“You do.” Ben’s voice was quiet but certain. “You’ve done harder things than this. The phoenix merge…the journey through the Waiting Place. This is just one more impossible thing, and you’ve never let impossible stop you before.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him that this was different, that I was already stretched to my breaking point, and that asking me to channel enough power to punch through a military perimeter was asking for a disaster. But when I looked at the faces around me — my mother and grandmother, my father hovering uncertainly near the door, the guardians who had traveled across the world to stand with us — I knew I didn’t have the luxury of doubt.
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me what I need to do.”
My grandmother came over to me, her weathered hands taking mine. I felt her consciousness brush against my own, ancient and practiced, filled with knowledge passed down through generations of guardians.
“The wards are anchored at the four corners of the house,” she said. “Right now, they’re configured to keep things out — to create a barrier against hostile forces. But with enough power, they can be inverted, pushed outward instead of held inward. If you can channel energy from the ley line through the anchor points….”
“I can create a tunnel,” I finished for her, understanding dawning. “A protected corridor through their perimeter.”
“It won’t last long. Seconds, maybe. And the effort will be….” She paused, worried gray eyes searching my face. “Significant.”
“Significant” was grandmother-speak for “potentially lethal.” But what choice did we have?
“Do it,” I said. “Set up the inversion. I’ll provide the power.”
The next few minutes felt like hours. Emily and the Sharmas moved through the house again, adjusting the wards they’d placed, reconfiguring the magical architecture for a purpose it had never been designed to serve. Outside, the mercenaries maintained their positions, patient and professional, apparently content to wait us out.
They had no idea what was coming.
I stood in the center of the living room, my eyes closed, my awareness split between the physical world and the ley line that thrummed beneath my feet. The pain was still there — the Dragon’s agony, the network’s distress — but I’d learned to compartmentalize it, to push it into a corner of my mind where it could scream without drowning out everything else.
Ben stood beside me, his hand in mine, his bioelectric field merged with my own. The contact helped more than I could say. Every time I started to lose my grip, his presence pulled me back, steadied me, reminded me that I wasn’t facing this alone.
“Ready,” Emily called from somewhere behind me.
I took a deep breath and reached for the ley line.
The power came rushing up like water through a broken dam, vast and wild and almost impossible to control. I felt it surge through me, filling channels that the phoenix merge had carved into my nervous system, lighting up pathways I hadn’t even known existed. My scars blazed with light, gold and white, and I heard someone gasp — my mother, possibly, or one of the guardians — as the illumination spread to fill the room.
For a moment, I was everywhere at once. I could feel the wards at the corners of the house, feel them straining to contain the power I was pouring into them. I could feel the Dragon far below, its consciousness brushing against mine in something that might have been recognition or might have been a warning. And I could feel the mercenaries outside, their bioelectric signatures dim and flickering compared to the blazing network that surrounded me.
“Now,” I said, and pushed.
The wards inverted with a sound like reality tearing. Light erupted from every window of the house, blinding white shot through with gold, and I felt the protective barrier surge outward in a wave that sent the nearest mercenaries stumbling backward. For a precious few seconds, a corridor of clear space opened between the back door and the tree line.
A tunnel through the siege, just wide enough for us to pass.
“Go!” Rebecca was already moving, herding the others toward the exit. “Everyone out, now!”
They ran. Josie and Emily went first, supported by Priya’s uncle. Then my father, his tablet clutched to his chest, his dark eyes wild with something between fear and wonder. The remaining guardians followed, flowing around me, their own power adding to mine as they passed through the corridor I’d created.
The strain was immense. I could feel the wards buckling under the pressure, could feel the mercenaries recovering from their surprise and starting to push back. One of them raised his weapon toward the corridor, and I lashed out instinctively, sending a pulse of electromagnetic energy that knocked him off his feet and fried the electronics in his scope.
“Sidney!” Ben’s voice, urgent. “We have to go!”
He was right. The corridor was collapsing, the edges fraying as my power began to fail. I released my hold on the ley line — felt the connection snap shut with a jolt that made me stagger — and let Ben pull me toward the door.
We made it through just as the wards collapsed entirely.
The sound of gunfire erupted behind us, bullets tearing into the space where we’d been standing seconds before. But we were already in the trees, already running, the forest swallowing us whole as the mercenaries scrambled to pursue.
I didn’t look back. I couldn’t afford to.
Ahead of us, the Dragon screamed again, and I felt the earth tremble in response.
We weren’t safe. We weren’t even close to safe. But we were free, and that was enough.