Page 55 of The Last Syphon
Prince Walder watched her closely, waiting to see what she would do.
Inara steeled her spine, standing tall, confident. She kept her gaze locked with Prince Walder’s as she slowly lifted her hand out to the side and called forth her magic. Her shield appeared in her palm in the shape of a disk.
Prince Walder sat forward.
Inara commanded it to spin.
The prince’s eyebrow arched high. If he was impressed by that, what was about to happen next would blow his fucking mind.
Diverting her attention back to the ever-exchanging crossbows, Inara counted. The timing had to be perfect.
Fire, retract. Fire, retract. Fire, retract—
Inara wound her arm back and released the shield disk in a fast throw. She used her hand to control its movement, guiding it to curve around the room. Her disk sliced through the crossbows, the front of them falling straight off and collapsing to the ground.
Gasps rang through the air. The broken weapons retracted back into the wall, and Inara sent the disk hurtling around the room again, splitting the remaining crossbows in two.
The pressure that had been building in her mind instantly eased when the bows stopped hitting her shield.
Only once Inara was sure they were all gone did she command her shield disk to return to her. She caught it, stared up at Prince Walder, and clenched her fist, distinguishing her magic.
Silence reigned down upon her. The shocked expressions of those in the crowd looking at her filled Inara with immense pleasure. She allowed the shield protecting her and Felix to dissipate, held her head up high, and marched through the open door. It slammed shut behind them.
“Pheewww. Glad that’s over. That shit was kinda scary.” Felix’s voice echoed into the darkness surrounding them.
It was pitch-fucking-black. Again. Like last time, Inara had to wait for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light before slowly inching forward. “You had such little faith in me?”
“Faith has nothing to do with it. We just had dozens of crossbows trying to kill us. It’s a scary situation. It’s not every day our lives are in peril like that.”
Felix looked at Inara.
Inara looked at Felix.
They both laughed uproariously.
“We’ve been through worse.”
Felix snorted. “True. Don’t think I missed the fact that you were showing off there.”
Inara allowed herself to slip out of the zone and release a small chuckle. “Couldn’t help it.”
“How are you feeling? How’s your magic?”
“Fine.”
“Did you overextend?”
“Not yet, but ask me that again after the next round.”
He was silent for a moment. “What do you think it will be?”
Inara stopped in front of the next door and looked over her shoulder. She could just make out his silhouette in the darkness. “I don’t know, but I have a feeling it will be a lot harder than the last.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Inara and Felix walked into the next chamber, their footsteps in sync. Minds as one. This chamber was different from the last. Although the above was the same—no ceiling, with a crowd of people watching on from cascading seating—the configuration down below was laid out completely differently.
It was a bigger area, for one, and there was a giant fucking hole in the centre of the room. An old, rickety, wooden bridge spanned the distance between the two ledges—the only clear path to access the door on the other side.
