Page 74 of The Iron Hex

This was the chance he’d been waiting for. Hugo ran and swung at him, pushing his sword through Sir Franklin’s belly just as Eira’s magic faltered. Sir Franklin dropped to the ground as Eira gasped, sinking to her knees as the water splashed to the snow-covered ground.

“Are you okay?” Hugo cried, leaving his sword buried in the knight’s gut as he ran to Eira, knees skidding on the frozen ground as he got on her level.

“I’m okay,” she said faintly, sounding so far away.

Hugo placed his hand on her cheek and a gentle kiss on her forehead before he stood and walked toward Sir Franklin. The dying man gasped on the ground, Evangeline standing above him.

“Since you’re going to die, I feel good about telling you that I’m Princess Evangeline,” she said, kicking the hilt of the sword still embedded in his gut.

Hugo watched the man’s eyes flare open in recognition, in rage and pain, before the spark in them faded into nothingness.

“You didn’t have to be cruel,” Hugo said as he pulled the sword out of Sir Franklin. “It was the man’s final moments.”

“He might have been the one that executed my family for all I know,” she said, a pang of guilt ripping through Hugo as she said it. He knew exactly who killed Evangeline’s family, and it wasn’t Sir Franklin.

“Did you see what she did?” Hugo heard one of the townspeople say as he finally looked around. They were surrounded by people.

People who had all just seen Eira cast illegal magic.

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Eira

Eira worked her way back to standing, a groan escaping her lips as she felt dozens of eyes on her. The townspeople, including the barmaid who had seen her magic yesterday, stood in a semicircle around them. Three fugitives. Three bodies.

Hugo ran to Eira’s side, beating Evangeline by mere seconds.

“What are we going to do?” Evangeline whispered.

“Fight our way out?” Hugo growled. “I don’t know. I don’t want to kill anyone else in this town.”

“You did enough damage, huh?” Evangeline scoffed, wiping blood from a gash on her arm.

Eira looked around at the people watching them, searching for signs of aggression, and found none. “No.” She shook her head. “Let me talk to them.”

“I cannot express how bad of an idea—” Hugo started but Eira walked ahead anyway, carefully approaching a mother with her young daughter beside her.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Eira said, hands still shaky from the magic she had cast.

“We’ve not seen magic like that in these parts from an outsider in a long, long time,” the woman said. She was older than Eira would expect a mother of such a young child to be.

“These days it isn’t very safe to show magic like this,” Eira said. “Do you think the people of Lichton can keep this a secret?”

“Darlin’,” the woman said to the young girl who hadn’t spoken yet, “show the lady what you can do.”

The little girl looked at Eira as she squatted down to the girl’s level. She held up her pointer finger and thumb and a tiny flame hovered over it, the glow reflecting in both of their eyes.

“Oh wow,” Eira marveled genuinely, a surge of tears welling in her eyes, threatening to pour down her cheeks. “You’re so talented.”

“Nana says I can’t tell anyone outside of Lichton, though,” the little girl said, brown eyes sparkling as she watched her own fire.

“Your nana is smart. We need to keep our magic a secret right now,” Eira said, nodding.

“Mommy didn’t keep hers a secret,” the little girl said. “And now Mommy is gone.”

Eira’s heart shattered—of course. This girl inherited her abilities from her mother, her mother who no doubt used her elemental magic to light the fireplace and stove at night and bring clean water to her home.

“I brought the little one north after the Iron Empire took over and her mother died; needed to keep her safe. Lichton is safe,” the girl’s nana said.