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“Then stay on this side of it with her. With all of us.”
“Are you really fool enough to imagine it’s that simple?”
“Simple? When I’ve had to fight tooth and nail for Cassia’s Gifting?” He stepped behind Solia to attempt a Mage’s Supplication, the move that had ended his match with the Dexion.
But the ground beneath his feet heated, and a lick of flame chased him across the dirt. He needed his magic.
Lio snatched Solia’s arm, twisting it into a Crippled Dove, counting off the seconds until her fire magic would foil his grasp on her.
Before he felt the burn, he abandoned the move. Suddenly released, she recalculated for an instant. Just enough of an instant for an immortal to use.
He made a Sun Strike at her eyes. He felt the blindfold under his fingers.
Then nothing but air. The ground cooled.
And heat flared to life on his arcane senses—on the other side of the ring. He whirled and spotted Solia.
The traversal had left her out of breath, her skin gleaming with sweat, but she smiled. “Two can play your stepping game, Hesperine.”
A lick of flame, more tease than threat, raced across the sand. But he would not dance to her fire any longer.
Lio stepped. Where he had stood, he left behind an illusion of himself. Then another. And another. One more for good measure. He poured four streams of thelemancy into the rough specters, then snapped his own magic back behind his mental shields.
He buried his magic deep, until he shook within, his inner defenses rattling with his contained power. But the illusions blazed. He made one blaze brightest of all.
She couldn’t see them, but she could sense them.
She stalked at the edge of the ring, her head tilted in concentration. “Well, you aren’t a bore after all.”
When she drove her fist in his best illusion’s gut, oh how gratifying it was to know he had fooled her.
He fortified two of the remaining illusions. Let her try to choose between them. He drifted along the edges of the ring in a whorl of veil spells, as if they played a deadly grown-up version of veil and step.
Solia halted between the two illusions. And then a ring of fire roiled out from her.
It was an almost gentle wave of his greatest weakness. He levitated, raising all his illusions into the air with him. Beneath their feet, three eddies of fire pirouetted up in delicate spirals.
The sparring ring filled with an orange glow, clashing upward toward his formations of white light and black shadow. The Chargers gasped in wonder and held their breaths. He heard the Blood Errant’s powerful hearts pounding with exhilaration.
While Solia conjured her magnificent, controlled fire, Lio stepped to her side. Before she could disentangle herself from the spell, he untied her blindfold with quick immortal fingers. Golden silk came free in his hand, and she staggered.
Her emotions raged through the Blood Union. Her anger burned him far more painfully than her magic. She was consumed with it, this sense of injustice.
Holding her only armor in his hand, he unveiled his thelemancy, a silent statement to her arcane senses. He would never trespass on her Will, but in this moment, he could.
She swore at him and swung her fist.
He could have evaded it. But he didn’t. He let her flaming knuckles land on his jaw.
The agony was too much for him to scream. Heat more punishing than mere fire exploded through his face and dissolved his thoughts. It didn’t stop there. It seemed to sear his every vein.
Magefire.
He crumpled to his knees, disjointed shards of his illusions scattering around him, little flares of light and jolts of shadow whirling on his senses.
“What were you thinking?” The tender question sounded like Cassia for an instant, before his ringing ears registered that it was her sister.
His vision was aglow, as if he’d stared into blinding spell light. He couldn’t see her, only feel her now-cold, sweating hands as she gently laid him down with his head on her lap.
