Fated

I saw then what Griff was going to do. Normal people, when something bad happens, get to tell themselves that they couldn’t have known. Diviners don’t. I knew what Griff was about to do, and I knew that if I tried to stop him he would swat me like a fly.

I held still.

Griff broke Luna’s wrist.

Luna’s scream was physically painful, like knives scraping down my spine. Griff waited for it to trail away into sobbing, then spoke again. ‘Try the cube.’

‘I-I-I—’

‘Try the cube.’

‘I won’t. I won’t. I—’

There was the sharp crack of another bone and Luna screamed again, a heartbreaking sound. I clenched my fists, a fine tremor going down my arms. ‘Try the cube,’ Griff repeated.

Luna only sobbed.

Griff made an exasperated noise, and I felt him channelling earth magic. I couldn’t see what he was doing; the pedestal was in the way. All I could see was the faint brown glow. Then Luna shrieked, and kept on shrieking. It was ear-splitting, but underneath it I could hear a grinding, scraping noise, like rock grating against rock. Griff spoke again, but this time I couldn’t make out his words. I dug my hands into the stone until they bled. I knew Cinder and Rachel were right on top of Onyx’s hiding place. Come on, I prayed, come on, come on, come on—

There was a roar and a flash of flame. The glow from the other side of the pedestal snapped out, and Luna went silent. Griff whirled, searching for the noise, and for an instant his back was to me. It was long enough.

Griff felt me coming. You don’t catch a battle mage totally off guard, no matter how quick you are. He was turning back towards me when I reached him, a shield of energy coming up to block my attack, but I wasn’t using a weapon. I slammed into him in a bull rush, and as I did I felt Luna’s curse suddenly take, hard. Looking into the future, it was as if every strand but one was extinguished. The one strand that led to Griff’s fate pulsed brightly, becoming real.

Griff staggered backwards, off balance, on the edge of falling but not quite going over. He kept going far further than he should have, and was halfway across the room before he came to a halt.

The shadows around Griff moved. Onyx strode out to his right, Rachel to his left, Cinder behind. The three Dark mages formed a triangle with Griff at the centre. Sea-green light flowed at Rachel’s hands; fire burned around Cinder’s. Onyx showed nothing at all. All three noticed Griff at the same time, and turned to stare at him.

Griff looked up, and there was just enough time for his eyes to go wide. ‘Oh, shi—’

Battle mages have a frightening amount of destructive power. Mages fighting a duel spend most of their energy preventing the other from landing a solid hit. It’s very rare for a mage to hit an opponent with all his strength, but when it happens, it’s always fatal. One spell from a battle mage can shred a human body like tissue paper.

The effect of three of those spells hitting at the same time doesn’t bear thinking about.

I won’t try and describe what it looked like. All I’ll say is that it was over very fast.

Then Onyx and Rachel and Cinder turned their attention to each other, and I dived behind the pedestal as the room lit up with death and fire. ‘Luna! Luna!’

Luna was leaning against the pedestal, her eyes fluttering. Griff’s stone chains still locked her ankles to the pedestal, her right arm was twisted at a horrible angle, and her face was dead white. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, her voice faltering. ‘It’s different, I—’

From the other side of the pedestal I could hear the roar of flame and the flat, deadly wham of Onyx’s force magic. ‘It’s okay. Don’t move.’ I looked around, trying to figure out some way to get Luna out of here. ‘We need to—’

I only had a second’s warning. I dived sideways off the dais, rolling, just as something swept through the spot I’d left with a swoosh of air. As fast as she had struck, Thirteen was gone. I came to my feet and slipped one hand in my pocket, tense, waiting.

Fewer than a hundred feet away a furious battle was raging as Rachel and Cinder hammered Onyx with all of their power, trying to break down his shields and kill him, but I couldn’t spare the time to look. I stood on the open stone, and it was Thirteen I was watching for, waiting to see how she would come at me – from the left or from the right or straight above. I couldn’t see her, but I could see into the futures where she killed me, and I could see how to move to make sure that didn’t happen. Not yet … not yet …

… now.

As Thirteen swept in I pivoted, and her claws missed my throat by inches. I kept turning, and as Thirteen flashed past next to me my hand flung a handful of glittering dust over her.