CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Seline
We found the Warden standing at the end of a corridor, in front of a door protected by magic. It didn’t take long for us to find him, but he’d beaten us to the door. As we turned the corner, I watched him hurl a bolt of magic at the magic barrier, only for it to spark and shimmer before returning to normal. It reminded me just how powerful Isabella was that she could make magic wards melt with minimal effort.
He must’ve heard our approach, because he turned around slowly. His hands were fists, his face was red, and his eyes were both sharply fixed on me. Most disturbingly, his left eye wasn’t twitching right now. I wasn’t sure why that unnerved me as much as it did, but maybe it was because he looked like even more of a psychopath without that twitching eye.
“You come into my building,” he said, “You tear down my wards, you attack my people, and now you lock me out of my own rooms? Who the hell do you think you are?”
“My name is Seline,” I said, taking a step toward him. “I am the leader of the Obsidian Order, the Aevian who made sure New York didn’t become ground zero for an invasion from the other side of the rifts, and a woman at the end of her tether. That’s who the hell I am.”
“Is that supposed to impress me, Outsider?”
“I’m not trying to impress you, Warden. I’m trying to remind you who you’re dealing with. Before now, I barely even knew who you were. You were a literal nobody, a little lord with a rabid dog, both hold up in their castle in the middle of one of the world’s shittiest neighborhoods. But you somehow feel you can carry yourself like you’re equal to either of us.”
“I am the Warden of this institution,” he snarled, “Don’t you dare speak like you know anything about me or what I’m capable of.”
“I think I’ve seen enough to know exactly who you are, Warden. If you were even half the man you portray yourself to be, you wouldn’t be trying to wake your dog up right now—you’d be dealing with us yourself. Instead, you’ve thrown every possible body at us you can. Is that a sign of strength?”
He cracked his neck and tugged on the shirt he had on under his duster. “There is strength in knowing who your enemy is and assessing what the best resources to deal with those enemies are. You seem to have taken the Horseman off the table; I suppose Sanchez has had a hand in that.” He clasped his hands together. “No matter. I don’t need his help to dispose of you.”
“Big words for such a small man,” Izzy said, “Do you really think you can take on all three of us?”
“How about we level the playing field, then?”
The Warden’s hands shot out to either side of him, there was a bright flash of light, the corridor started spinning, and when my senses righted themselves… there were four of him; four Wardens—and each of them had a smug grin on their face. Before I could say a word, the Wardens started moving, shuffling around, making it difficult to keep track of which one was the original.
“Seriously?” Izzy asked, “You’re going to pull this Psionic crap on us?”
“You have your tricks,” all four of the Wardens said, their voices synchronizing eerily, “I have mine.”
“Alright,” I said, “Fine.” I drew a pair of daggers from their sheaths at the small of my back. With a knife in each hand, I felt calmer, surer, more secure. I eyed the clones, watching them carefully to try to identify the real Warden, but it was difficult.
Each was an identical copy of the last, down to the twitch in the eye. When one of them spoke, they all spoke; and now that they had stopped shuffling, they were all just staring at me. It was like something out of a nightmare, and the worst part was, the real nightmare—the Horseman—was somewhere behind that door.
Even though the guard, Sanchez, had told us the Horseman was out of commission, I couldn’t count on the situation staying the way that it was. I needed to act, I needed to act quickly, and I needed to get to Six. Every second she spent in this place was a second longer that she was in danger.
“You take the one on the left,” I said to Izzy. “And if you’re really with us, you take the one on the right,” I said to Sanchez. “I’ll take the two in the middle.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Izzy said, preparing herself to fight.
Sanchez moved in beside me and stretched her right hand out. “It’s not too late to end this,” she said. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Do you really think you’re going to get away with any of this?” he asked.
“We’re about to. This is your last chance to surrender, Warden.”
“You’ll be the ones surrendering soon enough.”
It was the Warden who attacked first. One of the clones, acting independently from the other, whipped his hand toward Izzy and fired a bolt of blue-violet light at her. Izzy stepped into the magic bolt, deflecting it with her left hand and firing off a spell of her own with her right.
To our surprise, the clone also swatted the magic aside instead of letting it pass through him. Sanchez also moved in on the clone to the right, engaging it in magic combat. Then the four of them were dueling, exchanging magic blasts, and making the corridor light up like midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Not wanting the middle two Wardens to get any ideas about adding their might to the combats taking place on either side of me, I lunged toward them, my daggers poised and ready to strike. One of the clones put a hand up and fired a bolt of magic at me, but when the magic struck my body, it shattered like it was a piece of glass hitting a brick wall.
I could feel the singing stones around my chest flaring to life, their protective power kicking in to keep me safe from the Warden’s might. I wasn’t sure how long they would hold, or if they would stop all his attacks, but for as long as they worked, I was going to think about nothing more than getting in close to him and running my blades through his heart.
The two Wardens dashed out toward me, lashing out with their hands and their feet, and putting me on the defensive. One of them threw a left hook, which I was able to easily block. The other, meanwhile, tried to put his boot into my stomach, but I twirled aside and swiped at his other foot, knocking him to the ground.
They were real, solid beings—at least, they were to me. Izzy had called it Psionic crap, which meant it was entirely possible these clones were all hallucinations. But if that was true, then these were powerful hallucinations capable of inflicting very real damage.
Despite so far having been able to block or dodge out of the way of each punch, each kick, and each smash of the elbow, when they did make contact, I felt it. I could hear them grunting, I could smell their sweat, and I could see the way their eyes burned with rage. The Warden wasn’t going to make it easy for me to get to Six.
In fact, I had a feeling he wasn’t going to let any of us walk out of here alive; and all the while I kept getting distracted by the thought of the Horseman emerging from that room. It could happen at any point. I knew Six’s plan, and we’d theorized that he would be unconscious while they dove into his mind, but until Sanchez confirmed it, we had no way of knowing if that was true.
If he was only asleep, then it was totally possible that we could wake him up if we made too much noise out here.