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Dazmine gave me a bright-eyed nod that told me she and Terrin had succeeded in getting the rest of the island on Jagaros’s side, and…
Quinn raked in a breath just as one of the prisoners behind me screamed.
I should have sensed them sneaking up behind us. Spinning around, I just barely caught sight of three elites—brands still fully intact beneath the mesh circles in their cloaks—before they threw all their powers at us at the same time.
Water gushed from the walls, sweeping several prisoners off their feet in a wild torrent. At the same time, the bars of the nearest prison cells softened like heated wax and whipped toward us, wrapping around several others.
Including my throat.
Don’t fight back, a Mind Manipulating voice commanded. My own Mind Manipulating sparked in response, then died out just as quickly. My hands couldn’t stop themselves from lowering, allowing the rope-like bars to squeeze tight.
“Wait!”
I couldn’t so much as turn my head, but I recognized Quinn’s voice amid the gasps and grunts of the others who could still make a semblance of sound.
“I’m a pre-elite!” she rushed out. “I’m on your side!”
My heart tripped over itself. Drowned at the swirl of water around my feet.
No. Not another betrayal. I couldn’t handle another betrayal, especially not from her. Had she really come here just to swear her allegiance to the elites? Didn’t she realize that Coen would rip her apart when he found out?
Something I might not even live to see. The bar around my throat tightened even more, and my lungs seared. My vision swam with fuzzy black dots. My Object Summoning hands twitched with the effort to come back to life, to move, to wrench it off me as Quinn dragged herself into view.
With her shackled wrists raised up high to showcase the second brand burned into the flesh of her underarm, the three elites didn’t immediately kill her like I thought they would.
Pausing long enough to take her in, one of them sneered, “If you’re on our side, why are you with them?”
“Because I was spying!” Victory glittered in Quinn’s imploring gaze, there and gone faster than my languid blinks as the elites let her step closer. “Gathering information about their plans of attack to help you and Dyonisia Reeve.”
“Coward,” Dazmine spit from somewhere behind me. “Traitor.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the same elite hollered, and glanced back at Quinn. She’d almost reached them now, hands still high above her head. “Alright, pre-elite.” As much as he tried to smother the tint of fear in his voice, I knew he was terrified of the danger currently cutting down monsters above him. Knew he’d take any rotting scrap of help. “What is it you know?”
The black spots in my vision grew. My ears rang. And I heard Quinn’s hissing answer as if from the end of an underwater tunnel.
“That you’re going to lose.”
It happened fast. She brought her shackled wrists down around the elite’s head and twisted the flexible bar around his throat.
Not to kill him. We all knew she wouldn’t get that far. But to break his magical hold on us. To distract the others.
My own bar loosened, I raked in a heaping breath, and chaos unleashed itself. Every single prisoner swarmed the three elites, using fists and knees and feet to batter them as harshly as they themselves had been battered.
The water at our feet turned to ice, locking us all in place once more, but Bren smashed his needled fingers down to rip a chunk out and rammed it into one of the elite’s hearts. Then the other’s. Then—
Only that one elite remained, still grappling with Quinn. I reached for her, desperately trying to dislodge my feet. He smashed her against the wall, and I watched what came next with a silent scream building in my throat.
Quinn’s eyes popped open as the elite rammed a fist into her stomach. Where it burrowed into her, her clothes and skin melted, burning through organs, boiling her blood, the stench of her burned flesh singing my nostrils.
My scream finally poured out of me, long and peeling and desperate.
“Quinn!”
Bren did what I couldn’t. He wrenched his feet from the ice, circled a bulging arm around the elite’s neck, and cracked his neck with one tug.
God of the Cosmos. I couldn’t even imagine what the Good Council had done to him to imbue him with so much permanent strength. He would have made a truly terrifying monster if he hadn’t managed to keep his own head.
The elite’s body fell at his feet, the ice melted and bled back into the cracks of the floor, and there was silence.
