To Tame A Wild Heart: A Zyne Witch Urban Fantasy Romance (Zyne Legacy Romance Book 1)

by Gwen Mitchell

  Stars above, let her be unharmed.

  She would fight to get free until her last breath. He could do no less for her.

  As if sensing the direction of his thoughts, Roderic said, “An assault on the fortress elevated the threat, since our position has been compromised. I’ve tripled and widened the perimeter patrols. The guardians are expanding their search and throwing every resource they have at tracking this sorcerer down before he can report our location. This is now their top priority. That’s all they will tell us.”

  He gritted his teeth to hold back a curse of frustration and ran his hands through his hair. It was crusted with dried mud. He found himself echoing Audrey’s words. “That’s not good enough for me.”

  His gaze shifted to his mother, sitting there in silent contemplation, her eyes swirled with milky gauze. “What do you see?”

  Her throat bobbed, and she spoke in a rasp. “I see the choice you have already made in your heart.” Roderic reached over and took her hand. She squeezed it until her knuckles turned white. Her breath hitched. “I cannot see past it.”

  Corvin frowned. “You won’t try to stop me?”

  Her eyes went glassy as they returned to their normal color. She blinked at him. “Would you ever forgive me?”

  He shook his head. “Not for that.”

  She rose and went to her desk, where she retrieved something from the top drawer. She crossed the room to him in a rush, as if she must do whatever she planned before she changed her mind. She held out her hand and pressed a small key into his palm—the key to the fortress weapons chamber, where all the most dangerous tools and spells were secured.

  She was giving him her blessing to walk his chosen path, unhindered. She was even aiding him. He squeezed the key in his fist.

  His mother stooped to kiss his brow, her hands on his shoulders. “Bledsung, my son. May the Fates protect you.”

  He’d loaded up everything from the weapons chamber he could carry—stunning spells, cloaking spells, shielding spells, concussive spells—those that would do the most damage or aid the most in a fight. Because he may very well have to become a one-man army. Then he’d stopped on his way out to pack enough food for a few days. He had no idea how long it would take to find the Sorcerers’ lair, but he would head north along the coast, scouring every inch, until he did. He fixed several of the crystals from the Synod’s cache to his staff and looped the other spells in pouches around his neck. He packed a makeshift bed and sent one of his crows back to the fortress with a note to Roderic to see that Honey was taken care of. The rest of the birds could fend for themselves.

  He was just finishing gassing up his old Jeep, arguing with Smoke over whether he was coming along, when the forest went quiet around them. The hairs on his nape tingled, and Smoke let out a low growl as a Hohlwen arrowed toward the ground and appeared in a cloud of shadow.

  His fist tightened around the wrench he was holding, and he wished he had his staff when he recognized the arrogant features of the leach who’d attacked Audrey on that first day.

  “What do you want?” he snarled. Smoke echoed him with an aggressive caw.

  “I know where she is,” came his terse reply.

  Corvin narrowed his eyes at the immortal, studying his blank expression. “How?”

  An impatient grimace. “Does it matter? Do you want to save your woman or not?”

  “It matters. Tell me how you know, and I’ll decide if I can trust you.” If only immortals had human emotions to read, but there was no magic Corvin could use to gauge the truth of his words.

  “Let’s just say I have a stake in her well-being.”

  “What kind of stake?”

  “A bargain she has yet to pay on.” A taunting light glittered in the Hohlwen’s pitch-black eyes.

  What had Audrey gotten herself into?

  Does it matter, if he’s telling the truth?

  “If you know where she is, why not just retrieve her?”

  Fury rippled across the Hohlwen’s placid face and was gone in a blink. “Do you think I haven’t tried? The sorcerers lair is warded against immortals.”

  A cold dread filled Corvin’s chest, having his worst fears confirmed. But at least the sorcerers would not hurt her too much—she was too valuable to them. He narrowed his eyes. “Why did you come to me and not my mother.”

  The Hohlwen narrowed his cold, lifeless eyes. “To avoid questions.”

  Corvin hated that trusting a rogue Hohlwen was his best option, but he said, “Fine. Show me.”

  Ten minutes later, he and Smoke were bumping down the road in the Rover with their destination marked on a map. It would take about three hours to get there, and Seth—as he’d told Corvin to call him—had gone ahead to keep an eye on things and scout out the compound where Audrey was being held. Corvin had sent another crow with the coordinates to his mother, but he was not going to wait for the guardians to act.

  They rounded the bend between ancient firs that marked the passage through the Synod’s wards, and Corvin slammed on the breaks. The Jeep skidded to a halt a foot away from a half-demon in full battle garb, standing in the middle of the road.

  Roderic stared at him, and Corvin stared back, confused. “I thought she let me go,” he said, knowing the old wolf could hear him, even from outside.

  Roderic nodded once, and walked to the passenger side to open the door. Smoke gave a happy caw and hopped from the passenger seat to Corvin’s headrest. “She did. I’m coming with you.”

  He furrowed his brow. “But the Synod will not condone it.”

  Roderic climbed in, giving Smoke a reassuring pat. “That’s why I have left my post.”

  Corvin’s eyes widened, and he found it hard to swallow. A captain of the guard and centuries-old immortal who had served the Synod faithfully for several mortal lifetimes, who was a renowned and decorated warrior and had earned all the freedoms any Kinde could wish for… was giving up his position… for him? “Why?”

  A smile twinkled in Roderic’s steel-grey gaze, a playful light he hadn’t seen since he was a child. “All these years, and you have never wondered? Why I stayed by your mother’s side. Why she let me train you. Why she’s fought so hard to keep you so close.”

  Corvin shook his head, but a tingling feeling twisted in his stomach.

  Roderic reached over and squeezed Corvin’s shoulder. “You just healed from a bullet wound it would take most people weeks to recover from in a matter of hours. You’ve accomplished spells that many witches twice your age cannot perform. Corvin…” He sighed and stared into Corvin’s eyes. “You are my son. Demon magic laces your blood. So, why am I here now? Because I would gladly lay down my life for yours. I cannot let you go into battle alone.”

  Corvin stared at him, slack-jawed as that tingling became a buzz of nerves and excitement. Details of the past melted and re-forged themselves to reveal a new landscape of truth he’d been completely blind to. Many times as a young boy, he’d wished that Roderic were his father, but he’d known that could not be. His mother was a councilor, and she upheld Synod law—she would never break one of their most sacrosanct rules.

  But you knew.

  Deep inside, perhaps he had. Perhaps he had been angry at them both for hiding it, for doing it in the first place. Both for putting him at risk and for trying so hard to keep him sheltered from the consequences. His whole life, all his training, everything he believed…he never would have been a part of the Zyne world if they hadn’t kept their secret. His mother would have been exiled, himself an anathema. He wouldn’t have mastered his powers or found his calling. He would have no magic at all.

  I never would have found Audrey.

  Now, all he could feel was gratitude for Roderic’s sacrifice, mingled with the urgent need to save the woman he loved. He had a future to salvage. It was time to let go of the past.

  He embraced his oldest friend—his father—as tears built in his eyes. And despite his struggle to find his place, all the hard lines he’d been
made to toe, all the secrets and lies and manipulations, he realized… they had always been a family. An unconventional one, but a family nonetheless. Now Roderic had sacrificed everything he had to help Corvin build his own family. A wave of warmth suffused him, like the sun cresting over a long-frozen hillside. All that came out of his mouth was a rough, “Thank you.”

  Roderic nodded and slapped him hard on the back, clearing his throat. “I’m sorry it has taken so long to get here. Now,” the Kinde warrior faced forward, his jaw tightening, “let’s go skewer some sorcerers.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The keypad outside Audrey’s door beeped five times before the lock snicked. She’d positioned herself in the back corner, prepared to fight like hell when that rotting corpse of a man came back for another meal. She may not have her magic, but all that physical training hadn’t been for nothing—she could still kick some ass. She’d dismantled the camera in the corner first, and then she’d managed to take apart her cot.

  She waited with one of the rails poised overhead, ready to smash his sneering face into a bloody pulp. But no one came in. A few heartbeats after the door opened, a mousy voice whispered, “Audrey.”

  The metal rail clanged to the cement floor in her shock, and she cringed as she lunged for the doorway. “Lilly?”

  Sure enough, the demure girl who had haunted her dreams many nights the past month was standing in the hallway. She was dressed in a pair of clean scrubs with cartoon cats on them. Her hair had started to grow back in a thick black fuzz, her skin had color, and her cheeks had rounded out. Her eyes were the same though—dark and piercing, eons older than they should be.

  “You’re okay!” Audrey’s legs went wobbly with relief as she pulled the small girl into her arms, looking down the hall in both directions. “What are you doing here? How did you get out?”

  Lilly’s answering smile was the most heartbreaking thing she’d ever seen. She’d begun to doubt that she ever would see it. Despite everything Lilly had been through, it transformed her from an internment-camp victim to a bright, beautiful young lady.

  I’m here to rescue you, Lilly said silently. We have to be quiet. Follow me.

  She took Lilly’s offered hand and followed her down the hall on quick, silent feet, her senses hyperaware as she listened for any small sound.

  Where are we going? she asked in her head.

  Up and out, Lilly replied, confirming Audrey’s suspicions that they were underground.

  This way.

  They rounded a corner and came to an elevator bay. The hair on Audrey’s arms stood on end, and she couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder as Lilly pressed the button and the car beeped its way down to them. She felt way too exposed in the brightly lit corridor, without any weapons or magic.

  Lilly squeezed her sweaty hand in reassurance as the elevator dinged and the steel doors slid open.

  Audrey’s heart stuttered. She jerked Lilly behind her.

  Standing there, as if waiting for them, was her mother and another sorcerer, both in black pantsuits. The sorcerer lifted his hand to an earpiece, and Audrey readied to kick him in the solar plexus to knock the wind out of him, but before she even shifted her weight, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed into a heap.

  Her mother lowered her raised palm slowly to her side. Her eyes flicked from Audrey to Lilly, her face blank of any expression, then she shoved her arm forward to keep the door from closing. “Hurry,” she said in a raspy voice.

  Lilly tried to step around her, but Audrey held her back, unable to look away from the woman who embodied all her dearest dreams and darkest nightmares in one. She shook her head, trying to take a step back as Lilly corralled her forward.

  “It’s okay, she’s here to help us.” Lilly slid out of her grip.

  “Audrey,” her mother said, “I’m not who you think I am. Please. We have to go now—you have to trust me.”

  Though her torn emotions threatened to swamp her, Audrey latched onto her instincts, which told her to get out first and ask questions later. She stepped into the elevator, and the doors whispered shut.

  There were more urgent questions as the elevator crept up and up, through six below-ground levels toward the fourth and top floor—where were they going, how would they get out, what kind of resistance could they expect to meet—but the only thing she could articulate as she stared into that achingly familiar blue eye was, “Why?”

  Her mother seemed just as transfixed. “It would be easier to show you, if you’ll permit me.” She held out her hand.

  Lilly looked back and forth between the two of them, then let go of Audrey’s death grip, encouraging her to reach out. Her sweat-slicked palm met her mother’s cool, dry one, and a bright flash filled her vision.

  A pair of young girls—twins—huddled in a cell much like the one she’d just left.

  Flash.

  They were young women, holding hands and looking at each other in a mirror as the head sorcerer put matching moonstone pendants around their necks.

  Flash.

  One of them was giving birth as the other stood by her side, holding her hand.

  Flash.

  A teary goodbye as one of them snuck out a window with a small, blond-haired bundle strapped to her chest. Their hands held until the last second, then slipped apart.

  Flash.

  One of them was a broken body on a stone altar as blood dripped from every limb into ceremonial bowls. The other twin held her hand, gazing down with a face cold as stone. Then she picked up the nearest knife and jabbed it into her eye.

  Flash.

  Audrey bent over, clutching her gut as it threatened to heave. Her eyes adjusted to the vision of the unconscious sorcerer at her feet, and slowly, she looked up at the woman she’d thought was her mother.

  “You’re her sister,” she whispered, struggling to keep her breath even.

  Her aunt closed her eye and bowed her head as a single tear streaked down her cheek.

  “What was her name? My mother?”

  “Marina,” her aunt answered, her voice like gravel. “And I am Esther.”

  She didn’t have time to process any of it. Her brain was completely overloaded with conflicting emotions and flooded with adrenaline. All she could do was accept these new facts. Now she had a name for the woman in her memory. Now she had a story. Her mother had sacrificed herself to try and get Audrey to safety, away from the sorcerers.

  Yet you still ended up here.

  We always knew that you would, Esther’s voice answered.

  The elevator dinged on the fourth floor and opened to a small lobby encased in black marble, with rich wood trim and an elegant rug in the center. Across from them was a set of tall mahogany doors inlaid with detailed carvings.

  Esther pulled a cardkey out of her jacket pocket and swiped it through the reader on the wall. The doors unlocked, and she swung one open, gesturing them into the dark room beyond. Audrey went first, with Lilly close on her heels. She took two steps inside and froze, recognizing where they were from her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling glass. They were back in the head sorcerer’s office. The lights of the bay and the city beyond twinkled in a crescent around the dark water. The full moon was high in the sky, shrouded in a layer of wispy clouds.

  “Why are we here?”

  Esther was already across the room, entering a code into a hidden safe. When it opened, she pulled out an ornate wooden box and set it carefully on the desk.

  Audrey scanned the room for cameras but didn’t see any.

  Esther flipped the box open. Inside were two giant gemstones. They looked like rubies the size of her palm. She wanted to scream that they didn’t have time for cat-burgling, but as if reading her thoughts—in fact she probably was—Esther said, “Hold out your hand.”

  Audrey hesitated but complied. Esther set one of the heavy stones in Audrey’s palm, then walked behind her. “This will hurt for a second.”

  Before Audrey could respond, Esther
laid the other stone against the crown of her head. A sizzle of magic coursed through her like lighting the fuse on a firecracker, and then the stone in her palm warmed and flashed green. She hissed and dropped it to the floor, shaking out her hand as if she’d knocked her funny bone with a sledgehammer. She turned a questioning look on her aunt, who set the other haphazardly on the desk.

  “Your powers,” was all she said as she crossed the room and slid her card through another door, this one opening onto an outdoor terrace. “This way.”

  Audrey paused a moment to test her magic and found it restored. She cloaked herself in invisibility, and Lilly stared at where she’d just been with bulging eyes. She reappeared, then grabbed Lilly and cloaked them both. “Stay close to me—don’t let go.”

  “Audrey…” Lilly said in wonder, “I didn’t know you were a superhero.”

  I wish, kid. But she felt a lot better about this jailbreak now that she had magic. Thanks to the full moon, she was fully recharged after being drained earlier. Her heartbeat hammered in her chest at the first scent of cold, salt air as they skated around the side of the building and took two levels of service stairs down to the roof of one of the outbuildings. A foghorn blared in the distance, but no alarms sounded. Aside from the lapping of the water against the dock below them, all was quiet.

  There were floodlights on the roof, and likely cameras, but Esther took a path that kept her in the shadows, and Audrey and Lilly were invisible. At the far end of the rooftop, a service ladder went down another two stories to the concrete dock.

  Lilly went down first, exposed for those few seconds, with Audrey and Esther close behind. They inched their way along the side of the building as Esther strode ahead of them. They rounded a corner, and Lilly gasped. Audrey yanked her back, only to see another fallen guard crumpled to the ground, this one in black paramilitary garb and armed with an automatic weapon. Just like the other, he seemed to have collapsed on the spot, like a windup toy that had run out of juice.

  Neat trick, Audrey thought.

  I can only hold one under at a time. The other will wake now and raise the alarm. We have to hurry, Esther answered.