“Take control,” I whispered, nearly tripping over the words in my haste.
I could already feel the snaking energy coming for us. As soon as I finished the words, the full awareness of it washed over me, nearly making me reel at its strength. It latched on to first Bryony and then me, tugging at our inner reserves, trying to drain away our life force.
“Reverse,” I muttered, fear making me act without thinking.
Immediately the thread of energy connecting us changed course, draining in the other direction and flooding into me instead of our attacker.
I gasped as the energy hit me. A feeling of momentary discomfort—familiar from my training with Bryony—turned quickly into a euphoric buoyancy.
The energy continued to flood toward me, my attacker draining shockingly fast. A moment later I realized my mistake. She had been draining both Bryony and me, which meant she was now losing energy to us both. My friend was actually bouncing up and down from the unexpected influx.
Another ripping sound from above released a wave of pure power that spread around us in every direction, dissipating the smoke wherever it came into contact. As the air finally cleared, the woman appeared, now lying collapsed on the ground, her face ashen.
“Cut,” I whispered, and the flow of energy stopped. Her chest rose and fell in a shallow breath.
A warning shout from the front of the carriage made me glance backward as another wave of power slammed against our shield, bursting it with the strength of the attack.
Simultaneous ripping sounds from above and behind encased us in further layers of shielding, even as Lieutenant Beckett above us grunted and fell. He slid off the roof of the carriage, plummeting toward the ground.
Bryony reacted almost impossibly fast, racing past me to cushion his fall. The two of them collapsed to the ground in a tangled pile before Bryony sprang back up, reaching down to help the larger man to his feet.
“Something got through that time,” he said unnecessarily. “Maybe you should get back in the carriage, Your Highness.” But he sounded uncertain, as if he wasn’t sure if I was safer out here where they could see me or tucked away behind walls of wood.
I nodded absently, not really following his words. It was hard to focus with the buzz of energy inside me.
At first it had seemed just like the familiar feeling of excess from Bryony’s compositions to gift energy. But the more seconds ticked by, the stranger it felt. This energy fought against combining with my own. It twisted, pulling away from me before springing reluctantly back, making me rock every time.
Beckett frowned at me. “Are you all right, Princess?”
I nodded, panting slightly. “I’m fine.”
I hoped my words were true. What was happening to me?
“We have to help Captain Layna,” I said. “Are there more of them?”
As if in answer to my question, an even stronger wave of power hit us from the side, emerging from between two buildings. It broke through the first of our shields before fizzling out against the second.
Beckett already had a parchment in his hands, tearing it to once again give us a double layer of shielding.
“How many more of those do you have?” I asked, keeping my voice level with difficulty. The energy still fought inside me, the buzzed feeling of its presence at odds with my natural fear and the strange nausea produced by its attempts to escape from my skin.
“More,” the lieutenant said. “But whether we have enough depends on their number and how well-equipped they are.”
I appreciated that he didn’t offer me platitudes or empty reassurances.
“We need to get moving,” he said. “See if we can outrun them. Or at least get out into the open. If we could make it to the Academy…”
I glanced up at the carriage driver who was shaking in fright, even as he attempted to control his even more terrified horses. The thunder and rain had stopped, but the animals could sense something unnatural was going on.
“That’s not going to be easy,” Bryony said.
I led the way toward the front of the carriage, where Layna still stood with her back to us, the ground around her now littered with torn scraps of parchment.
“One of them is down,” Beckett told her. “Although it must have been the princess who did it. It wasn’t one of my compositions.”
Layna nodded without taking her eyes off her opponent. “How many of them did you spot from up there?”
“At least three,” he said. “But my visibility was limited by the buildings. There could be more.”
Lightning arced through the sky, cracking against our shield and setting the carriage horses to rearing again. For the first time true fear shook me. With the energy mage disabled, we were safe enough behind our shields. But for how long?
I had still seen no sign of any locals, and the residents of the village were all commonborns anyway. They could do little to help us against such an attack—assuming they didn’t side with our attackers.
A shout and the sound of running feet made us all flinch. My attempted control over my roiling insides faltered, and this time when our attacker’s energy pulled away, it snapped free, disappearing instead of springing back toward me.
A heavy weight pressed me into the ground for a moment before my sense of self equalized. I wasn’t exhausted, this was my normal level of energy. It had just felt like weakness for a few seconds after the loss of the unnatural strength.
Gold robes appeared in the street, accompanied by the red and gold uniforms of commonborn guards. I instinctively relaxed, but Layna remained taut, her attention sliding between her opponent and the new arrivals.
I recognized the man leading them, and my own wariness reasserted itself. Vincent, the captain of the Academy Guard, had been appointed directly by the king—a man I knew wanted me dead.
But Captain Vincent took one look at the situation and began barking orders to his team. The guards ran forward, swords outstretched toward the man standing openly in the street.
He cursed and tore several more parchments, fresh power springing to life around him. But the guards didn’t hesitate, hammering away at his shield with their weapons, slowly draining it.
After a moment, I realized they were doing more than that. Working in coordination, they used their attacks to drive him back, herding him away from us and toward one of their two mage lieutenants.
“There’s another between those buildings,” Beckett called, pointing to the relevant gap.
The second Kallorwegian lieutenant took off running in that direction, a small stream of red and gold guards following.
“And one behind,” Layna barked to Captain Vincent. “Incapacitated.”
I glanced back behind the carriage. The street was empty.
I bit my lip. “She’s gone. I’m sorry, I should have stopped to bind her.”
Layna frowned at me. “That’s not your job, Princess. And if we’d had more people, one of us would have done it. But we rightly had to keep our focus on current threats.”
“Are there any more?” Captain Vincent asked.
Beckett shrugged. “Not that we know of. But they were hiding between the buildings, so it’s possible.”
The Kallorwegian captain frowned around at the empty streets. “This village is close enough to the Academy that I’ve interviewed every one of the inhabitants myself. I don’t believe they would be part of any such attack.”