She went to move away, but he grabbed her wrists and held her firm. “Then make me understand,” he said, his voice quieter but still commanding.
“You’re sending me to my death,” she cut out, her tone bitter and scathing. She snatched away from his grasp. “Do you really think that is noble?”
Alec clenched his jaw. “Do you think this is easy for me?” he asked. “If I could save everyone, I would. But what do you suggest I do? Sacrifice the entire sector to save one woman? And then what? You die anyway.”
“You don’t know that,” she challenged. “What good is it saving these people if their lives are worth nothing individually anyway?”
A pain bubbled in Alec’s throat at the memory of his sister, and he swallowed it down.
“See,” she said, waving him off. “You don’t know what it’s like. Not until you lose someone you love.”
Alec thought to tell her the better of it. He damn well knew what it was like, probably more than she ever would.
“And who did you lose?” he asked instead.
“My parents,” she whispered. Her gaze slowly lifted to his, the pain in her eyes like burning coals. “To a witch hunter.”
Her words sliced into him, and he sat back, taking them in. Of course he knew this. Of course he knew that every person he brought in was someone’s mother, daughter, sister, or friend. But he hated to think about it.
“And it was my fault,” she said, staring down at her hands now, picking at the edges of the book cover. “The witch hunter tracked magic to my home. They sensed it. My mother said it was her. But she was just protecting me. And I didn’t say anything.”
Alec reached out and stilled one of her hands. “You were a kid. You can’t blame yourself for that. Your mother made a sacrifice, the same as we all must at some point.”
Adira shook her head. She looked down at the marking he left on her wrist and traced it with her delicate fingers. “The displays aren’t sacrifices, Alec. They are murder. A ravager shredded my mother, and the heartache killed my father. I grew up alone with no guidance other than the lingering memory of my parents telling me to never, ever use magic. And now, look where I am.”
Alec slid a hand down the side of his face. Was he broken? Was there something wrong with him that he hadn’t grieved for his sister the way this woman grieved for the loss of her loved ones?
What if he hadn’t done the right thing by letting his sister die?
He shook his head. No, he’d done exactly what needed to be done to save them all from dying, the same as he would have to do with Adira, no matter how badly he wanted to protect her from her fate.
“I’m sorry,” Alec said.
Adira nodded. “But?”
He raised his eyebrows. “But the regent can’t protect the sector alone. He needs someone like you to—”
She pushed him hard enough to make him waver back a fraction as she stood. “Don’t you get it?” she asked. “The regent probably can’t even have kids!”
Alec rose to his feet now, too, towering a good foot over her. “The regent has done everything to protect this sector!”
“Oh, like the woman he killed when he had a device that could’ve given him the same answer?”
Alec’s fists curled into balls at his side. “He had good reason for that.”
Adira strode over to him, standing inches away, unflinching. “What good reason, Alec? What reason could possibly be good enough to kill an innocent woman who moments before had pled she wasn’t a witch?”
Alec grimaced. He’d forgotten that part. Regent Dvorak had been so angered by his questions that Alec had shut down. Stopped asking. His mouth opened to defend the regent, to make sense of his reasoning and present it to Adira in a way that still fit the situation, but no words would form.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, turning away. “You can go now. I believe I still have twelve days.”
“If you run—”
“I’m not running,” she said.
And he could hear it in her voice. The one thing that had never broken him before but that could break him now, with her.
Tears.
Inexplicably, despite feeling like he could never face her again after being such an insensitive asshole the day before, Alec found himself at her door again the very next day.
This time, she did not greet him with her usual vibrancy and sarcasm. She just stared at him for a long moment until he was certain he could not handle another second of it. He grabbed her hand and pulled her body against him, bringing his mouth to hers and tasting her sugary lips.
She softened in his embrace, slowly at first, as if resisting what they both wanted. Needed. He deepened the kiss. She moaned as her hands ran over his shoulders, up his neck, and raked through the back of his hair.
He kicked the door shut behind him and lifted her from the floor. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he laid her down on the bed, his body over hers as she passionately kissed him, moving her lips from his mouth to his jaw, his neck, his shoulder.
Nothing else existed. For this one moment in time, everything was as it should be.
She pushed on his shoulder, rolling him underneath her and straddling his hips. Peeling off her dress, she revealed the swell of her breast and her small, pink nipples.
When she leaned forward to kiss him again, his reached up and cupped her breast, rubbing a thumb against her nipple until her hips started to grind against him. His cock hardened, throbbing against the heat between her legs that was separated only by his pants and her underwear.
God, he wanted to fuck her. But not like this. Not under these circumstances.
Circumstances that would never change.
He groaned as he pushed her off him and stood, leaving her sitting along on the bed. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
She tilted up her chin. “Why not? Because eventually, I’m to sleep with your boss? Is it wrong for me to sleep with someone I want to, but not with a man I despise?”
“It’s not like that,” he mumbled.
“Then what’s it like?”
He lifted her dress from the floor and threw it toward her, then turned away. “Sacrifice,” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure anymore who was sacrificing what.
“And what have you sacrificed?” she asked.
His chest constricted. He turned toward her, relieved to find her dressed, as though clothing somehow made her less vulnerable. Somehow made him less weak.
“Why are you even doing this, Alec? This isn’t you. You’re not like the others.”
“You don’t know me,” he snapped. “And I am like the others. I’m like them but stronger. Better.”
“Huh,” Adira said, the concern draining from her voice. “What a horrible thing to be the best at.”
“I’ve lost people, too,” he said finally. “A sister. So don’t talk to me about what is wrong and what is horrible. I will never regret trying to create the kind of sector that would have saved her life.”
She opened her mouth, but just as quickly closed it. Her face twitched as though trying to keep her expression angry, but the lines in her forehead and around her eyes were already softening.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know. That must have been hard.”
He pressed his lips together, his gaze trailing slowly up to Adira’s eyes. “Not as hard as it’s going to be losing you.”
Chapter 11
Ten days left.
Adira had barely slept last night. She’d been up for the second time scouring the pages of the book Alec had brought to her, trying to make sense of what she was reading.
All of her life, she’d been raised to believe there was no new magic. There was only the magic that already existed, and that was what limited the regent.
But if what this book said was true, and if the regent had only recently conjured the witch-tester device, then Dvorak had channeled a new source of magic.
Of course, no
one who didn’t know magic would read it that way. It also didn’t make sense. What would Dvorak have to gain from lying about something like that? If he admitted to finding a new source of magic, he would be the single-handed hero of Sector One. He wouldn’t need a bride or an heir. Just someone—any high-ranking male witch would do—to take his place.
It didn’t make sense.
A knock on Adira’s door made her jump. She slammed the book shut and shoved it under her pillow.
Miss Balek walked in. “Oh, come, you know I know about the book,” she said, tapping her temple. “I’m not going to take it from you. I will, however, warn you that you don’t have time to get swept away in the whys and why nots. You have work to do, and not much time left to do it.”
Adira sighed, sliding her palms over her thighs. “I just thought I should read more first.”
“No,” Miss Balek said, taking Adira’s hands and pulling her to her feet. “You’re afraid to use magic. You only use it when you feel you absolutely must. Defensively. That, and that alone, is your problem. Fear.”
Adira shook her head. “I’ve never had a fearful thought about using magic. Just of being caught using it.”
“Oh, I’m not saying this because you thought it, dear,” she said. “I’m saying it because I know it when I see it, and you don’t need to know it to feel it.”
Adira squeezed the old woman’s hands before letting them go. “Okay, but I should tend the hydroponics first, or Izabela will have nothing to work with for dinner.”
Miss Balek wagged her finger. “Uh-uh. You’re avoiding. Kveta will take over for you today, and you can cover her dish duty after dinner. Let’s go.”
The old woman didn’t give Adira a chance to argue. She left the room, forcing Adira to follow unless she wanted to be rude, and she certainly wasn’t about to be rude to the closest person she’d had to family in a long time, even if they’d only know each other a few short days.
Miss Balek led Adira downstairs and into a big room in the far corner of the building. Inside, the concrete floor was chalk-marked with several circles, a pair of witches sparring magically in each one. Shouts, laughter, and banter all flooded throughout the room, stirring up an unfamiliar excitement in Adira.
“You’ll start with Anastazie,” Miss Balek said.
Adira balked. “You can’t expect me to fight a child. I might hurt her.”
Miss Balek chuckled. “Heavens, no.” She shook her head. “It’s not the size of the fighter, Adira. It’s the size of the fight within them.”
Great. More riddles.
Adira strode over to Anastazie, who stood facing a long table with a number of seemingly random objects laid across it.
Anastazie looked up at her. “Miss Balek says you use magic like a child.”
“Hmm,” Adira said. “Maybe that’s why she paired me with you.”
“Don’t worry. We won’t be fighting today. Miss Balek doesn’t want you to get hurt.” The little girl giggled, then motioned toward the objects on the table. “Everyone starts here. Reanimation. These objects were once enchanted, but they aren’t anymore. We have to make them work again.”
“Is that all?”
Anastazie smirked. “All right. You go first.”
“But I don’t even know what to do,” Adira said, narrowing her eyes at the girl.
“Then stop talking and start listening.”
The little girl’s command of language threw Adira. The child was surely gifted in more way than one.
She lifted a radio first. “This was how the sectors originally communicated with each other. As far as we know, ours was the last one still working, but it’s since died. If other sectors have re-enchanted theirs, and we re-enchant ours, then we can find out if there are others out there.”
“What good would that do?” Adira asked, crossing her arms. “We can’t get to them.”
“It’s been hundreds of years, Adira. We don’t know what we can do. Communication is always relevant.” Anastazie flipped the radio over and pointed to a symbol on the back. “This was the rune that powered the object originally.”
Adira shook her head. “Well, even the regent can’t restore runes.”
The girl nodded. “Right. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Besides, we can still re-enchant them, even if we can’t restore the rune for the enchantment to power itself.”
“Okay,” Adira said, taking the radio from the girl’s hand. “So you mean to tell me we can enchant objects without runes?”
The girl snatched the radio back. “Yes. But it’s temporary.” She set the radio on the table. “No one can get the radio to do anything, though, so let’s try something simpler.”
Adira picked up the radio again. “I thought you said just because something hasn’t been done doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try?”
“Fine. Do you have any spell ideas to reanimate the radio? Because I don’t.”
Adira set the radio down again. “Point taken.”
“The first step is always figuring out why the object doesn’t work anymore,” Anastazie said, this time lifting a spinning top from the table. “It’s always going to be one of two things: either it’s not enchanted more, and we have to find out why, or there’s another enchantment blocking it, and we have to find out how to remove it.”
“Like the boarded-up windows.”
Anastazie smiled. “Miss Balek gets us all with that when we arrive. I’m the only one who’s gotten out.”
Adira raised her eyebrow. “How?”
“Magic, of course!” The girl beamed and grinned coyly. “I can get out of anything. It’s my special gift—everyone has one, if they figure it out. But don’t expect me to tell you all my secrets. A girl’s gotten keep her edge around here.”
It was at that moment reality crashed into Adira. They had all come here at some point, for some reason. But Anastazie was young. What happened to her parents?
She pressed her lips together, thinking it best not to pry. If the girl wanted people to know, she would talk about it in her own time.
“Tell me about the top,” Adira said.
Anastazie nodded. “We found out it actually spins out energy, when it’s working. So you can sort of create a protective bubble around you. The faster it spins, the farther out the bubble goes. The longer is spins, the longer the bubble stays in place. Of course, the stronger the witch is, the longer she can keep the top spinning.
“Sounds useful.”
“Yeah,” she said, a note of whimsy in her voice. “No one can get it to spin very long, and the second anyone tries to use another enchantment with it, it stops. But it could be really useful if a witch could learn to hold its protection while fighting at the same time.”
“And if we really restored it, it could spin itself?”
“That’s the idea,” Anastazie said.
The little girl spun the top, but without any enchantment. It spun and spun in its own natural way until it finally slowed and rolled back to its side.
Anastazie turned back to Adira. “Anyway, I guess you can start with this one. Hold your hand out over it. If you feel a pull, it has a negative charge. If you feel a push, it has a positive charge.”
Oh.
Oh!
“Oh my God!” Adira’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God, Anastazie. That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“An enchantment on an enchantment gives a negative charge. Humans are a negative charge.”
“Huh?”
Adira waved her off. Anastazie probably hadn’t seen the new witch-testing device yet. No matter. This was great. If Adira could get herself to register as a negative charge, that would be perfect.
“Okay, so, how do we put these enchantments on enchantments?”
“We don’t,” the little girl said. “We remove them, at least temporarily, so that the objects can be re-enchanted. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“I have,” Adira said. “And you’ve been a great teach
er.” She gave the top a whirl. “But let’s say we did want to do it…to put a block on something like one of these objects. How would we do that?”
Anastazie stopped the top from spinning. “We don’t. We can’t. We shouldn’t anyway. Half of the mess in this world is because stronger witches of the past did just that. We need to undo that. Not do more of it. So just get that idea out of your head and focus on the top. If you get a pull, that’s negative energy. Remove the block. If you get a push, it’s positively charged and you don’t need to remove anything to re-enchant it. Got it?”
“Crystal clear,” Adira mumbled.
She held her hand over the top. A negative charge. She studied it longer, though, wanting to understand it from the inside out. Someone had done this. It could be done.
“Well?” Anastazie pried.
“Negative, right?”
“Right,” she said. “Now remove it. It will re-enchant until you let go, or until your magic slips.”
“How do I do that?”
“It’s different for everyone. I say výtah. You could try that.”
Lift. Made sense.
Adira focused on the top. “Výtah.”
Nothing.
“Výtah!”
Ugh. This was the plywood board all over again. Wasn’t knowing what to do supposed to fix that?
Anastazie put her hand on Adira’s forearm. “It’s okay. Yours will just be another word. What’s the first word that comes to mind?”
Adira tried a few.
Odstranit. Remove.
Rozptýlit. Dissipate. This time, the top wobbled a little on its own.
So close.
Finally, Adira got it right with Rozpustit. Dissolve. The top whipped into action.
“You did it!” Anastazie cheered.
A wide smile pulled at Adira’s cheeks as the top spun faster and faster, a faint blue glow emanating from the object, spreading farther and farther out.
Soon, a few of the other witches gathered around.
Erik came over to observe, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses on the slope of his nose. “Impressive,” he said. “Try fueling it.”
“No,” Anastazie said. “It’s too soon. She’ll lose it.”
Origin: an Adult Paranormal Witch Romance: Othala Witch Collection (Sector 1) Page 8
