Mama said I didn’t have the Sight, and when she’d told me that, I’d never been more grateful for anything in all my life.
Biting at my bottom lip, tugging at it even though my wobbly front tooth protested the move, I watched as my abuela tossed and turned, her face turning paler, her skin growing clammy even though I’d tried to cool her down.
When she stiffened, her body freezing, becoming so still that I wasn’t sure if her heart had stopped, I became frozen too. Unmoving, unbreathing, just waiting, endlessly waiting.
Her voice, when it came, didn’t even fill me with relief at the fact she wasn’t dead. It wasn’t her voice. My grandmother’s tones were rusty from the tobacco she smoked, from the ends of the cigars she rolled, and we sold onto the wealthy Americans my madre called tontas for wanting to watch the natives form their tobacco into fat little rolls. Abuela had a croaky laugh, even if it was deep and full-bodied, and when she spoke, there was always a smile to the words. Come what may, my abuela was always smiling.
But now?
Her voice was unlike any of that. It was deep, to be sure, but it was pure. Soft. Sweet.
My ears tingled, tingled, as I listened, and though I was only young, I knew her words would haunt me for the rest of my life.
‘Sol’s stone brings peace not war, but, to connect with it, on the islands our daughter must be.
Where Kou morphed into a harbor forged of pearls, she will surge into the air, her wings aloft, her magic at the ready.
Gaia’s gift to her will drain the well of her power, but her reward will be worth the loss.
She will change, but that change is a catalyst for more than we ever dared hope.
The balance to be redressed, Gaia’s Way to overpower Sol’s with his blessing,
But only with the second angel of our line.
So mote it be.’
With that, she sagged into the mattress, her body slumping, her muscles relaxing, and Havana released a soft, sorrowful whimper.
My eyes stung as I realized this time, she was gone, her heart was still forevermore, those lungs would inhale no more tobacco, and that mouth would never form another smile.
With a sob, I tore out of the bedroom, rushed out of the kitchen and launched myself out onto the farm.
Wailing as I ran, seeking out my mama, I sobbed for the grandmother who’d never hug me again as much as I sobbed for the child she spoke of.
Maybe it was bad, so bad, of me to pray to Gaia in the hope that I wasn’t that child, the child who brought change, but even as I sought my mama, I prayed like I’d never prayed before.
One
Daniel
As I watched my mate being tossed around by clouds, inside, I felt like I was about to explode. The funnels that had appeared out of nowhere to haul her away from me, higher than I could reach with the wind buffeting me, made me want to curse Sol himself for doing this.
The freak storm was too freaky for my liking, but none of this situation was to my liking. How could it be?
I. Couldn’t. Get. To. My. Woman.
A roar of pure outrage fell from my lips as I screamed, the urge to get to her as intrinsic as the blood pumping through my veins.
Watching her be tossed around in the air like a kite in midflight only exacerbated my rage. Worse, it fed my terror.
Her flying skills were too weak to be of any use in evading the air currents, but even if she’d been Fae born as I was, there was no guarantee. Sol, I couldn’t even reach her despite all my flight training.
The wind tossed me around as much as it did her, but at least I knew how to take advantage of the air swells to swoop in and out of harm’s way. My woman’s arms and legs were tossed around like she was trash going down a chute, and then, just as she cried out as the funnel grabbed a firm hold on her wing, tossing it back so high up on her shoulder that I feared she’d sprained it and would be further rendered incapable of flying defensively, the clouds began to disappear.
They’d flooded the sky like a blanket, surging from out of nowhere like the tide encroached upon the shore. They’d come in thick and fast, turning the clear blue sky into a cotton candy-like thickness before they’d begun forming funnels and, out of nowhere, lightning struck.
I could scent burning feathers, could feel the supercharged ozone that swelled as a result.
But, as quickly as they’d appeared, they rolled back, retracting, even as my woman had tumbled through the sky, falling at a rate that was…
My nightmare came to life.
She plummeted, falling faster and faster, and no matter how hard my body screamed at me, how the muscles in my wings tore with how I raced through the sky, I couldn’t get closer to her.
My lungs burned, my heart pounded, but nothing got me there fast enough.
When she collided, I felt like I was dying, but when she slipped through the ground like it was butter?
I staggered to a halt so fast my wings froze in midflight.
“Where the Sol did she go?” Seph raged, his own panic evident as we hovered in place, staring down at where Riel should have been but most definitely wasn’t.
I’d dreaded the sight of her crumpled and torn on the ground, but not to see her at all?
My mind felt like it had been blitzed by the same bolt of lightning that had hit her.
“Where is she?” I whispered, terror and fear coagulating inside me.
Matthew grabbed my shoulder. “We’ll find her.”
“Damn straight we’ll fucking find her,” I ground out, adrenaline ripping through me like a tidal wave, “but where do we start? She went through the earth. How do we—”
The magnitude of what had just happened struck me dumb, and I figured that it had the same effect on Seph and Matt too, because they fell silent.
I ceased flapping my wings, ceased maintaining my height, and began to descend to the place where Riel should be but wasn’t.
Her scent was there, and it was strong, thanks to the burning tang that perfumed the air from her scorched feathers. The trail was stable as a result, but it came abruptly to a dead end because she wasn’t fucking there.
I ran a hand over my head as I landed, but before I could do more than sniff around, Leopold grabbed my arm. It was only then that I remembered he’d been there.
And it was his fault we’d stayed in the sky.
I twisted around and grabbed him by the throat. It was a testament to my strength and my speed that he was taken unaware. As he floundered in my grasp, I bit off, “Why did you make us stay up there?”
And why the fuck had I listened?
A lifetime of obeisance, of following the rules, of never rocking the fucking boat, because that was what good admin castes did…
What had it earned me?
I’d lost my woman.
Lost. Her.
And I had no idea how to find her.
Leopold’s wings stuttered as he tried to take off, to break free from my hold, but I clung on. Baring my teeth at him, I snarled, “You’re to blame for this.”
Just as much as I was for not making us land.
“Where… did… she… go?” he rasped out between choking breaths, his confusion evident but the beast inside me didn’t care that he looked as perplexed as the rest of us. I just saw him for what he was—the reason we’d been in the sky in the first place.
And, because I was a student here, one who was afeared of ignoring an instructor’s dictate, I’d stayed up in the air when I should have brought my mate down to the ground, out of danger’s reach.
This was my fault.
But Sol if I didn’t want to drag out his vocal chords with my bare hands…
Seph hauled me back while Matt gripped my wrist and tore it free from the instructor’s throat.
“He knows nothing,” Matthew ground out, the words snarled into my ear. His anger and his possessiveness called to the matching traits in me that were responding to Riel’s sudden disappearance and, though it was like peering through fog, m
ade me see reason.
As we were separated, I didn’t bother rushing for him, didn’t bother attacking Leopold because Matt was right. This useless piece of shit had no answers, and though our reason for being out here on the arena rested on his shoulders, he was just a petty, useless instructor that was stuck at the Academy.
In the Fae world, those who couldn’t do definitely instructed.
Of course, just because I hadn’t bothered attacking didn’t mean one of my troupe brothers didn’t. The next time I looked, Leopold was flat on the ground, and Matt, though he was shaking his hand, waving off the ache, was returning to my side after having leveled the cunt to the floor.
Though I found great satisfaction at the bastard’s crumpled form, it didn’t take away from my part in this fuck up. “It’s my fault,” I rasped, my torment evident for Matt and Seph to hear. “I should have ignored him—”
“And disobey an order?” Matthew squeezed my shoulder. “You’re not to blame for this, but when we find those who are responsible, we’ll make them pay. Do you hear me?”
Blindly, I stared at the ground where she’d been robbed from us. “I hear you,” I blurted out, and I was grateful for their lack of blame. In their position, I wasn’t sure if I would have been so generous.
“We’ll find her,” Seph comforted me, but I could hear the agony in his voice too. Just like with Matt, his misery called to me.
I felt as though my heart had been ripped from my chest but, somehow, I was still breathing. Still functioning. I didn’t know how it was possible when, on a fundamental level, my entire world felt as though it had been destroyed. But that they were feeling the same way tied us tighter together.
I’d known her for eight months, and I’d only been connected with her this strongly for a week. So even though I wondered how had she come to mean so much to me, how this Virgo bond, a powerful link between a witch and her mates, had come to overtake me to this extent, that they were just as plagued, comforted me like nothing else could.
“She’s strong enough to find us,” Matthew growled, and I took more comfort from that too, because he was right.
The bond had changed Riel. Made her seek us out where, before, she’d been more likely to flip us the bird and scroll through her Instagram feed like we meant nothing to her. She had let us in, had accepted what we were to her, and I knew, deep in my bones, that she’d be as desperate for us as we were for her.
If we were going to fight to get to her, she’d be fighting to get to us as well.
The Virgo bond was no longer just a theory, and even in my misery, I could only be happy about that.
❖
Seph
“Father, I need your help,” I stated the second we returned to my room and the call with my father connected.
Noa vil der Luir tilted his chin forward so he could peer at me. He looked at me as though he was staring over a pair of glasses, but even in his advanced age, he had no need for eye correction. Not yet, at any rate.
“What kind of help?”
“Gabriella has gone missing.”
His brows soared at that. “Missing? How? She ran from the Academy?”
I blew out a breath and collapsed in the seat in front of the screen. My bones felt like mush, and I knew for a fact there was zero stuffing in my limbs.
Without Riel here?
It was hard to focus.
And yet, I’d never needed to focus harder in my life.
How had she come to mean this much to me? How was it that I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my body in the matter of days?
Even as I was disgusted by the decisions my father had made, the power of the bond was thrust into my face once more. For someone like Noa who wielded his control as a weapon, the Virgo bond would have been his idea of a nightmare. If he’d felt this much for his own Virgo witch—Riel’s grandmother—then it was little wonder he’d taken duty over matters of the heart. There was safety in duty, after all. Safety where none could be found in the power of a connection this overwhelming. And though I wasn’t like him, though I prayed to Gaia I was nothing like him, the ramifications of the bond were hitting me hard.
Could I withstand this for the rest of my life?
Endure such a crippling force that was entirely out of my hands?
“Joseph! Focus, boy,” my father snapped, jerking me out of my thoughts and back to the matter at hand. “How has she gone missing? Did she run?” His tone was softer now, like he knew he had my attention and recognized just how overcome I was.
“No,” I told him shakily. “She was…” I shook my head, dazed by what had just happened. Still reeling from what I’d seen. “I don’t know, Father. She disappeared. A storm surged into being, she was struck by lightning, and then a funnel dragged her down until—” I gulped, unable to credit what had happened to her.
It went beyond a freak accident.
“Until, what, Son?” he demanded, sitting straighter in his desk chair.
“She plummeted to the ground, but instead of being hurt, she slipped through like it was a—”
“Portal,” Noa rasped.
My eyes flared wide at his choice of word. “Yes. A portal. I mean, I guess it could be.” I’d never seen one in action before, and even if I had, I’d never have noticed. My focus had been on her, not on the ground that had swallowed her whole. “She should have been hurt, Father. Seriously hurt. From the height and at the speed she was traveling? There was no way she could have survived…” My jaw clenched at the thought.
How could losing her be the better prospect right now?
I didn’t have a clue where she was, where she could be, or who the Sol might have taken her, but that was a thousand times better than the alternative.
She was alive.
Somewhere.
And that was all I had to cling to.
Even as the power of the bond threatened to choke me, my joy in knowing she lived, my terror in not knowing where she was exactly, were enough to remind me of one salient point.
Gabriella was mine.
“Witches can’t brew portals, Son,” Noa informed me, as he stared at me with a resolve I was used to seeing being aimed at business, not personal, matters.
“They can’t?” Daniel demanded from behind me. I was surprised he’d stayed quiet this long, but we were all feeling the aftereffects of what had just gone down.
Sol, I wasn’t sure if that scene wouldn’t repeat itself in my head for the rest of my life.
Never had I ever witnessed anything more terrifying than seeing Riel being torn from us, ripped away from our sight, and I prayed to Gaia I never would.
“No,” Noa stated firmly. “They can’t. Portals can be issued from old magic. Blood magic. That’s all Fae.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Who’d want to capture Gabriella in that way?”
“I don’t know,” my father replied. “As far as I can tell from my investigation into her, she seems to be a below average student. Aside from the Skills’ test, of course. She excelled in that.”
“She was. She didn’t want to be here. She’s like all witches—anti Fae,” Matthew answered, but the ache in his tone resonated with me.
I’d known Matthew a long time. Not personally, and not all that well, but we’d been fighting in the same kids’ tournaments since we were old enough to pick up a sword and fly. To hear him hurting wasn’t something I was used to, but I understood.
Not much could hurt Matthew. If anything could, I’d never have said it would be a woman, not when I knew his past and his family’s situation, but that was exactly it, wasn’t it?
Riel was more than just a woman.
We were her Virgo, and that bond between us was as crazy as the feelings she inspired in me.
“A few days ago, she was sent a raven,” Dan explained grimly. “It attacked her. I killed it, but she sensed the magic of several people within the charm used upon it—”
Noa raised a hand. “So, seve
ral witches wished her ill, mayhap even caused this storm you speak of, and then a Fae has created a portal to get to her?” He blinked. “That’s ludicrous.”
Anger swirled inside me. “Perhaps, but it’s the truth nonetheless.” Had the witches who’d sent the raven also sent that fucking storm? My mind raced with ideas, and my father’s blank refusal to listen to me made me want to throttle him.
“She’s witch born, Son, not the second coming,” Noa argued. “I told you already, witch born Fae aren’t talked about, but they’re not uncommon. Why would anyone want her?”
“I don’t know,” I gritted out, hating his derogatory tone. “That’s why I need your help. You know we can’t leave the Academy.”
Not until we graduated, at any rate.
We were confined to the grounds until then to ensure we weren’t ‘distracted’ by outside pleasures.
“I can get you out, but that won’t help you much. It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack.” He grunted. “I’ll have one of the witches seek her out. I’ll be in touch.”
“Wait!” I half-yelled, aware that his parting words would trigger the end of the call.
“What?” he snapped, eyes stormy.
“Did you manage to find your troupe brother? Riel’s grandfather? Did you speak with him?”
“No. Not yet. He retired several years ago and is in seclusion,” he replied, exasperation clear in his tone. “The bastard always was too paranoid for his own good.”
I swallowed. “Please, Father, encourage the witches to help us.”
Noa pursed his lips. “You can be at Landgow within the hour if you fly at full speed. I’ll speak with the principal and clear it for you. You can see for yourself what the witches discern.”
Because I hadn’t expected such a huge boon from him, I was speechless. Thank Sol, Matthew wasn’t.
“Thank you, sir. It’s much appreciated.”
The laugh my father uttered was cold. “Don’t be grateful. I had a mate once, remember? I know how all-consuming it can be.” He cleared his throat. “Be swift once you get a text from me. We don’t want to waste any time.”
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 22
