Still, I kept fighting—clawing, slapping, and punching with all my might. Clementine continued to laugh. Apparently, my weak, pitiful struggles amused her. She let go of my throat long enough to slap my hand away from hers, the blow so hard that it caused my knuckles to crack into the marble walkway—

Wait a second.

Marble—I was lying on a solid sheet of marble. In fact, the whole boathouse was made out of stone. I’d once collapsed an entire coal mine, so I knew that I could use my magic to do the same thing to the boathouse. But as satisfying as that might be, dropping a couple of tons of rock on top of Clementine’s head wouldn’t help me. The rocks would either crush us outright or shatter the walkway and drag us both down to the bottom of the river. I didn’t want to drown, especially not if Clementine was going to be trapped on top of me for all eternity.

Still, there had to be some way to use my magic against her without killing myself in the process. Oh, I’d sacrifice myself if it meant murdering her too, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. Not until my air was almost completely gone and I had no other chance of stopping her.

I moved my head left and right, my gaze shooting every which way, but there wasn’t much to see. Just the marble ceiling over my head, the columns on either side of the boathouse, and the statue of the old fisherman to the left of Clementine—

The statue.

My gaze locked on it, but it wasn’t the figure of the old man I was interested in—it was the spear clutched in his hand. I hadn’t made a dent in the giant with my silverstone blades or Ice knife, but that spear looked to be at least six feet long and three inches thick. That spear would take down anyone, even a giant as tough and strong as Clementine Barker.

All I had to do was find a way to finesse it right into the bitch.

I quit fighting the giant, quit clawing at her hands, quit kicking and punching and trying to buck her off me. I even quit using my Stone magic to harden my skin. Instead, I gathered and gathered the power inside me, combining it with all the Ice magic I had left, added to what was stored in the spider rune ring on my right index finger.

Clementine noticed that my skin had reverted back to its normal texture. She paused and drew her hand away from my nose and mouth. I sucked down breath after breath, but all the while, I kept reaching and reaching for my magic, getting ready to make one final strike with it.