CoS38

## Chapter 38

**Chapter 38** of **City of Spells** follows **Tavia**.

## **Full Version**

BEING DEAD SUCKED. Thankfully, those kinds of things weren’t always permanent.

Tavia patted herself down, touching her chest where the blood had been moments ago.

She wasn’t dead.

Why wasn’t she dead?

*I had to make it look real*, a voice in her head whispered. *I’m really sorry if I scared you.*

Zekia.

Tavia searched the bridge until her eyes settled on the young girl, who was trying her best to look anywhere else but at Tavia.

*Get to the bullet*, Zekia said. *Wesley told me you needed it.You have the time now. He thinks you’re dead.*

By he, she meant Ashwood, but all that came to Tavia’s mind was Wesley.

He was knelt beside the false image of her that Zekia had conjured. There were tears staining his eyes, trembling at the corners like they were too afraid to drop.

She’d never seen his face like that before.

She never, ever wanted to again.

She made to move toward him.

*The bullet*, Zekia urged. *Go now!*

Tavia bit her lip and looked back to Zekia.

She was risking her life to help them and it occurred to Tavia then that the future Karam had seen wasn’t of Tavia dying; it was of the world thinking she had.

Zekia was as good a planner as her brother.

*Thank you*, Tavia whispered inside of her mind, hoping Zekia could hear.

She took a tentative step forward.

Ashwood’s back was to her, which was just what Tavia needed.

Karam was on the ground by Ashwood’s feet, his hand clutched around her wrist. Her arm shook as she tried to push him off, but Ashwood persisted.

Saxony’s face was one of pure rage.

“I’ll show you power,” she said.

And then her hands set ablaze and the ground around her lit up with pools of fire.

Tavia could feel the heat from where she was and when Saxony threw her hands out, Tavia ducked and placed her hands over her head on instinct.

The fire shot toward the Kingpin.

Only Wesley didn’t move.

He stayed kneeling by Tavia’s body, staring at the illusion of her like there wasn’t a war just a few feet from where he was.

Tavia wanted to scream that she was alive, and that everything was okay, but this was the moment she needed.

The distraction of Saxony’s fire would give her time.

She walked slowly away from Wesley, toward the bullet that had pierced through Ashwood and was lying on the bridge. Her movements were careful, in case the illusion shattered. Magic was a fragile thing and Tavia couldn’t risk being seen.

Especially when Zekia had killed her so convincingly.

*A little too convincingly*, Tavia thought.

Because though she didn’t feel the pain of the bullet, there was a small glitch, maybe ten seconds or so, when she’d seen the blood on herself and the look on Wesley’s face as he’d seen it too. The few fractures of time when the illusion propelled into the world and Zekia forgot to omit Tavia from it.

For a moment, Tavia thought she was going to die.

The bullet was squashed and wrinkled and when Tavia picked it up, it was still a little warm. The blood that coated the gold metal was an almost black shade of red.

Tavia clasped it with a busker’s smile.

Ashwood still had his back to her, his magic clutched tightly around Saxony’s neck.

Her friend was gasping for breath.

Tavia narrowed her eyes and set Dante Ashwood in her sights.

With hands quick enough to earn her reputation as Creije’s best busker, she reached into the back of her trouser pocket for the mirror doll and wiped the bullet, riddled with Ashwood’s blood, onto its body.

The change was instant.

The doll’s head snapped back and its body shook as it shed its makeshift form and mutated into something other, growing flesh in place of fabric, hair stringing from its ghostly scalp.

Its face was muddled and incomplete, just as Ashwood’s was. Eyes that were a faded black and lips that were smudged across its deathly face. The only thing human about it was the heartbeat, the breath that escaped its tiny mouth, and the way it shuddered under Tavia’s touch.

Ashwood whipped around to face her and Tavia caught the moment his shadows jolted and his thin frame stiffened.

Saxony gasped, Zekia smiled, and Tavia swore that Karam looked close to rolling her eyes.

And Wesley, who blinked as the pretend Tavia’s image faded and he looked up to see the real thing standing over him, swallowed loud enough for it to sound like a crack of thunder.

He said her name, just once, in utter disbelief, voice splintering on the sound. And then he was by her side and she thought maybe he was going to kiss her in the middle of this battle until she heard Ashwood hiss, and they both turned to see his graying teeth bared.

“Impossible,” he said at the sight of Tavia alive. “You—”

Tavia snapped the doll’s leg backward.

Ashwood fell to a knee, clutching on to his cane to keep himself upright.

Up ahead, the skies growled with his anger.

“Foolish child,” he said from the ground. He was staring at Zekia. “How dare you betray me like this?”

His hand cut into the air and suddenly Zekia was on the ground, screaming.

Her body twisted, like he was snapping her bones apart.

“I will make you pay. I will make you regret the day you were—”

He paused and let out a choked sound.

Tavia squeezed the neck of the doll tightly.

*See how you like it*, she thought.

Ashwood pulled his hand from the air and brought it to his own throat and Zekia let out a gasp of relief as the Kingpin’s magic ripped from her.

They watched, all of them, as Ashwood gasped for breath, choking on nothing at all.

He looked up as Tavia pinched the neck of the doll and Wesley, standing by her side where he belonged, watched on.

“My boy,” Ashwood said in a breathless stammer. “Help me.”

Wesley’s face remained plain.

“He’s not your boy,” Tavia said. “And nobody’s going to help you now.”