He waggled his fingers, and the fire in his palm burned a little brighter, as though it were a hungry monster that was eager to melt the skin from my bones. The hot, crackling stench of it filled the air, even more pungent than the rotten filth that polluted the plaza. Ricardo was clearly the strongest magier, although Lena was a close second, and the fire in her palm sparked almost as much as his did.
I was still holding my sword in my right hand, and I curled my left hand into a fist, then coated it with the invisible force of my own cold, hard power. Ricardo might be strong in his magic—but he wasn’t stronger than me.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I snarled.
He laughed, and Lena and the other magiers joined in with his chuckles. “If you want to get burned, Your Majesty, that’s fine with me,” he purred again. “It’s always so much more fun when our guests resist.”
He summoned up even more fire, but I didn’t flinch at the searing flames, so he sneered at me. “Do you really think your tearstone sword is going to stop me from scalding you? I’d heard you were arrogant, but I didn’t realize you were delusional as well.”
Like most people, Ricardo assumed that my sword was the source of my power, that the silvery tearstone blade and the blue shards in the hilt were what protected me. He was wrong.
“I don’t need my sword to destroy your magic. I can do it all by myself.” I twirled the weapon around in my hand, then lowered it to my side.
“You might be a queen, but you’re a fool,” Ricardo hissed. “Perhaps you’ll be a bit more humble after I’ve burned off the first few layers of your flesh.”
He reared back his hand and tossed his magic at me. Not enough to kill me outright, but more than enough to severely burn me. The fire streaked through the air, the flames growing hotter and stronger as they chewed up the distance between us.
At the last moment, right before his magic would have slammed into my chest, I snapped up my left hand and flexed my fingers as though I were flicking water off them. In a way, that’s exactly what I was doing. Only instead of water, I was throwing my magic at his.
The cold, hard, invisible force of my immunity slammed into his fire, shattering it like glass. The red-orange flames exploded in a roar of black smoke that boiled up and quickly wisped away in the winter breeze.
I casually brushed a stray ember off my right shoulder, snuffing it out just like I had the rest of the fire.
Ricardo’s topaz eyes widened, and he jerked back in surprise. “How did you do that? I thought you were just a mutt who could smell things.”
To most people, even my own Bellonans, I was just a mutt, a common, if condescending, term for folks with simple, straightforward powers like extra strength or speed. Even among mutts, my enhanced sense of smell was considered a weak, laughable ability, and most people thought I had only a faint spark of magic, and no real, significant power.
Those people were right—and wrong. I was a mutt, in every sense of the word, but I was also a master, someone who could control and wield a specific object or element.
And my element was magic.
I had always known that I was immune to magic and that I could destroy other people’s fire, lightning, and ice just by pitting my power, my strength, my will, against theirs. But I’d recently discovered that I could do other things with my immunity, like control where other people’s magic went or how much of it was used. I was still learning new tricks, and one day I hoped to be able to wield my immunity as easily as I did the sword in my hand.
I could have told Ricardo all that, but he didn’t deserve any explanation. No, all he deserved was to die screaming. Him and everyone else who’d been stupid enough to threaten me, trick me, and especially make me feel all that damn hope. Icy rage surged through me, freezing out everything else. Forget running away to safety. I was going to end Ricardo here and now.
So I crooked my index finger at him. “Why don’t you come over here and find out how I did that? If you’re not too much of a coward. Using a girl to trap someone is easy enough, but actually battling a Bellonan queen yourself is a bit more challenging.”
Anger filled Ricardo’s eyes, a muscle ticked in his clenched jaw, and more fire erupted on his fingertips, even stronger than what he’d just thrown at me. But I didn’t flinch, and I didn’t back down.
“You think your little trick is going to save you from me? From all of us?” He gestured at Lena and the other magiers. “You shouldn’t have come here alone, Winter queen. You’re going to suffer for your arrogance.”
I smiled, baring my teeth at him. “Who said I came here alone?”
Lena and the other magiers were so busy watching Ricardo threaten me that they weren’t paying any attention to what was happening around them—like the shadow that was creeping along one of the alley walls and heading in this direction.
Paloma let out a loud roar, charged into the plaza, and swung her mace at the closest magier. The other woman never even saw her coming. The magier’s head caved in like a soufflé taken out of the oven too early, and she dropped to the ground without making a sound.
Paloma roared again and charged at the next-closest magier, who whipped around to face her, along with several others.
Ricardo snarled with anger, reared back, and threw another fistful of fire at me. This time, I used my immunity, along with the blade of my tearstone sword, to swat away his magic like it was an annoying fly.
The fireball exploded against one of the building walls, igniting the rotten wood, spoiled food, and other filth piled there. Smoke, sparks, and red-hot embers boiled up into the air, hanging over the plaza like a thick, foul fog, but I sprinted through the stench toward Ricardo.
He snarled again, yanked two long knives out of his black cloak, and stepped up to meet me. He brought both knives down at once, attempting to cut through my defenses, but I whipped up my sword and blocked his attack.
Clang!
The loud crash of our blades banging together rang through the plaza, momentarily drowning out all the other grunts, yells, and screams. That one single note of sound turned a key deep inside me, and phantom music started playing in my mind. Xenia might be teaching me the Tanzen Falter, but Serilda was the one who’d trained me to treat each battle like it was a dance to the death. I let the quick, pulsing beat of that phantom music sweep me away, and my body moved to the rhythm, even as I pushed Ricardo back and twisted to the side.
He growled and slashed out with his knives over and over again, trying to drive the blades into my heart. He wasn’t trying to capture me anymore. Now he wanted to kill me as badly as I did him.
I danced away from his blows and launched my own brutal counterstrikes in return.
We kept hacking and slashing at each other, even as we waded through the broken glass, chipped bits of stone, and other debris that littered the ground. The crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch of our boots added another layer of sound to that phantom music playing in my mind, and I hummed along to the beat, even though no one could hear it but me.
On the other side of the plaza, Paloma swung her mace at every magier she could reach, punching the spikes into first one body, then another. My friend was easily holding her own, so I turned my attention back to my enemy.
Ricardo feinted and lashed out with one of his knives, trying to catch me off guard, but I whirled to the side and knocked that blade out of his hand. The knife tumbled end over end along the cobblestones, shooting off a few weak silver sparks before it landed in a pile of dirty rags.