Read Online Magic Kingdom (Dragon Born Alexandria Book 3) by Ella Summers - Free Book Online

had others sacrifice themselves, not telling them they would die. I could see it in their eyes. Those thugs inside were not the sort to sacrifice their lives. They thought they were just taking down supernaturals, not throwing themselves into the flames.”
    Anger burned through her veins. She kicked the pile of wood again. That coward had gotten away.
    “Do you want me to track him?” Logan asked.
    Alex’s phone buzzed. Another alert. They just couldn’t catch a break. The city had gone positively mad tonight. She glanced at the screen.
    “A building has been…melted?” She looked up at Logan. “How is that even possible?”
    “It could be another trap.”
    “Yeah,” Alex said, dialing Monster Cleanup.
    Violet answered after three rings.
    “You need to send Disposal here to clean up a barn that’s been blown to pieces,” Alex told her.
    “You blew up a barn?”
    “No, someone blew it up while we were inside.”
    Silence hissed from the other end of the line.
    “Violet?”
    “We’re still behind, but I’ll do what I can.”
    “Thanks,” Alex said, then hung up her phone. “Are you ready to investigate a melted building? If it’s even melted.”
    “If it’s not, we’ll kill whoever is setting a trap for us.”
    Alex headed toward the car. You had to love the pragmatism of an assassin.

    * * *

    They arrived at the scene to find a destroyed shell of a building. Its street-facing wall looked like a block of chocolate that had melted then hardened again.
    “This isn’t a trick,” Alex commented as they stepped out of the car.
    “But it could be a trap,” Logan said, drawing his knives.
    “I guess we’ll see soon enough.”
    An odd residual magic hung in the air. It smelled of burning bleach and scraped against her senses like a metal saw. They stepped over a ruined concrete wall that had melted down to a nubble of rock. As soon as they crossed into the broken building, the magic in the air went silent.
    “Something has scorched the magic from this building,” Alex said. “What can burn away a magic signature?”
    “Perhaps the same thing that can burn a concrete building,” replied Logan. “That shouldn’t even be possible. Concrete does not melt like that.”
    “Logan, we fight monsters and face the impossible every day of our lives. Magic plays by different rules. It makes the impossible possible.”
    Alex squatted down to get a better look at the melted walls. It wasn’t just the front wall. A line of melted walls extended from the entrance straight through to the core of the building. Warped almost beyond recognition, at this point they more closely resembled candle wax than concrete. They looked like they’d been at the wrong end of an elemental mage’s fiery fury. It would take an enormous amount of fire magic to melt concrete, though. More than she’d ever seen from a single mage.
    That’s not completely true, Nova said. Dragon fire could do it.
    So you think another Dragon Born mage did this? One who could actually control their dragon fire, unlike her.
    I don’t know. I just said that dragon fire burns hot enough to do that.
    “Something was taken from here,” Logan said from a few layers deeper in the building.
    Alex rose out of her knees. “How can you tell with all this damage?”
    “Come here, and I’ll show you.”
    She stepped over the melted walls one-by-one until she reached him.
    “There,” he said, directing her attention to a hollow block of warped metal that had partially melted into the floor.
    “Is that a safe?” she asked.
    “It used to be. Whoever is responsible for these melted walls headed straight for this safe—straight through these walls. This isn’t random arson. Our perpetrator knew what he wanted and where it was being kept.”
    “I wonder what he took.”
    Normally, she’d just find out who owned the building and do an inventory of what was taken. Maybe she still could do that, but based on all the piles of ashes and warped metal