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Owein whimpered.
The magic cut off abruptly, leaving Merritt in blissful silence. He blinked his eyes, trying to reorient himself—
A wall of fire burst to life behind him and Hulda.
Silas Hogwood had risen from his macabre spell-winding. He glared at Merritt and Hulda with dark, furious eyes. His hand extended toward them, his fingertips...frosty? Owein whined but tilted his head to see. He was still all right. He was still alive.
But Merritt had a feeling he and Hulda soon would not be.
“You think you can thwart me?” Silas’s dark gaze slunk from Merritt to Hulda. The fire behind them burned hotter, forcing them into the revolting laboratory. “Nobody will have power over me. Not family, not BIKER, not even the Queen’s League.”
He eyed Hulda up and down, sneering, then flung out a hand, sending her flying across the room. Merritt burst forward, but not quickly enough to catch her. She slammed into the shelving on the wall opposite the mutated dolls, ripping free a wooden plank, knocking over half a dozen bottles that shattered when they hit the stone floor. Merritt dropped to his knees at her side, picking her up. Blood from several shallow cuts smeared his fingers.
Anger and fear warred within him. “We don’t want power over you,” he spat. “We want nothing to do with you. Just let us go.”
Silas’s mouth split into a foul smile, parting to release a chuckle. “Release you? No. Chaocracy has such beautiful enchantments, and I’ve craved them for a long time. The one thing that could make me truly untouchable.” His lips curled. “Even for the royal family. And you two are rife with it.”
Merritt blanched. Two? Owein and...him?Chaocracy?“You’re mad.” He still struggled to believe he had any magic, even though he’d seen and heard evidence. But chaocracy?
Hulda pushed herself upright. Her eyes flicked to the dolls.
Merritt’s gaze followed but didn’t linger.The dolls.They were important. Hadn’t Hulda said Silas got his magic from the people he didthatto? So if they could destroy them...
Hulda stood; Merritt rose next to her. Owein writhed, his straps slowly turning into glass marbles... a sluggish chaocracy spell to free himself. Merritt pointedly kept his gaze on Silas so as not to give the dog away.
“Mr.Hogwood,please,” Hulda begged. “I know you can be reasonable. Let me strike a deal with you, just as Myra did—”
“Don’t be sohysterical.” He flung out his fingers.
Hulda retreated into Merritt, then doubled over shaking. Her skin turned cool and clammy beneath his touch. “Hulda!”
What was this? Another spell?Hysteria?
Merritt grasped her shoulders, trying to shake her out of it—
The pattering of marbles hitting the floor sounded just before a vicious growl tore through the air. Owein, free, ran for Silas and leapt, clamping his teeth down on the man’s forearm. A gasp escaped Hulda as Silas lifted Owein from the ground and flung his arm outward, slinging the dog toward the fire.
“No!” Merritt reached for the animal.
Owein collided with an invisible wall erected before the flames. He yelped and fell to the stone.
Merritt gave himself half a heartbeat to marvel at the shield he’d managed to put up. Then he turned about and charged the Englishman himself.
Still shaking off the fear spell, Hulda dashed again for the dolls, nabbing a shard of glass on her way. Merritt cried out. Hulda winced. Ran. Collided with the bars.
And stabbed the glass shard into the center of the closest doll.
Hogwood roared and arched like a gargoyle coming to life, throwing Merritt off his back. The fire extinguished, but she couldn’t be sure whether he’d lost his hold on the spell or lost it forever because the stabbed doll had been giving him that power.
Lifting her arm, she stabbed the next doll—
An unseen force slammed into her, knocking her into the wall, tearing both the air from her lungs and the glass shard from her hand. Moving stiffly as a side effect of the kinetic spell, Hogwood hunched, turned back to Merritt, and picked him up off the ground with the same spell, shoving him toward the plank with the leather straps nailed to it. As his shoulder blades hit, Merritt said, “I can hear them.”
Hogwood hesitated.
“Your dolls,” Merritt rasped as Hogwood’s knuckles pressed into his throat. “I can hear them screaming.”
A stone slammed into Hogwood, right below his neck. Merritt dropped.
