Determination rose inside me - cold, hard, unflinching.

I reached for my Ice magic again. It was harder this time, so fucking hard, like trying to scoop up water with wide fingers. Every time I gathered up enough power, it slipped away. So I reached for it again, clenching my hands around the trickle of magic inside me. It tried to slip away, but I held on tight and pulled, yanking it to me, bending it to my will.

And something inside me wrenched.

For a moment, I felt like a raw egg that had been dropped on the floor - broken, messy, oozing. But then magic filled me. More Ice magic than I'd ever felt before.

I didn't stop to think about where it had come from or whether this was all some sort of deathbed hallucination on my part. I used the magic to freeze more of the water rushing through the air and threw it at Dawson.

This time, the droplets formed long, slender icicles that zipped through the dusty air like daggers. The dwarf saw them coming. He stopped in his tracks about five feet away from me and brought his own Stone magic to bear, trying to block my attack, trying to use his elemental power to harden his skin against the crude weapons, as I'd done so many times before.

But it didn't work.

Maybe he was too distracted by the chaos around him.

Maybe I'd wrecked his concentration with my initial sneak attack. Maybe I'd upset the order of his perfectly arranged duel, and he just didn't know how to recover from the unfairness of it all.

Whatever the reason, my icicles slammed into Dawson's chest with all the force of one of my silverstone knives. The blue glow of magic snuffed out of the dwarf 's bulging eyes, and he opened his mouth to scream. The rest of the ceiling began to collapse, drowning out his hoarse cries.

It should have been dark in the cavern, which was choked by dust, debris, mud, and water. But it wasn't.

There was a light on - me. I stared down at my hands.

The spider rune scars on my palms, the ones that had been caused by the silverstone metal burning into my flesh all those years ago, were on fire - with icy flames.

And I felt the power surge through me again, greater than before. Ice magic that felt almost as strong as my Stone power did.

Not good.

For a moment, my eyes met the dwarf 's. Panic, fear, pain, and awe flashed in Tobias Dawson's gaze. And then he was gone, swallowed up by the falling rock, rushing water, and suffocating dust. I curled into a tight ball and huddled in the wall recess as the earth and stone shook around me. The stones' vibrations roared a violent, unending scream inside my head. I'd shattered the cavern ceiling with my magic, caused it as much pain as Dawson and his mining equipment ever had. The sound made my stomach clench. But it had been the stone or me, and I'd choose me every single time.

So I closed my eyes and listened to the stone wail as the cavern collapsed on top of me.

Chapter Thirty-One

I huddled in my usual hiding place, a small crack in the alley wall behind the Pork Pit. The enclosed space always made me feel safe. Secure. Perhaps it was because I knew no one could squeeze in here after me - especially someone as big as the giant I'd just killed.

Half an hour had passed since Douglas had forced his way into the restaurant and attacked Fletcher and Finn. My tears were gone, but blood still coated my hands from where I'd killed the giant. I scratched my fingernail across my skin, leaving a white mark in the rusty brown stains. I'd done it again. Killed again. Just like I had the night the Fire elemental had murdered my family, and I'd collapsed my own house down on top of them all - including Bria, my baby sister. My stomach twisted. Somehow, I forced down the hot bile that rose in my throat.

The back door of the Pork Pit eased open, and Fletcher Lane stepped into the alley. The middle-aged man didn't say a word as he sat down cross-legged a few feet away from me.

His green eyes were as bright as a cat's, although his face sagged with weariness and pain from where the giant had hit him.

I stayed in my crack, my little refuge, and wondered if this was the part where Fletcher told me to leave - and never come back. He'd seen what I'd done to the giant, what I was capable of. Who would want someone like that hanging around?

"You've been here a while now," Fletcher said in a quiet voice. "You're a smart kid, Gin. I'm sure you've noticed things. Like me being gone so much."

And coming back with blood all over you, I thought.

I didn't know what Fletcher was getting at, but at least he wasn't telling me to get lost - yet. "Yeah, I have."

He nodded. "I'm sure you've wondered where I go, what I do. All the trips I take." Fletcher turned his eyes to me, so that I felt the full force of his green gaze. "It's time you knew the truth, especially after tonight. I'm an assassin, Gin. Have been for years."

Maybe I should have been surprised or stunned or even horrified. But I wasn't. After my family's murder and the harsh realities of living on the streets, nothing much shocked me anymore. My childhood and my innocence were gone, replaced by the knowledge people were mean, cold, crazy, dangerous.

So I just nodded my head, as if his revelation made perfect sense to me. In a twisted way, it did.

"Do you know what being an assassin means?" Fletcher asked.

I shrugged. "You kill people for money."

He smiled. "Most of the time. Sometimes though, I get offered jobs I don't take. Sometimes the people I turn down get angry with me. Sometimes they find me, come after me."

"Like Douglas?"

"Just like Douglas."

Despite the weirdness of the conversation, I found myself curious to learn more about this other life Fletcher led. "Who did Douglas want you to kill?"

A shadow passed over Fletcher's face. "Some little girls."

"So why didn't you do it?"

Fletcher stared at me. "Because there are rules, Gin. Things even assassins shouldn't do. Killing innocent kids is one of them."

I thought of the Fire elemental and all the questions she'd asked me about Bria, my baby sister. I hadn't answered the elemental, not even when she'd burned me with my own spider rune. Because I'd known what would happen. I would die, and then so would Bria.

"What happens when someone breaks the rules?" I asked in a hoarse whisper.

Fletcher stared at me. "I try to make it so they can't hurt anyone else."

I knew he meant kill them. I thought of Douglas and the way the giant had looked at me. What he would have done to me if I hadn't done it to him first. I shivered. "That must be nice. To be able to take care of other people like that. To be that strong." The last word came out as a raspy whisper.

Fletcher stared at me, a strange look on his lined face, as though he was considering something important. Like telling me to get lost. I decided to make it easy for him. I owed him that much, if only for the last few weeks of security he'd given me.

"Do you want me to leave?"

Fletcher frowned. "Of course not. Why would you think that?"

I stared at the blood on my hands and didn't say anything.

"Oh, Gin," he said in a soft voice. "You don't really realize what you did tonight, do you? You saved me. Finn too. Douglas would have killed all three of us if you hadn't stabbed him. Don't you dare feel bad about stabbing that sick bastard. You did what you had to do. Nothing else."

The knot in my stomach loosened. Maybe I wasn't such a monster after all. Or maybe I just didn't care anymore.

"I want you to stay, Gin," Fletcher said. "For as long as you want. And, if you'll let me, if you want to, I'd like to train you."

I stared at him, confused. "Train me to do what? You're already teaching me how to cook."

He hesitated. "To be like me. To do what I do. To be an assassin."

Maybe I should have been surprised. Shocked. Horrified.

But I wasn't. Instead, I thought of Douglas, the giant. How he'd come at me and how I'd defended myself. I knew my stabbing him had been more dumb luck than anything else.

But my family was gone, and I was alone. I was tired of living on the streets and being weak and small and helpless.

Tired of hiding from everyone and everything. I looked at Fletcher. It wasn't just that he was an adult, older than me, taller, more muscled. Fletcher Lane had an inner strength that set him apart from other people. I suddenly realized it was a strength I wanted. A strength I needed to survive.

"What about Finn?" I asked. "He's your son. Shouldn't you train him instead?"

Fletcher smiled. "He is my son, and I love him, but he doesn't have the right temperament. He's too reckless, too flashy. You're different. Calmer. You take the time to think things through before you do them."

I didn't know about all that. But I decided to take what Fletcher was offering me. Grab on to it with both hands and never look back. Genevieve Snow was dead. Her family was dead. But Gin Blanco was still alive. And I wanted to stay that way.

"Okay," I said. "You can train me."

Fletcher nodded. "All right then. We start tonight. Come on. Let's go back into the restaurant."

He got to his feet and stretched out his hand to me. I stared at it a minute. I was going to be an assassin. Might as well start acting like one. Which, to me, meant getting to my own feet by myself. Which I did.

Fletcher's green eyes brightened as he smiled -

I gasped in a breath, waking from the dreamy memory.

It took me a moment to remember where I was, what had happened - and the fact I was probably buried alive.

Panic welled up in me, threatening to break loose. But I pushed down the hot, worrisome emotion, smothering it with cold logic. I was still alive, still breathing. Which meant I still had a chance, however small it might be.

I didn't know how long I'd huddled there under the lip of rock, with the earth shaking below my body and the cavern collapsing in on top of me. Minutes had passed, maybe hours, for all I knew. But it was quiet now. The earth had quit trembling, and the stones had quit falling, which meant it was time to come back to myself.

I opened my eyes to blackness. Again, panic filled me, and once again, I forced it down. I hadn't been afraid of the dark since I was a child. Besides, Tobias Dawson and his giants were dead. They couldn't hurt me anymore.

There was nothing down here but me and the rocks and the water. Nothing I couldn't handle.

So I began to blink, focus, and strain my eyes. Slowly, the blackness lessened to a midnight gray, and the world came back into focus. What I could see of it, anyway.

Which was nothing more than a big pile of rocks. They partially blocked the entrance to the small recess where I'd taken shelter from the cave-in. I stopped a minute to assess my body. Wiggled my fingers and toes, and went through the whole routine I'd done when I'd first woken up in the cavern. Sore, scraped, raw, aching, bone-weary.

Same as before, but everything was more or less in working order.

I reached down, searching for my purse and the healing supplies Jo-Jo Deveraux had given me. But the purse was long gone. So was my blond wig, and I didn't feel the blue contacts in my eyes anymore. They'd popped out somewhere along the way. The only thing I had left were my black dress and stilettos, which were no help at all. So I blew out a breath, crawled forward, put my hands out, and shoved.

To my surprise, the rocks moved. Bits and pieces broke off like eggshells where I touched them, and I got to work. I don't know how long I crouched there, half under the recess, scooping rocks out of the way so I could wiggle forward and get to my feet. Slow going given my various aches and pains, but eventually I cleared a space large enough for me to worm my way through. I got up on my knees first, then lurched forward, and used my legs to push myself up and out of the hole. The rocks tore into the thin fabric of my dress and scraped my stomach, but I didn't care.

Slowly, I got to my feet. There was almost no light, but maybe I could fix that. I uncurled my dirty palms. Even though I couldn't see them, I knew the spider rune scars were still on my hands. I'd always been able to create a little light with my magic, especially with my Ice power.

The familiar silver light flickered over my palm anytime I made a simple cube or Ice pick.

But before, when I'd made that final, desperate reach for my Ice magic to stop Tobias Dawson, the spider rune scars on my palms had ignited and burned with cold, silvery flames of Ice magic. Something they'd never done before.

I wondered what the silverstone scars would do now that the danger wasn't so imminent. Time to find out.

I reached for my Ice magic. Cautiously, this time, drawing on a small trickle of power. But again, it came to me far easier than it ever had before. It only took a moment of concentration to make the scars on my palms burn with cold silver fire. Better than a fucking flashlight.

"Well, that's something new and different," I murmured.

I held out my glowing palms. The silver light flickered over what remained of the cavern, and I surveyed the damage I'd wrought with my Stone and Ice magic.

Beyond my hole, the stone and earth rose and fell in jagged waves, and dust choked the air like storm clouds of particles. The cavern, which had once been so beautiful and elegant, was now nothing more than a pile of mismatched rubble, like a house that had fallen in on itself.

Tons and tons of earth, stone, water, and mud filled the entire stretch of the cavern, blocking the entrance back to the mine shaft. I looked up. There must have been more rock above the ceiling than Tobias Dawson had let on, because the stone had formed a sharp, sloping roof, instead of the natural arch of the original cavern.

I wasn't getting out that way. Because even if I'd been at full strength, instead of beaten, bloody, and exhausted, I doubt even I could have managed to blast my way through so much stone and earth. Elementals had a lot of raw power, but ultimately, we all had our limits. Even me.