Tam sucked in his breath. “Raine!”

The Magh’Sceadu flowed back the same distance and stopped.

Nothing like a game of chicken with a soul-slurping monster. I think this one realized I was more than he wanted to bite off. Point for me.

“Can you open that ward?” I quietly asked Tam.

“Only the shaman who made it can open it.”

Damn. Tam’s boys were doing too good a job. Half the shamans lay dead or dying. With the way our luck was running, the ward builder was either dead or inside a Magh’Sceadu.

“But I can rip it,” he said with a fierce smile.

The cell block was huge; there was at least thirty feet of shaman/mage battle-infested floor between us and the spellsinger cell. Fists and steel were flying right along with spells and death curses. The Khrynsani started it; Tam’s boys were determined to finish it.

We were shielded, but I’d found out last week that Magh’Sceadu ate shields for appetizers. Control or destroy were our only options.

“Get that ward open,” I told Tam, never taking my eyes from the carnivorous inkblot in front of me. “I’ll worry about him.”

Piaras’s song abruptly changed. His warm, rich baritone turned dark and discordant, the notes booming and harsh. He was singing in Old Goblin, the language of black magic, the language of the dark spells used to create Magh’Sceadu. He wasn’t trying to repel them.

He was trying to unmake them.

Oh no.

Tam spat the exact word I was thinking.

Katelyn Valerian wrapped her arms tightly around Piaras’s waist, pressing her head against his chest. I actually saw Piaras’s shields strengthen. The girl was sharing her power. Piaras hesitated, then wrapped his arms tightly around Katelyn, and his song became a little stronger. The pair of Magh’Sceadu stalking them hesitated, wavering— and became slightly less substantial than before.

Tam said the same word again, this time in admiration.

I saw a flash of scarlet out of the corner of my eye. Ronan Cayle was gesturing and yelling. The wards kept any sound from getting out.

There was a Magh’Sceadu in the cell with them.

Crap.

The thing had come straight through the rock wall of the adjacent cell. A second Magh’Sceadu oozed through the same way. Ronan Cayle stood protectively in front of his students, pushing them back against the far wall. That was all he was doing. Why wasn’t he fighting, singing, whatever? I realized with dawning horror that those wards did more than keep sound in.

Ronan couldn’t use his magic.

Chapter 28

We only had seconds before those Magh’Sceadu started feasting on Ronan and those kids.

Tam and I sliced, blasted, and beat our way across the cell block. I didn’t know if the Magh’Sceadu that had been in front of us was now behind me, and I didn’t have time to look or worry about it.

The boy spellsinger, Gustin Sorenson, held a sobbing Megan. He gently turned her head into his shoulder so she wouldn’t see what was about to happen to them.

The Magh’Sceadu drifted almost within touching distance, as if feeding on those kids’ fear. I never thought I’d be grateful for sadistic behavior, but it bought us a few critical seconds.

Tam took one look at the ward close up and snarled a string of guttural goblin curses.

I looked where he was looking. “What? You can’t do it?”

“The wards are rooted in bedrock,” Tam told me. “If I rip into it, the ceiling comes down.”

“Any other way?”

“None.”

We were at least a hundred feet underground, with an embassy on top of that. If Tam tore into those wards, all of that was going to be on top of us.

If we did nothing, those spellsingers were worse than dead.

I’d held up a stage full of mages two days ago. No Saghred, just me. But that stage was wood, not untold tons of rock. Dammit. I didn’t want to die squashed like a bug, but if I screwed this up, a lot of other people would be dying along with me.

I snarled my favorite about-to-meet-Death four-letter word.

“Do it!” I snapped.

“The ceiling—”

“Is my problem.”

Tam knew what I was saying. He stared at me, his expression unreadable. “I need you to support the ceiling above the tear I’m going to make.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it. You pull; I push. Let’s go!”

“I need control and delicacy, Raine.”

I snorted. “Too bad you’re stuck with me.”

He held out his hand to me. “And we have to work in unison.”

So there it was. I knew it wouldn’t be just Tam and me. The Saghred was going to want a piece of the action—and a piece of us. The Saghred had given me power when I’d used it. Would it do the same for Tam? I didn’t want that power. Did the dark mage in Tam not only want it, but crave it?

Triumph was the only way I could describe what I felt coming off the Saghred. The rock was about to get what it wanted. If we all got out of this alive, I’d have what I wanted.

A win-win for everybody. Yeah, right.

Tam called his power and I felt it: dark, potent, rushing up from the deep, primal core of him. My own magic coiled and flared through my body, serpentine, seeking the source of Tam’s dark power. I found it and touched it: the dark well, its source unknown, its depths unexplored. The Saghred wanted to know those depths. I just wanted to explore.

“I knew I couldn’t leave you two alone.”

Rudra Muralin stood smiling at a tunnel opening next to the Magh’Sceadu’s cell, manacles dangling negligently from one finger.

“Always have a backup plan,” he told us. “And an extra set of keys. I hope you didn’t pay your two lackeys in advance, Tamnais. Gold is wasted on dead men.”

Muralin laid his hand on the ward of the Magh’Sceadu’s cell. It opened seamlessly and Magh’Sceadu poured out, flowing around him like a black tide. They wanted nothing to do with him. I guess evil repels evil.

“Impressive work, Piaras,” Muralin called. “You have even more potential than I thought. Too bad you’re about to be overrun.”

“Rip it now!” I snarled at Tam. I turned my head toward Piaras, Talon, and Katelyn. “Run!” I screamed.

I grabbed Tam’s hand, and his power exploded through my body; my own surged upward to meet it.

A roar tore itself from Tam’s throat. His eyes were solid black orbs, his lips pulled back from his fangs in a bestial snarl as he sank his fingers like claws into the wards and tore them open. The wards screamed as if Tam was ripping into living flesh, not magic.

I gathered my will and my arm extended toward the rock above where Tam had shredded the ward. My fingers flared out to focus my magic and I pushed with everything I had. My arm shook with the effort and my shoulder was on fire.

A spiderweb of tiny cracks appeared on the ceiling where wards met rock.

Oh hell.

Tam had flung open the door to the cell and was pulling the spellsingers out and all but throwing them toward the door to the tunnel beyond. Ronan and two of Tam’s mages were herding the kids, including Piaras, Talon, and Katelyn, into the tunnel.

Rudra Muralin was gone.

All that power came at a price. I was panting and tasting blood. Either I’d bitten my tongue or ruptured something. Black blooms danced on the edges of my vision. If I didn’t stop soon, I was going to pass out.

Silence hung in the air, followed by a low rumbling. A crack appeared in the ceiling at our end of the cell block and started to spread.

I was all that was holding up that ceiling and if I let go…

I couldn’t speak. I frantically motioned for Tam to go.

His black eyes blazed. “Like hell!”

A tremor shook the room. The crack in the ceiling was as wide as my hand and expanding fast. Chunks of ceiling began to crumble and fall. Tam tightened his grip on my hand.

“Drop it!” he screamed over the din. “Now!”