Six of Ruin (Heirs of Irenwell #1) ✔

Chapter 52: The Witch of Irenwell

Everything around us cracked; stone, tension, panic. Fire still spread through the palace, devouring everything inflammable. Smoke whooshed around us, seeking air to pollute. Rixen hit the wall with his fists, his face twisted into sheer pain.

"I'm going to kill him!" He shouted. "I'm going to fucking kill him myself!"

"No, you're not!" Danilo still held Rixen's shoulders, preventing him from doing something stupid and reckless. The shadowman crumbled on the ground, his shoulders slumping, his posture relaxing.

"Is he dead?" Nickeltinker examined Ace while Frank licked the mage's face, trying to wake him up. "He looks dead! We're all going to die if he's dead!"

"He's not dead." I wiped away the fresh tears falling over the dry ones. "But he's weak."

Nickeltinker slapped the mage.

"What the fuck are we going to do now?" Danilo asked when Rixen finally gave up on trying to fight Soterios alone.

Despite feeling and understanding his pain, now was not the time to lose it.

"Where is he?" I stared at the square, which was now eerily empty, even the cultists' bodies were gone. "I don't like this, I don't like this at all."

Nickeltinker slapped Ace again.

"We need to get out of here." Danilo walked through the great hall, searching for weapons, but all he managed to find was cutlery. "I don't have a sword. I've nothing."

"There's Irina's sword." Rixen rose from the ground, his breathing heavy. "If the fire didn't eat it."

Danilo walked over to the warthog, who was still licking Ace's face, and dug through our stuff. My mother's sword was still intact, but Danilo frowned.

"That's a knife, not a sword."

"Oh, shut up." I grunted.

Nick punched Ace in the face, and finally, the mage's eyes fluttered open.

"What- what happened?"

"You collapsed, Torvald died and Soterios disappeared." I sighed, there was no time to process the pain, the guilt, the regret. There was no time to breathe or think.

"Alright." Ace managed to sit, his face twisting with pain. "Back to work." He put his palms back on the ground.

"Are you sure you can do this?" I chewed on my lower lip, my glance escaping to the empty square in front.

I knew Soterios didn't just give up and go home. He was planning something.

"No." Ace winced. "But we have no other choice."

"We can run." Danilo suggested. "There must be a way through the basement, to the forest."

"There's seven floors of basement." Ace breathed heavily. "Soterios is going to catch us in the middle and burn us alive."

"Alright, let's get to work." Rixen pushed himself off the wall, "We have to barricade the door with something that doesn't burn easily."

"This guy melted marble." Nick shook his head. "Nothing's going to stop him."

"I have to cut the peninsula in half." Ace stretched his fingers and braced himself. "The palace is going to stay in place because it's built into the mountain, but the rest of Orathia is going to sink, which means we cannot let Soterios step foot into the palace."

"Easier said than done." Nickeltinker's hands shook as he counted the darts and daggers and vials he had left.

Frank helped Danilo drag broken stone plates and use them to block the gates. Rixen went through our stuff, looking for weapons. All we had now were the shovels and rakes we stole from the ruined villages near the city.