time.

Stay.

Back.

Not him.