The Last Spell 42.1

The stone was death-cold in Shane’s hand. He could feel his pulse thrumming against it.

All eyes were on him as he held it up, motionless. Some eyes were wary, narrowed with distrust. Others were wide with horror. But the eyes he held his gaze on were smiling and green.

Seeing that smile made him feel sick with poison all over again.

“Shane.” It was Kaja who broke the looming silence, her voice hushed with disbelief. “What are you doing?”

Shane didn’t dare look her way, tensing his jaw. He couldn’t afford to.

“So it’s true.” He didn’t think it possible, but Sparrow’s grin pulled wider. “You’re the Hawking boy. I hoped it might be you.”

“I’m the one holding your life in my hand,” Shane replied. “Get it right.”

Sparrow shook his head with a click of his tongue. “These last few years must have been rough on you, haven’t they? I hoped for that, of course. Never predicted you losing it and diving headfirst into a revenge quest, though.”

With a challenging tilt of his chin, Shane held up his other hand with his thumb, pointer and middle finger pressed together, ready to snap. All of Sparrow’s followers flinched at the movement.

“Trigger-happy, too.” Sparrow laughed. “Perhaps I’ve underestimated you. I know the look of a man who’s hellbent.”

“You thought you’d gotten away with it, didn’t you?” Shane hardly recognized the sharp voice speaking as his own. “Years of investigations, and nothing to be uncovered. It’s as if justice went blind trying to find you.” Blood pounded in his ears. “You’ve been expecting it as a pair of handcuffs, or a prison cell far too comfortable for where you belong, and so you’ve found a way to outrun it. But you didn’t think justice would be forged in the same fire you started.”

“Would you do it?” Sparrow’s voice was wry. “Would you put yourself and your friends in the flames just to get back at me?”

“I’d start a second fire just to be sure you burned,” Shane said lowly.

Sparrow wasn’t smiling anymore. His eyes were narrowed Shane’s way, and he felt his gaze like daggers on his skin, searching for any trace of weakness. Shane returned it with a glare that said, Try me. I dare you to fucking try me.

Only his racing heart knew how fear twisted around his chest.

“What do you want?” Sparrow asked at last.

Shane finally tore his gaze away to look at his friends. Kaja was staring at him, wide-eyed and aghast. Her hands were bound by a spell behind her back, but she appeared uninjured. Past her, Cyrin was kneeling on the floor, watching him with a shell-shocked expression. Blood was dribbling out the corner of their mouth, tinting their lips crimson. He didn’t know what kind of beating they’d taken, but it didn’t look good.

He wished he could’ve warned the two of them. But this only worked when they didn’t know what was going on.

“Hand them over,” Shane said. “And the First Spell too.”

Sparrow scoffed quietly. “In return for the spell stone.”

“You first,” Shane countered.

Sparrow smirked slightly without any delight, and he turned to face his mercenaries. “Well? Get to it. An Heir is speaking.”

Scowling, Shane slowly lowered his thumb and index finger on his free hand so it was only his middle finger left raised. It wasn’t very classy, but he saw a muscle clench in Sparrow’s jaw.

One of the mercenaries guarding Kaja waved her hand, and the Force spell uncoiled from her. Kaja watched them suspiciously as she moved away from them to stand beside Shane. Cyrin slowly rose to their feet with a certain nobility not even their condition could erase as the man holding them in place backed away. Their hand was pressed to their side, and their face contorted with pain they were evidently trying to mask as they limped over.

Sparrow reached into a pocket on the inside of his jacket, his gaze never leaving Shane as he pulled the First Spell out. It felt like forever since he had laid eyes on the scroll. Sparrow held it out with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes, and Shane swallowed as he stepped forward, exchanging it for the stone in his hand.

As Sparrow paused to admire the stone with fascination, Shane hurriedly returned to his group, sliding the First Spell into a pocket inside his suit unceremoniously. After mouthing You okay? in Kaja’s direction and receiving a stunned nod in response, he moved to Cyrin, who was leaning against a bookshelf for support.

“Where are you hurt?” he whispered.

“Ribs. Head.” Cyrin closed his eyes. “And pride.”

He meant broken ribs and internal bleeding, from the look of the blood staining his lips. Shane wouldn’t be surprised if he had a concussion. He rested a hand on his shoulder lightly.

“Try to heal what you can quickly, okay?” he murmured.

Cyrin nodded weakly as he reached for his MagicBox, and Shane pulled back, turning to face Sparrow again. Amusement lit the crime lord’s features as he shook his head, watching Cyrin weave a Salve spell.

“A poor trade, I’d say,” Sparrow said, looking down at the knife in his hand, which Shane realized was Cyrin’s. “You’re still outnumbered. But I’ll let the Specter get back on his feet— it’ll be better when he gets knocked down again.”

“Says the man always hiding behind someone else who’s doing the fighting.” Cyrin’s words started out spoken through gritted teeth, but gradually became less strained as he held a spell to his side. Exhausted relief slipped over his face. “You probably punch about as well as your name.”

“What you mistake for my cowardice is other people’s loyalty,” Sparrow said. “You were never loyal, but you’d know all about doing my work for me, wouldn’t you?”

Glaring, Cyrin stood back up, shaking off the glow of their used-up spell. Shane noticed that they hadn’t healed whatever head injury they had, but he felt that their invisible timer to recuperate was running up. “Fuck off.”

“Now where have I heard you tell me that before?” Sparrow murmured.

“Is what Shane said true?” Kaja spoke up before Cyrin could retort. Shane turned her way to see venom in her gaze as she stared Sparrow down. “You killed his parents?”

“I didn’t have the pleasure of setting off the bomb myself.” A violent smile had twisted Sparrow’s lips. “But I was happy to send the assassin on their way.”

Kaja looked back to Shane. He’d never heard her express grief or regret over his parents, and the ferocity in her amber eyes caught him off guard. Politically, he knew they’d been on different side of a debate floor, but he wondered if despite their different ideologies, Kaja had found a way to respect them.

“Not even the Saints can spare you from what’s coming your way,” she growled to Sparrow.

Before anyone else could say another word or even move, the lights overhead suddenly flared back to life as thunder roared from outside the library. Everyone looked up in surprise. But as Shane raised his head, he caught motion in his peripheral vision— Cyrin’s hand, extending in a swift, beckoning sweep.

Sparrow let out a startled hiss as the knife, powered by its Force enchantment, shot out of his hand and into Cyrin’s. Almost in the same heartbeat, a spell collided with his chest. Shane didn’t know what it was for, but it must’ve been Acid stripping away some enchantment, because Sparrow’s clothes sparked with fading magic like a dying firework.

By the time the mercenaries had looked back and caught on that something was going wrong, Cyrin was already charging the broken-nosed man who had been holding them in place. Their shoe found contact with the man’s neck in a high kick, and he staggered back with a guttural wheeze. The woman beside him reacted, but Shane didn’t know what she’d been aiming to do, because Cyrin flung their hand out in her direction without so much as a glance. Shane didn’t realize they’d thrown the knife until he heard her screech and saw the blade pinning her hand to a shelf before Cyrin summoned it back.

Alarmed, he turned to Kaja, just to catch the moment her fist collided with the face of the mercenary who had led Shane over, and the man slumped to the floor. She immediately turned and tackled the two mages she’d been fighting before, sending them down in a heap of bodies. He’d missed the memo that this distraction meant they were supposed to snap into action and fight. Great. Not what he was built for.

Luckily for him, there was only Sparrow left, looking around with an increasingly irritated expression at his loss of control over the situation. Their eyes locked, and Shane made a split-second decision that he was only half-certain wasn’t a terrible idea. He bowled into him.

He didn’t have the advantage of being heavy— Shane had been underweight for as long as he could recall— but in a way, that was helpful. Sparrow was no fighter either, and he wasn’t expecting this from Shane, because who would?

The two of them fell together, and as Sparrow thrashed to get away, Shane reached into a pocket and pulled out the spell stone he’d asked Cyrin to enchant earlier. He snapped his fingers for the Rationale spell to take effect, and the stone lit up.

“Freeze,” Shane ordered.

Sparrow instantly held still, motionless except for his gaze darting around frantically and the rise and fall of his breath. His outraged look landed on the stone Shane had given him, still clutched in his hand.

“Go ahead and activate it,” Shane said. “I know you want to.”

Glaring, Sparrow raised his arm as if he’d been pulled by a puppet’s string, snapping his fingers. Nothing happened.

The crime lord’s face, painted with shock and anger, demanded an explanation, but Shane reveled in the satisfaction of his fury for a moment longer as he grabbed Sparrow by the collar and pulled him upwards. Around him, he could hear the shouts and sounds of Cyrin and Kaja’s battle, but it was background noise to him. The rage pulsing through his bloodstream drowned it out.

“You may speak,” Shane said coldly.

“What is the meaning of this?” Sparrow spat immediately. He could hear the rush of his breathing, on the edge of panic, and he understood it. His mind was free, according to Cyrin, but the Rationale had stolen the last of his control and left him with no option but to obey directions.

“What you’re holding,” Shane said, “is a regular garden rock. I got it from the interior courtyard right here. You just traded the most powerful artifact in Aphirah for an oversized pebble.”

The flash of wrath in Sparrow’s eyes should have been all the revenge Shane needed. Instead, it only lit a fire to it. Maybe nothing was ever going to fill that hole— but Saints, he ached for some kind of retribution. He needed something to show for the canyon ripped through his heart, something that didn’t leave him the passive victim of a tragedy or the ever-scarred survivor. Anything that would put out the scream for justice in his head.

“Ask me what I want.” His fingers tightened in Sparrow’s collar as his voice dropped to a whisper.

“What do you want?” Sparrow’s words were a growl, like he was trying and failing to keep them from leaving his throat.

“I want you to plead for my forgiveness.” Shane felt possessed, hearing words leave his mouth that didn’t sound like him, and yet he knew he meant them with every fiber of his being despite how he choked up. Distantly, he realized that he was trembling with fury, unable to contain it all. The knife of grief he’d been living with in his chest had turned outward and resharpened into rage. “I want you to beg me the same way I begged the universe that this wasn’t happening, that I was wrong, that I hadn’t just watched my parents go up in flames on the screen.”

His shoulders shook with a sob his voice couldn’t give sound to. He didn’t know when he’d started crying, but there was salt on his lips now.

“And I want you to know that you’ll never get it.” Shane’s whisper was somehow both full of all that he was burning with and hollow of anything at all. “The same way that I will never get them back.”