City of Storms: Nightmarked #1 by Kat Ross

Author:Kat Ross [Ross, Kat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Acorn

* * *

A swift end, and cleaner than he deserved, Lezarius thought.

“I know who sent them,” he rasped. “I remember it all now.”

Mikhail tilted his head in a question.

“Thirty years they left me to rot. Thirty years!” Lezarius scrubbed a hand across his mouth. “But these walls will not hold me anymore.” The old man sat up. “Justice will be served, but I cannot do it alone, Mikhail. Will you be my champion?”

Mikhail rubbed his arms. He cast his eyes down and shook his head. Lezarius cupped his chin, forcing him to look up.

“Why? Because they claim you are mad?”

Mikhail’s gaze burned.

“Well, I am mad, too.” He laughed. “I cannot be trusted! Will you die here, like a penned sheep, or will you help me?”

He searched the dead men’s pockets. Each had a corax. He read the names and put them in the pocket of his tweed jacket. He found a set of car keys and took those as well. “Now, Mikhail,” he said solemnly, “I will show you something.”

Lezarius wore the Warded, mesh-lined gloves that blocked patients from touching the ley, but a residue from Gerlach still sang in his blood. He focused it and the Wards dissolved. Lezarius tore off the gloves. He stared at his fingers for a long moment. The skin was pale and damp as a mushroom. He raised a hand to his nose. It smelled bad.

Mikhail watched in silence as Lezarius washed in a bowl of water, scrubbing with soap until his hands were raw. Then he sat on the floor, letting the ley wash over him. Tears blurred his eyes. This is what they had taken from him. This.

He touched the deep vortex beneath the Arx, remembering the making of it. Had he desired, he could have broken the reservoir, irrevocably, but he also remembered what the mages who ruled Bal Agnar and Bal Kirith had done with the ley. The slave markets. The grinding poverty of the masses, while a handful of Nightmarked lived like emperors. They’d made their cities into jungles, with the strongest and cruelest taking the lion’s share, and called it the natural order.

Lezarius knew he was mad, but he was still their foe.

He took his coat off, and his shirt. He could no longer create, but he could destroy.

The Raven blazed, so fiercely Mikhail threw an arm up to shield his face.

It began at the Arx. Channels of ley raced outward, disabling Wards as they went. The shockwave rolled through Novostopol. Within seconds, it reached the Institute. Mikhail cried out as his own Marks flared, and then the wave passed, spreading outwards toward the Void.

Mikhail breathed hard, but his eyes no longer held that terrible blankness. Lezarius put his shirt and coat back on. He took a last look around at the cell that had been his home for the last three years. He knew every crack in the plaster. Every creaky floorboard. He wondered how the world had changed in his absence. They had forgotten him, but now they would remember.

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