Alastair grabbed his jacket from where it had fallen onto the couch. He swung it at the crackling, sparking magic.
There’s arxium in the jacket, Ridley thought the instant before the jacket swiped the magic. She hurled her air form at Archer, becoming a waterfall of water at the same moment the magic exploded outward in a blazing flash, reacting to whatever arxium had touched it.
Ridley’s ears rang, which made her realize she had ears, which made her realize she was in human form again. Lying on a hard floor. Beside a dripping wet Archer who was struggling to sit up. The howl of a gale joined the ringing in her ears. Icy air tore across her wet skin. Not wet from the water form she’d been in moments before. Wet from rain. Rain pelting her skin. Rain gusting in through the enormous hole that had been blasted through the penthouse windows.
“What have you done?” Alastair bellowed. He was across the room on the other side of multiple upturned items of furniture. Not to mention multiple shattered glass boxes, fallen statues, broken vases, and probably a great many priceless artifacts. Perhaps because he’d been the one wielding the arxium jacket—or perhaps because he had other forms of protective clothing—he appeared to have survived the magical blast. “You.” His eyes locked onto Ridley.
Archer was up already. In one swift motion, he tugged Ridley to her feet. Without another thought, she launched toward the gaping hole, taking Archer with her. Together, they fell.
Even with the knowledge that she could shift to air—which she did about a second later—it was terrifying. She thought she heard the wind scream in her ears before she shifted form, but it was probably her own voice.
Ridley sped toward the Boards24 Building and deposited Archer in the middle of the rooftop garden with zero explanation. She’d wasted enough time already. Were Nathan and Malachi still trying to dodge fake elementals? Had they given up? Had they been hurt or … worse?
As she passed the wall and soared over the wastelands, she reached out for Nathan. She found him, further out, and her instinctive question—Is he okay?—was answered immediately: Yes. She could tell Malachi was with him, and along with the vague sense of their location, she felt a hint of … playfulness? No, that wasn’t quite right. But the idea trying to take form in her mind was definitely of some sort of game. She strained harder to understand, and the answer finally hit her in a single thought.
Distraction.
They were drawing the man-made elementals further out, giving Ridley a chance to get close to the wall. They were trusting that she could do it all without them as long as they kept the threat at bay.
Again, like earlier, she felt magic telling her, You have to do it. Meaning: You have to do everything.
I know, she answered. But the idea of diving into solid earth still scared her. Then her fear seemed to drift away as hope swelled inside her and around her. It wasn’t her own. Well, some of it was, but mostly it was the magic out here, taking her tiny kernel of hope and amplifying it and adding its own. She felt encouraged and … lifted. Almost literally. Buoyed up by the currents in the air. And then …
She was catapulted down toward the earth. Fear and determination and excitement collided in every particle of her being as the ground rushed toward her. I can do this. A conversation that seemed like a lifetime ago came to mind. Fall into it, Grandpa had said. So she did. She fell into the earth.
It was utterly dark. Terrifying and exhilarating. She hurtled forward the same way she would as air or water or fire, but somehow as a continually moving solid being. She didn’t know how and she didn’t try to direct it. She fragmented and all she knew was crack, shudder, smash, demolish. Except … that wasn’t all she knew. She was scattered, but somehow … focused. Her magic stretched through the ground, reaching further and further, but she was precisely aware of every inch of it.
Break the city wall, she thought. Break. The. Entire. Wall.
Power erupted through the earth and past what remained of the broken, burned arxium machines, and though Ridley couldn’t see it, she knew where it went. It rushed through the ground, circled the city, and struck the entire wall at once. Cracks fractured their way through the structure. Fall outward, she thought as she burst from the ground and became air. Like a shock wave radiating out from a central point, hurricane-speed wind rushed away from the city in all directions, and colossal pieces of the wall fell with it.
Ridley shot downward, shifting to fire, and struck the rubble. With a deep, imaginary exhale, she let herself come apart, sending flames rushing across the ruins. They licked, raced, leaped, blazed, and soon the whole of Lumina City was encircled by flame. Pulling herself back to her contained elemental form, Ridley glided overhead. She couldn’t help imagining someone sitting inside their home staring out at this, possibly thinking the end of the world had come. I’m sorry, she thought. It’ll be over soon. All the arxium will be consumed and then this will be over.
She directed her attention upward to the arxium panels that hovered above the city, unable to help herself from feeling a touch of doubt. There were thousands of panels. The area was so much bigger than the area she and the others had practiced in near the reserve. Lumina City was enormous. And though Ridley was an heir, she was also just one elemental—and she was starting to tire. Could she really burn through everything? Fling all those thousands of burning panels beyond what remained of the wall?
The rest of us could probably sit back and watch while you burn through all the arxium around Lumina City on your own. That’s what Saoirse had said. But did she really know? She didn’t. She’d been guessing. Hoping.
You can, magic said, and there was that feeling that had pervaded Ridley’s being after she’d burned through the Shadow Society building in the wastelands. The sense that magic was pleased with her.
Without giving her doubt another moment to strengthen its hold on her, she shot toward the panels. She fragmented before reaching them, racing through the air on the wind, spreading out further and further until her air self felt as if it encompassed the entire dome of panels. Then, with a single explosive thought, she let go entirely.
BURN.
An inferno of apocalyptic proportions erupted instantly across the sky, igniting every arxium panel in a second. The fiery mass blotted out the sky for barely a moment, and then the force of the magic hurled every burning panel outward and away from the city.
It felt to Ridley as if a tiny piece of herself was launched into the wastelands along with each of those panels. If not for the pendant she wore, she might have been so far-flung that it could have taken hours, days for her to pull herself back together. But she retained enough focus to snap herself back into a single ball of flames. Then into a gust of air.
She remained high up, watching as the broken pieces of Lumina City’s wall slowly burned themselves down to nothing. Further out in the wastelands, the fiery specks that were the burning arxium panels blinked out one by one until none were left. Finally, Ridley watched as the clouds that had been rolling overhead all morning drifted apart just enough for sunlight to stream through, lighting up several gleaming glass skyscrapers.
Exhausted, relieved, amazed—an overwhelming combination that mostly just made her want to cry—Ridley swooped over the buildings of the Opal Quarter, looking out for one in particular. A building with a rooftop garden. A building where Archer was waiting for her.