“Why not?”
I shot him a look. “I don’t trust it.”
He raised the brew to his nostrils. “I can only scent chamomile.”
“Me too,” I whispered, unease filling me.
Was this all a lie?
Why had my grandmother brought me here?
I was trusting her with me, with my mates, and yet… was I churlish to trust in her? To have faith that she could help? It was strange to doubt everything at this exact moment, but there was so much at risk. My tatarabuela had told me to trust in my abuela, but that was just it.
I didn’t trust her.
Not her intentions, not her word. I didn’t know her anymore. Didn’t know Lars. Didn’t know what I was doing save for following a vision an ancestor had thought important enough to bestow upon me. But something wasn’t right here. I couldn’t put my finger on it, couldn’t sense it because my senses were reeling. Not just from the Rut but from that interminable noise.
Sol, how my brain buzzed with it.
Warily, Seph grabbed my coffee cup and placed it on the small table beside the woman’s wheelchair. She watched him move, her eyes never leaving him as he pressed the mug to the table’s surface, and each second he was away, my heart pounded in my chest and the white noise in my head trumpeted fiercely.
He was out of reach for a handful of seconds, and I felt each and every one of those seconds in my head. My heart slowed, my lungs seemed to freeze, and just as he began to move, I saw it.
The magic.
It surged out of her, as powerful as she was powerless. The bright turquoise gusted around Seph, netting him in her magic. Capturing him.
“Get back!” Matthew roared, the stool he was sitting on toppling over as he leaped to his feet.
But it was too late.
Mine.
Inside, I screamed. The part of me that was theirs roared out in fury and my own magic snapped out of me without conscious thought. The pink, so bright, wasn’t gossamer-like as it usually was. It was viscous. Thick and soupy almost. Those silvery metal flakes swimming around in the quagmire as it shrouded the other woman’s magic and quenched it before she could do anything to my mate.
My heart started again when she sagged in her chair, but I shrieked, “Seph!” as he staggered to his knees and fell back against the floor at her feet.
My wrath surged out, unbidden, and the old woman’s chair rolled back, slamming hard into the wall behind her. Plaster burst free around her, showering her in dust, but I didn’t care about that, didn’t care if she was hurt. My magic stayed swirling around her, and I knew I could trust it to keep her contained.
I dropped to my knees, moving until I was straddling my Virgo. He was unconscious, his mouth slack, his…
A scream escaped me as I turned to look at the woman. She was young. Young when I hadn’t touched her. Her face was immobile thanks to the surge of power I’d given her, and she would be unconscious for a long time if I had my way, but where she was suddenly in the prime of life, Seph was…
“Sweet Sol,” I moaned, seeing her infliction imposed on his body. Around me, Matt and Dan skidded into place, surrounding him with our protection.
Knowing they were there filled me with the warmth that had been drained from me when I’d seen the other woman’s magic flood from her, as strong as she was frail.
“You never could do things the easy way, Riel,” my grandmother snapped. She’d moved too, coming to a stop at my side, but at her words, I not only sensed my mates’ tensing, their tempers surging, I felt my own rise in me in a way that not even the Norwegian witch had just experienced.
“You think you can harm my mate?” I ground out, each word throbbing with my ire.
“You had to awaken her. She is the oldest of us all. Her knowledge would—”
“Riel, no!” Linford screamed, as I blasted my grandmother with my magic. Only when she crumpled to the ground, hazed in pink as my power swirled around her, keeping her contained, did I swerve around to face the other half of my treacherous family.
In my hands, I wielded my powers as though they were missiles, and my fingers twitched with the need to punish someone, anyone, who thought they could harm me or my men.
“You can cure him, dammit,” Linford bit off, face strained as he stared at his mate. “Just make him better.”
“Making anyone better is my choice, Linford,” I spat, my face snarling and hitching with the true force of my wrath.
I’d never felt anything like this before.
Nothing could compare with the sheer torrent of black energy that was fueling me.
A burst of Norwegian sounded from behind me, but I ignored the intrusion, heard the squall of a baby, and instead, sent magic to encompass the strangers. There was no way I was going to take my eyes off Linford. I knew he wouldn’t transport himself out of here, not without my grandmother who was still trapped by me.
“Don’t hurt them!” Lars cried out.
“I don’t hurt the innocent,” I shrieked at him. “Only you do that.” My mouth tightened. “You will tell me exactly what is happening here. You will tell me or I will hurt your family because they’re not innocent if they’re a party to this travesty.”
“She’s the oldest,” he spat out, shooting a glance at the woman in the wheelchair. “The oldest of our kind. Not just of the first families, but of all witchkind.” His mouth trembled as he cast a look at his family behind me. I could only assume it was his wife and his baby from the terror that was written all over his face, a terror that I could use to my gain.
“So? What does that matter?”
“It was foretold that an angel would bring her back to us. She was trapped in her body. Trapped with only her mind as young as you. She’s been like this for decades. I’ve never even seen her move.”
My eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
He shrugged. “Trude uses magic for everything. She’s either beside the fire, waiting for you, or she’s in her bedroom, resting. Her magic tends to her.” Lars licked his lips. “She’s like a piece of furniture to me now. She’s there, but she might as well not be.” He whispered, “She’s important, Riel.”
“Why? Why is she?”
“Because she has the answers you’re waiting for,” Linford ground out, his gaze on my grandmother. “She’s the greatest Seer…”
My mouth worked as something occurred to me, something my grandmother had said. “No. No, that can’t be.”
Lars frowned. “What? I don’t understand.”
“The witch. The one who predicted the meteorites…” I shook my head, the wild action making me feel like I was going insane. “That was, you said that was hundreds of years ago.”
“And so it was. She predicted them all, Riel. All of them. But she has more to share. More to give.” Linford’s mouth trembled. “You had to free her.”
“It was my choice,” I snarled at him. “My choice to help her. My choice!” Around me, the earth began to quake. Behind me, the baby began to squeal, but I ignored it all, ignored them all as my terror and my temper entwined, morphing into a single unit until I didn’t know where one ended and one began.
“Love.”
I tensed as Daniel’s arms swept around my waist.
“Calm down, Riel.”
Matthew approached from the front, sandwiching me between them, surrounding me with them. My tension eased somewhat, but it was only then when I realized I was sobbing, sobbing like my heart was breaking. And maybe it was.
“Heal him,” Daniel crooned into my ear.
“You can do what you did for your grandparents.”
“How c-can I-I?” I shrieked, the words garbled. “I wasn’t going to heal her because there’s a natural order to things. If I keep on ignoring that then I’ll only cause more harm than good!”
“You can’t live without him, Riel,” Linford called out, just loud enough for me to hear over my sobs. “You need him. Just as much as you need Trude.”
&nb
sp; I pushed my face into Matthew’s chest, rocking my forehead back and forth against his shirt.
It was so simple.
Save Seph.
There was no simpler action than that. Linford was right. I couldn’t live without him, couldn’t endure this life without my Virgo, and yet…
What had my grandmother said?
There was no such thing as coincidence.
Was I supposed to die after this whole thing was over?
Was I supposed to survive only long enough to make things right? To fulfil the vision that my tatarabuela had seen and no more?
If everything happened for a reason, why had this happened at all?
Shivering in my mates’ arms, lost and frightened, with so many different directions to take, I swiftly came to terms with the fact that if this Trude had predicted each and every one of the meteors, if she’d been hanging around, subsisting on her magic for this long, then she was the only one who truly would have any answers for me.
I tensed, stiffening inside and out as I thought about releasing her from my magic.
I wasn’t comfortable enough with it yet to understand the nuance of my powers. I didn’t know everything, after all. Just had a feeling for what I could do. But thus far, everything I had done was with the grace of a warrior wielding a mace rather than a surgeon with a scalpel.
How to liberate her while keeping her contained should have been my biggest obstacle. Instead, I was worrying about Seph. I wanted him here with me, sandwiching me between the three of them, and yet…
Principles.
I clenched my jaw, hating the situation I was in. I’d never asked for any of this crap, but here I was, knee deep in a pile of shit that had nothing to do with me or my mates.
Since when were we the road sweepers or the trash collectors of the world? Clearing out the detritus everyone else had tossed out, uncaring where it landed?
“Tell me your reasoning, Riel,” Matthew whispered in my ear, but even though the way he spoke felt intimate, his question was cold and hard.
I thought about a moment’s silence. A moment’s peace for us to talk, focused on it, concentrated on it so I could will it into being.
Just a sliver of time.
That was all I needed.
Licking my lips, I twisted my head to look at Lars. When I saw that his hand was hovering in midair and Linford was frozen in place too, I released a breath that was loaded with relief.
“I extended two people’s lives. By doing that, I messed with the balance of the world. I did that because I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling. I’d been without my grandmother for so long when she was the only one I believed understood me. As for Linford, my reasoning was both selfish and romantic. I wanted him to have more time with my grandmother, but also, I’d never had my grandfather before, and I wanted him. I wanted him close to me. He understood the other half of my nature, a part that no one else ever had, a part that I’d hidden all my life.” I sucked in a shaky breath, but even that wasn’t enough to empower me to say the next words.
“It’s okay, Riel. They’re your family. It’s only natural to—”
“But that’s just it,” I whispered. “What I’m doing is the exact opposite of natural. It’s the exact opposite of a power that shouldn’t be in the hands of a single person. It’s a power that belongs to Sol or Gaia. Not a single witch.”
Matthew, his somber eyes trained on me, dipped his chin with a solemnity that had me wanting to clench my own shut.
He understood.
And I hated that he understood, because that meant my reasoning made sense, and if that was the case…
I gulped as the endless white noise surged louder than ever, making me feel like I was drowning in a white sea of it.
“Your grandmother said everything happens for a reason,” Daniel pointed out, his voice as earnest as the way he hugged me to him. The hug did more to battle the sounds tearing at my senses than anything else could. “You obviously had to do—”
I felt dazed by what I was enduring, but what he said no longer fit. Maybe once I’d felt that way, but the vision with my great-great-grandmother had changed that. Had changed me because she’d opened my eyes.
“No. I don’t agree with her.” When he tensed in surprise at my words, I squeezed his hands. “I mean, she’s right, but if I live my life that way, if everyone led their lives that way, no one would ever be held accountable for their actions.” I shook my head “I don’t believe that’s right. My powers are—”
“Your powers are tied to us,” Matthew pointed out. “We’re a unit. Trust me when I say, Riel, that you don’t want to live without Seph. We’ve seen the witches in his father’s cirque du freak. Even though Noa’s intentions with them appear to be pure, their misery is unreal. Their powers are there, just as strong from what I gather, but that’s not enough to make them want to live.”
My mouth tightened. “Maybe this is the stepping-stone to the fate that’s been awaiting us all along.”
Matt scowled at me. “What fate is that?”
“Maybe this is the first step on a path that leads toward all our ends.” As the words passed my lips, my knees almost crumpled when that horrendous noise burst into my brain, overtaking every single one of my senses until I felt like I was going to swoon.
❖
Daniel
I could see she believed it. Could see that she believed every word she’d just uttered, and considering what we’d been through lately, I couldn’t exactly blame her.
Any normal humanoid who’d touched that meteor would never have survived the radiation that seeped into them as a result of coming into contact with an extraterrestrial object.
Instead of being afflicted by some terrible infirmity, we’d been granted powers.
Powers that existed for a reason.
While I could see her point, I could also see something that she couldn’t.
“I think we need to drain your magic a little,” I rasped, and when she tensed, I stared at her calmly. “You’re talking crazy, Riel. We don’t plan missions with the assumption we’re going to die. We don’t leave fallen comrades to suffer and perish—we heal them. We do everything we can to save them. To the best of our abilities.”
“This isn’t a stupid mission the Assembly has sent us on!” she ground out, shoving away from me and Matt. I watched as her hands came up to cover her head a second, she plucked at her ears, making me wonder what she was doing—could she still hear that noise? When her fingers scrabbled at her hair, I thought she was going to tug at it, but then Seph released a low moan and it distracted her from whatever was afflicting her. The second he made that sound, her own discomfort was forgotten and she headed over to Seph. Squatting beside him, she traced her fingers over his brow.
What once had been free from lines, the golden silk of Fae skin, was now withered and creased. In a handful of seconds, I’d watched my troupe brother morph from a handsome bastard into a male so old he looked like he could turn into dust if we so much as breathed on him.
How, in Sol’s name, had the old bitch managed to do that? How had she transferred her sickness onto Seph?
The thought had me frowning. “Guys, if Trude could do what she did to Seph, why hasn’t she done it before?”
Matthew tensed, then, slowly reasoned, “If she’s been living here all these years, she’d have had ample opportunity, Riel.”
Her brow puckered. “You’re right.”
“She did it for a reason,” I murmured uneasily, tossing a glance at the witch.
To be honest, I was surprised Riel had managed to fell her. Especially since this woman was so damn powerful that she had managed to outwit time itself.
Yet, when I looked at her, she was frozen. There was no feigning it either. I wasn’t just talking frozen like whatever the Sol Riel had done to the clock which let us speak as though a second was an hour. There was something about her and about Gabriella that spoke of… My mind caught on a pair of words that made me feel
even worse.
Rigor mortis.
Lars and Linford were frozen in place. Whatever they were doing, they’d carry on doing it until Riel let them go—Linford was wringing his hands and Lars was holding a cup.
But the pink haze of Riel’s magic did something to the two females. It seemed to be using their muscles against them—they looked like they were in pain, whereas Linford and Lars didn’t.
They weren’t suffering.
The women were.
My throat felt tight at that, and the ordinary Dan wanted to feel pity. But Seph was down, Riel was stumbling, and all because those two witches had misled us. How could I pity them when Gabriella had brought us to this situation, intentionally leaving us in the dark? How could I wish they weren’t suffering when Seph was suffering thanks to both their actions?
My mouth was tight as I stepped away to crouch at Seph’s side. He wasn’t frozen in time. Whatever Riel had done, she’d included him in the circle. It figured. Riel would never forget about him. Not even in a panic.
He was breathing, deep, drawing rasps that made my ears hurt.
“You can’t function without him, Riel,” I reminded softly, unsure why I even needed to say that. But Riel wasn’t functioning normally either. Her eyes were glinting more than usual, and I had a feeling that whatever she could hear that we couldn’t, was fucking with her head somehow.
Making her judgment questionable?
Evidently so from her hesitation to save Seph. Then, I looked at the two witches and reasoned that some part of her was in full working order.
What the fuck was this place doing to my mate? We needed to get out of here, but with things as they were, that wasn’t looking likely, was it?
“You think I needed you to tell me that?” she growled.
“Why did she steal Seph’s youth from him? Why not yours? Why not anyone within the years she’s been chained to that chair?” Matthew pointed out calmly, so damn calmly I wanted to smack him.
He spoke like he was a lecturer just waiting for the students to call out the answer to a question they should have studied the previous night.
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 56
