Free Mercenary Magic by Ella Summers Page A

shield, only to find a flock of stones swarming toward her.
    She looked back at the building, then at the smirking mages in front of her. There wasn’t time to be smart; she just had to hope that being fast was good enough. She sprinted for the twins. The stony swarm changed direction to intercept her. Sera pushed herself faster. Her sides burned. Her lungs were screaming out for oxygen. She couldn’t stop to give it to them. She stopped, she died. The end.
    The swarm dove low and hard. She threw herself forward, stones spitting against the ground, ricocheting at her heels. She landed and rolled, angling toward the twins. If she could just get to them, she’d win. Mages like these—ones who depended on their magic to keep them safe—were total lightweights. They couldn’t take a punch. And for the hell they were putting her through, she’d be sure to gift them a few extra punches.
    She was almost there. The swarm changed direction again. The backs of her legs felt like they were on fire. The swarm dove. Just a few more steps…
    An ice umbrella formed over her head, then spread up like a rainbow, encasing the entire swarm. Sera looked up, her eyes following the frozen arch speckled with stones—then pivoted around to Kai. He was standing over the unconscious lightning mage, brushing snowflakes off his hands. It was a regular elemental circus today.
    “You’re welcome.”
    She glared at him.
    “Careful there, Sera. When you’re upset, your wall cracks. I’m getting a whiff of your magic.” He inhaled long and deep. “Mmm. Delicious.” He shot her a roguish smile. Which she ignored. Or pretended to, anyway.
    “I had it.”
    “Really? Because it looked to me like you were in distress.”
    In distress, my ass. “I had it,” she ground out, passing under the ice rainbow.
    She spun around, launching herself up to slam a kick hard against the twins’ heads. One, two, they went down like a pair of dominoes. See? That’s what she meant. Total lightweights.
    “Good,” Kai said as she passed back under the rainbow.
    “I’m glad you approve,” she said drily.
    “Fighting without magic against magical foes certainly has forced you to be creative.”
    “Yes.”
    “But you’d make it much easier on yourself if you just used your magic,” he said. “Why don’t you? What are you afraid of? That you’ll get addicted?”
    That happened to some mages. They used their powers so much that they turned into magic junkies, always after the next hit. The quest for the next hit quickly escalated into mages going mad, attacking people randomly until the Magic Council sent in a team to deal with the menace. Sometimes, the Magic Council was too slow to act, and that’s when scared people started flocking to Mayhem and the other mercenary guilds, begging them to take out the psycho mage well on his way to turning their neighborhood into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
    Sera had once been on a team Simmons had charged with taking out one of these magic junkies—and she had the scars to remember him by. Mages drunk on magic were powerful and resilient. They didn’t feel pain like a normal person would. To them, it was just background noise. The power was all that mattered. Using that power was all that mattered. Sort of like Finn when she’d fought him, come to think of it.
    “Are you afraid you’ll get addicted to the magic?” he repeated.
    “No.”
    “You think you can avoid talking about this. You can’t,” said Kai.
    “Sure I can. Just. Like. This.” Sera turned and started to walk away.
    “Running away?”
    “Walking away.”
    Behind her, ice roared, and she pivoted around to watch the entire rainbow collapse like a shattered mirror. A million shiny shards rained down on Kai. They burst into flames, dissolving into whiffs of steam before they could touch him.
    “What is the matter with you!” she demanded, charging up to him. “Normal people don’t act like this. They don’t—”
    He body-slammed her