The Right Side of History (Schooled In Magic Book 22), Christopher Nuttall [books to read romance TXT] 📗

Void wouldn’t be foolish enough to confront her personally. He was controlling the wards, shifting the school’s interior to keep them both confined until he was ready to deal with them. She couldn’t sense anything from down below, not any longer. She hoped that meant Master Lucknow and the others had escaped, but she feared otherwise. There had been too many entranced people for her to free them all...

She looked at the stone above her head. The students were trapped, too. Perhaps entranced, perhaps simply confined to their rooms... she knew she couldn’t get to them. Frieda was up there, somewhere, and... Emily cursed under her breath. She’d have to leave her friend behind.

Jan stumbled back, crashing into her. “I think...”

A stone wall turned into a doorway. Void stepped through, looking more annoyed than angry. The wards boiled around him, ready to defend him against anything. She was locked out completely. Emily felt a flash of pure rage, even as she knew there was no hope of fighting. Lady Barb had died in a desperate bid to stop him, yet she’d died for nothing. There was no hope of escape, no hope of...

“Emily,” Void said. “It’s time to come home.”

“No,” Emily said. She grasped Lady Barb’s amulet in one hand and reached for Jan with the other. “I... this isn’t going to work.”

“I can make it work,” Void said. “And so can you.”

“You’ll create a state that is entirely dependent upon you... upon us,” Emily said. She knew she was stalling, but she owed it to herself to try - one final time - to talk him out of his insane plan. “There is no way you can micromanage every last detail or step in every time there’s a problem. The sheer weight of detail you’d have to handle would crush you effortlessly. You would never be able to step away from ruling. And the moment you did, the whole edifice would come tumbling down.”

“There’s no choice,” Void said. “If I do nothing, there will be chaos. Those selfish bastards would lay waste to the entire world, if they thought they would be kings and masters of the wreckage. They have to be stopped.”

He held out a hand. “Join me.”

Emily braced herself - she could sense the wards growing ever-stronger around them - and triggered the amulet. The world turned white, then black. Pain - white-hot pain - flared through her. She sensed immense power churning around her, as if she’d been caught in a thunderstorm; she heard the wards screaming as they tried desperately to cancel the spell. Void had done a good job, she reflected as time seemed to stretch into an endless abyss of agony, but Whitehall’s wards were powered by a nexus point. She might just have condemned them both to a painful death.

The world snapped back to normal. Emily hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind from her body. Her nose smacked against something solid and broke. Something else landed on top of her, then rolled over and lay beside her. It took her far too long to realize it was Jan. He stumbled to his feet and cast a hasty lightspell.

Emily staggered to her feet. Her nose hurt. She was grimly aware she was bleeding. It took her last traces of magic to stem the bleeding and cut the link between her and her blood. She leaned against Jan, who looked to be in shock, then stumbled down the road. Void might hope - or fear - that she’d atomized herself, but he was hardly likely to take it for granted. He’d check the oubliette at Whitehall, then come looking for her. And she was in no state for a fight.

Jan held her, gently. “Where are we going?”

“Sergeant Miles,” Emily said. She forced herself to walk faster. She had to tell the sergeant about... her heart clenched in pain. Lady Barb was dead. She didn’t know how she was going to tell him that, or how he’d react, or... she didn’t know anything. He’d lost his lover and... “ We have to move.”

She glanced at Jan. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” Jan frowned. “Emily? What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” Emily said. “I thought” - she swallowed - “I’m sorry I didn’t write to you.”

Jan looked pained. “He wasn’t too pleased,” he said. Emily knew who he meant. “But he had too much else to do to worry about me. I thought...”

He shook his head. “A problem for later, right?”

“Right,” Emily agreed. She had no idea if Master Lucknow had escaped or died at Void’s hands. “We have far too many other problems.”

She felt her blood run cold as the first glimmerings of sunlight appeared over the distant mountains. How long had it been? It felt as if it had been midnight only a few short seconds ago. She knocked on the door and waited. It felt like hours before Sergeant Miles threw the door open and beckoned her inside.

“Emily,” he said. His eyes lingered on Jan for a long moment, then looked past him. “Where is she?”

“I’m sorry,” Emily managed. She honestly didn’t know what to say. If the sergeant ran to the castle, in a bid to get revenge... she didn’t want to think what he might do if he blamed her for his lover’s death. “I’ve got bad news.”

Chapter Forty

“WE CAN’T STAY HERE,” SERGEANT MILES said, when Emily had finished her explanation. “He’ll know where to find us.”

Emily winced, inwardly. Sergeant Miles had taken the explanation surprisingly calmly, but... she knew him well enough to sense something roiling beneath his dispassionate expression. Lady Barb and he had been lovers for years. Emily found it hard to believe he didn’t care about her, let alone that he wouldn’t mourn her death. And yet, she was selfishly glad of his focus. She was too stunned to think straight.

“Aiden, go to the inn and hire a horse and coach,” Sergeant Miles ordered. “Emily, can you get into your house?”

“Yes, but I