by Julie Leto
She’d relied too much on everyone else so far. On Damon’s magic. Cat’s abilities. Even Paschal’s superior knowledge and Ben’s medical skills. Rose had been her assistant, but Alexa was an expert negotiator. She should be able to work this out on her own.
Rose marched between her goons and placed one foot on the bottom step.
“You’re anything but stupid, Ms. Chandler. You know exactly what we want. Hand it over, along with the castle, and your brother will be safe.”
“She’s…,” Jacob said, his breath coming hard from his bloodied mouth, “lying.”
Alexa raised an eyebrow.
Rose shrugged prettily. “Perhaps I am; perhaps I’m not. We want what we want and we mean to get it. By any means possible.”
“Who’s we?”
“The K’vr,” Rose answered, though almost imperceptibly, her eyes darted toward the path that led to the lagoon. “We’re the rightful heirs to this castle and everything within it, including the source of Lord Rogan’s magic.”
Alexa squinted, trying to see if someone was hiding amid the overgrown plants, but she saw nothing but the rustle created by the ocean breeze.
“What is that source?” Alexa challenged, sidestepping closer to her brother, who was struggling to his feet. “You’ve been incredibly vague for someone who wants it so badly. It’s almost as if you expect me to tell you what it is. Don’t you know?”
“You know,” Rose insisted.
“I do? Why are you so sure?”
“Because you’ve manipulated the magic for days,” Rose replied. “Your brother here has seen it, seen him. Felt him, anyway. The phantom within. Now your time is up.”
Alexa bent down next to Jacob and shifted so that her shoulder tucked under his arm. Up close, their eyes met and Alexa watched as his gaze shifted from pained to regretful to icy cold.
Cat jumped out from behind the door and screamed, “No!” but her warning came a split second too late. Jacob grabbed the Queen’s Charm and yanked it from Alexa’s neck.
Gunfire erupted. Alexa tucked her head beneath her hands and dropped to the ground just as blood spurted from a bullet drilling into Cat’s arm. The impact threw her friend hard against the stone. Alexa rolled toward her, yelping when a bullet exploded just above where her head had been.
Jacob ordered the attack to stop, but when it didn’t, he jumped in front of her. Blood splattered from his stomach, raining bright red drops over her.
“Jacob!”
Shocked, he turned to Alexa and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” Then, as if time stopped cold, he crumpled forward and tumbled down the steps, only to unfurl, wide-eyed and bleeding, on the shell-encrusted ground at Rose’s feet.
Coldly, Rose stepped over him, stopping only to retrieve the Queen’s Charm from his hand. Alexa turned her face away from her fallen brother, knowing he’d betrayed her even as he’d tried to save her. A mass of contradictions assailed her, none of which she had time to sort through. Was Rose from the faction of the K’vr that believed the necklace was the source of the power, or did they understand the true nature of the charm?
“You didn’t have to kill him!” she screamed.
Rose gave Jacob a cursory glance. “He was in the way.”
“Meaning you meant to kill me,” Alexa surmised.
Rose took the steps slowly.
Cat had rolled so that the advancing enemy could not see her face. She had one hand gripped tightly around her wound, but the blood seeping through her fingers wasn’t bad. A flesh wound, likely. Alexa wished Cat would verify her suspicion with a thought, but she could see her friend was too hurt to wrangle her psychic energy. Alexa had to get them out of this. Rose had the necklace. There was a chance she might be able to enter the castle without worry about the magic on the other side of the door.
But the gunmen couldn’t.
Just as Rose’s foot touched the top step, Damon appeared and in two flashes of blue light, disarmed the gunmen below. The rifles flew high into the air, then landed in melted, mangled heaps on the ground. With a frightening battle cry, he leveled another set of flares toward the men themselves. One fell. The other ran, singed, into the tangle of trees. Knowing Damon could do nothing to stop Rose with his magic, Alexa launched herself into the woman’s side, sending her flying.
If Damon was experiencing uncontrollable rage since he had called upon Rogan’s magic again, Alexa imagined the eruption of emotion was nothing compared to the fury flooding through her as she tussled with her former assistant. Though formidable when flanked by armed gunmen, Rose wilted beneath Alexa’s well-placed strikes to her nose and ribs. Applying pressure to the woman’s wrist, she released the necklace from her grip and snatched it back.
“You’re so fired,” Alexa said, before delivering one more blow to Rose’s chin, which left her unconscious.
When she spun on Damon, she saw the fire building in his eyes, even as he leaned against the door. He was both weakened and powerful. Reluctant and determined. His gaze had drifted to Cat, who’d scuttled as far away from Damon as she could. With the Queen’s Charm firmly in her hand, Alexa shouted his name.
He turned. She moved to kiss him, to release the evil coursing through him, but he pushed her away. She tripped down the stairs, falling to where Jacob lay dead, her body aching and her mind confused. Was she too late?
“Alexa?” Cat called desperately as Damon turned back toward her.
“Damon, no!”
She stood, opening her arms wide. “If you’re going to hurt someone, hurt me.”
Below her, she heard a croaked, “No.”
“Jacob?”
Though blood soaked his shirt and his skin had paled so that he nearly blended into the sandy ground, Jacob turned his face a quarter of an inch and blinked. He didn’t have much time. He knew. Fear streaked in his glossy gaze, scaring her as much as the anger and rage building in Damon just a few feet above her.
“Not Rose,” Jacob said, his voice barely audible. “Keith.”
“Who?”
Just beyond the edge of the trees, Alexa heard rustling again. Not the breeze this time. Not even the soldier who’d deserted. Someone else. The Coast Guard? Another accomplice?
She glanced at Damon, who stared woefully at his hands, which sparked with the same blue flame he’d used to disarm the gunmen.
Jacob gasped for air. “Rogan’s…” He gulped in another painful breath, then exhaled with the word “heir” dying on his lips.
Alexa turned toward the trees and spied a dark head bobbing beyond the thicket of palmetto. “Keith!” she called, thinking fast. “You coward! Rogan’s heir wouldn’t run from a fight, would he?”
The dark head stopped its retreat and with infinite slowness turned toward her. He was a kid. A teenager. But the hatred in his eyes was unmistakable. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, but his sneer spoke volumes. And so did the fact that he’d watched this entire confrontation from the sidelines. He expected Jacob and Rose, two people once close to her, to do his dirty work. Well, if there was one thing Alexa knew about, it was how to properly take on a legacy of power—and this punk had a hell of a lot to learn.
“You did this,” she accused. “You killed my brother. You caused this bloodshed and you hide in the bushes like a snake? Take it from someone who runs a multimillion-dollar empire, kid. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
The young man accepted her challenge. He came out of the trees, his chin jutted forward. Only then did Alexa notice the automatic pistol clutched in his hand.
“You should have let me go when you had the chance,” he taunted.
Damon started down the steps. Keith held his gun higher. “You may have my magic, but you’re not impervious to bullets. And neither is she.”
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He turned the gun yet again on Alexa, who’d managed to back up a few feet, but not nearly enough to avoid being shot at close range if the kid had even halfway-decent aim.
Damon stopped. T
he fire in his eyes flickered, flaming and then burning out, then flaming again. He was struggling against the evil infection of Rogan’s magic. Struggling, but not winning. Sweat dripped down his face, soaking his shirt to his body. His hands shook.
Out of the corner of her eye, Alexa saw Cat crawl back into the castle. One less person in the line of fire, she thought. Now it was up to her and Damon to bring this to a close.
“Damon,” she said, turning to face him completely. “I love you.”
Behind her, Keith laughed. “How romantic, wasting your last breath on sappy shit. Go on,” he urged Damon. “Declare your love for her, too, so I can shoot you both and claim what is mine.”
“You can’t kill him,” Alexa said, her voice balanced and calm. She’d negotiated business deals with sultans and despots. She could certainly manage one homicidal teenager. “He’s the source of the magic. You need him or you’ll have nothing.”
The lie tripped off her tongue easily, and from the horrified look on the kid’s face, she knew he’d bought her story instantly.
“Is he?” he asked, his eyes wide and mouth agape.
“Rogan?” Alexa turned back to Damon, the fire still flickering in the stormy gray depths of his eyes. “I don’t know. Are you?”
Two words. One short question, but enough to push Damon over the threshold between victim and master. With a guttural shout that called up a mighty wind, Damon lifted his hand high, and Keith’s feet were ripped out from beneath him. He flew one way and the gun the other. Alexa dove over Jacob’s lifeless body, retrieved the weapon and threw it as far as she could into the bramble.
In the distance, she heard sirens. A bullhorn. The rattle of gunfire.
The Coast Guard.
And through the howling of Damon’s conjured tempest, a young man screamed for mercy.
“Damon, stop!”
She battled through the wind and threw her arms around him from behind, willing all the love she felt for him to pass through her and into him.
“I. Am. Nothing. Like. Rogan,” he shouted; then his voice turned icy cold as Keith cowered below him, tucked into the fetal position, whimpering. “If I were Rogan, you’d be dead.”
The wind died. The sand and shells stopped attacking Alexa’s arms and face like angry hornets, and when she gazed into Damon’s eyes, she saw nothing but silvery gray. Throwing her arms around his neck, she pulled him down until their lips were but inches apart.
“But you are Damon Forsyth. And you’re all mine,” she said.
The longer and more luxurious their kisses, the more the atmosphere around them stilled. Soon the only sound was the Coast Guard rushing toward them, guns drawn. Paulie broke through the line of seamen to reach her side.
“Are you all right?” the young woman asked.
Alexa pulled back from Damon, glanced woefully at Jacob’s body, then with hope toward the castle, and then into the eyes of the former phantom she’d grown to love.
“I will be. Now I truly will be.”
From a chair set just in the arch of the main door, neither inside nor out, Damon watched the sailors zip Jacob’s body into a dark bag. The doctors that had arrived in the flying machine had tended to him, halting his bleeding and staunching the pain with something called an injection. While he waited for Alexa to supervise the removal of her brother’s body, he perused the island from his perch, wondering at the exotic plants that bordered the castle and imprinted the piquant scent of sea salt in his nose. He glanced at Alexa, who stood a few feet away, her arms wrapped tight around her middle and silent tears streaming down her face.
He wanted to cradle her in his arms and quiet her heartbreak with soft words, but he knew she wouldn’t welcome the affection just now. Her brother had worked against her, betrayed her. In the end, he’d sought to save her, but his previous machinations had caused the conflagration in the first place. Damon would not soon forget having to draw from Rogan’s evil magic in order to save her—nearly losing himself in the process.
“She loved him,” Cat said, balancing her injured arm, newly bandaged, with her healthy one. “I never understood how deeply.”
“He was her family,” he said simply.
Cat eyed him narrowly, then tossed a look over to Ben and Paxton, who had strolled into the dining hall to examine the mosaic at the precise point where Rogan’s cloak and the magic fire opal were depicted. “Family is important to you?”
Damon stared at her, wondering at the odd question. “Of course.”
“And what about Alexa? If you run off now to try and find the rest of your brothers, your sister or even that Rogan creep, where does that leave her?”
Damon shifted in the chair, the ache of his injury nothing compared to the idea of losing Alexa. Even for a day. An hour. A minute.
“She shall be with me, Miss Reyes.”
Cat plopped down on the top step, then tilted her head so that her long hair brushed over her knees. “She needs to heal. She’s not only lost the last member of her family; she’s lost this,” she said, indicating the castle. “She’s put more than money and thought into rehabilitating this old castle into a hotel. To you and me, it’s just business. But to Alexa, it’s her—”
“Life,” Damon provided, then patted Cat’s shoulder reassuringly. “I understand her, Miss Reyes. She’s a woman driven by many goals, not the least of which is financial. I have no doubt Alexa and I will be able to merge our ambitions, but because I know you worry, I will not rush her. My brother took sixty years to find me, and while I’m not willing to wait quite that long, I will not abandon Alexa in my quest.”
“You won’t have to abandon her at all,” Ben said, joining them outside. “We’ll look for your brothers,” he finished.
Damon regarded his nephew quizzically. “Paxton is not of an age to go running about this new world searching for trinkets any longer. He is better served by remaining here, with—”
“I didn’t mean my father,” Ben clarified. “I meant Catalina.”
“Excuse me?” Cat asked.
Ben grinned and Damon had the sudden urge to leave, but when he moved, Cat jumped to her feet and pushed down on his shoulder, making it quite clear she didn’t wish him to go anywhere.
“Why not?” Ben asked excitedly. “We make an excellent team, you have to admit. And my father and I think I’ve put my life on hold long enough. Paschal knows he can’t go jaunting around the world in search of his brothers anymore. After today’s fireworks and finding Damon, he’s agreed to let me take on this mission. He has a good lead on a sword that his research shows was forged in Valoren.”
Cat listened, then a smile bloomed slowly on her face. “Yes,” she said confidently. “I think I might like roaming the world with you. You’re a fun guy, when you’re not stuffed up in some classroom.”
He smirked. “And you can be fairly exciting yourself, when you’re not trying to run the world.”
Ben opened his hand to Cat, who placed her palm in his and screeched delightedly when he pulled her into his arms. They both turned expectantly toward Damon.
“So,” Ben asked, “does this plan work for you?”
Alexa started up the stairs. “What plan?”
After a moment of thick silence, Damon explained the proposal to Alexa. The more he allowed the idea to take root in his head, the more he thought the plan sound. Ben and Cat would take charge of the search while Alexa and he remained at the castle, ensuring that her dream to turn the structure into a luxury hotel went forward as planned.
“I can’t ask you to abandon your dream,” Alexa said, kneeling at his side after she’d asked Cat and Ben to give them a few moments alone. “You waited three hundred years to leave this place, to explore the world. To find your brothers.”
“Then you believe they may still exist?”
She rolled her eyes. “You exist. Paschal, um, Paxton exists. Chances are good, I suppose.”
“And Rogan as well?”
She winced, fear skittering acr
oss her face.
“But I’ll not search for them without you,” he declared. “And first, you need to see your dream to its fruition.”
With a withering sigh, Alexa sat on the step and dragged her hands through her hair. Hands still marred with stains from his blood. And Jacob’s. “I don’t know,” she said finally.
“Paschal said you could do with the island and the castle whatever you wished,” Damon reminded her.
“I know, but what’s the point? Jacob’s gone.”
“You did not want to do this for Jacob.”
“I don’t know what I want anymore.”
He leaned closer. “Are you so sure?”
Despite her heartbreak, she managed an intimate smile. He’d lost his brothers, too, but he hadn’t had to witness their betrayal or their violent death. Alexa had healed once physically, but now it was her heart that had been battered and bruised. And more than any ambitions he had to reunite with his brothers or avenge his family on Rogan or his murderous heirs, Damon wanted to help Alexa find her joy again. If she could find her happiness in him, so much the better.
She’d changed his destiny. Now it was time for him to repay the debt.
“I want you,” she answered simply.
“Good,” he said. “I was hoping that would be your answer.”
He ignored the pain from his injury and wrapped his arm around her. She climbed gingerly onto his lap and pressed her cheek softly to his. “I can’t ask you to stay here. You have a whole world to see.”
“And I’m sure you will be an excellent guide. We’ll explore the world, Alexa. Together. For centuries, I thought I had no time at all to act, to take revenge, to live again. Now I realize, even if I have only fifty years, that’s all the time in the world, as long as I’m with you.”
Her smile rivaled the sun, and when she kissed him, he could think of nothing but stripping away her torn and bloodied clothing and washing her clean with his own hungry hands.
For an instant, he thought he might have inadvertently transported them inside the castle, but when he fluttered his eyes open, he found them sitting still on the steps, the ocean waves crashing on the rocks nearby, the sun beating softly on their shoulders and the sky a brilliant and unrivaled blue.
