by Elena Lawson
But I wouldn’t risk too much movement, with my hands firmly clasping the bits of stone, I’d be able to keep as still as possible.
“Straight to the point,” the same voice spoke, and I could tell without looking the man was standing where the throne would be.
The pieces had been taking shape and finding where they fit with each other since I appeared here, but there were a couple things I knew for certain; this was not Kalzir Prison. And whatever was going on here was not legal.
Which meant two other things; if this wasn’t Kalzir, then judging by the crest set into the floor, and the bindstone running in sparkling rivers of black through the stone walls, it could only be Emeris. The Exalted Court. Where the alchemist’s ruled over the immortal lands all those hundreds—or was it thousands?—of years ago.
“…there’s been a development. We’ve received word from our informant that they’re close to reconstructing the spell…” the man continued, but I was too lost in my own thoughts to listen.
My feet were standing on stone that was rooted to the soil of Emeris. My immortal homeland.
I could hardly believe it was possible and glancing up at the white light filtering down from the skylight, I had a sudden, burning desire to be outside. To see what it was like. Though since the plague that befell the land after Cyprian’s curse was laid, I knew I’d likely not see very much.
But, still, I wondered what the power here would feel like. Would it feel the same as the magic I drew from the earth of the mortal lands, or would it feel different? Would it react differently when I called it? Would it be stronger, or weaker for the plague that ravaged the land.
“…but we aren’t ready…”
I was still reeling when I came back to myself, realizing I was sticking my head too far out into the main chamber—I slammed myself back, knocking my head against the rough stone. Wetting my dry lips, I tried to focus on what was happening in the chamber.
The whispers had begun again, and I could make out some voices louder than others as they argued. But…it was strange. Every voice sounded alike. Exactly the same, in fact. That same rich baritone belonging to a male person. My brows furrowed as I watched them. With them all facing away there was no way to tell who was speaking.
“How will we stop them if not to undo what was done before—”
“We must work faster. We can still—”
“Enough,” a louder voice rose above all the others vying to be heard in the din. A cloaked figure went to stand beside the other cloaked figure who was standing in front of the throne, heels clacking against stone. I supposed he—or she—must be their leader.
The newcomer, a woman I assumed based on the telltale sound of high-heeled shoes, silenced the crowd with a raised hand.
“They’ve left us no other option,” she said, her voice coming out the same deep baritone as all the others. “It’s time to end it.”
The leader stepped forward, moving until he was on the edge of the dais, his gaze sweeping over his congregated following. Who was he?
“Cut the head off the snake and the body may writhe for a time, but eventually, it too will die.”
A fist of ice gripped my heart. They were talking about murder.
As assassination.
But of whom?
For what purpose?
“Stay vigilant, my friends,” he added. “Soon, we’ll strike. Soon, this madness will come to an end. I promise you.”
The whispers resumed.
“You’re dismissed,” the one standing next to the man in control said. I understood her to be his second in command.
Gulping, I watched as one by one, the cloaked figures removed their masks…and vanished. As though I’d blinked each one out of existence. I reached a hand up and felt the cool contour of my own mask. I only had to remove it…
I’m such an idiot.
The stone beneath my other hand shifted with the force of my grip and how I was leaning my weight on it. The mortar holding it in with the other pieces fell apart and the rock dropped to the ground with an ear-shattering clack that tailed off in a resounding ringing that filled my ears like a fucking siren.
I might as well have had a megaphone to my mouth and shouted here I am!
I tore the mask from my face a fraction of a second after the stone hit the floor, not knowing if I was too late. I didn’t have time to wonder if anyone saw me because the instant the sweat-slicked metal came away from my skin, I was falling again.
Straight through the stone floor. Straight down, down into the heavy dark.
17
I dropped to the warm hardwood like a weighted sack, my bones heavy and limbs shaking and weak. The bindstone from the chamber below-ground had suppressed my power, but now I felt it slowly rousing from its slumber, awakening first slowly, but then surging with a fury at having been suppressed for so long.
Like a wild dog loosed from a chain, it swelled behind my breastbone, filling me with the strength I needed to stand. I hushed it soothingly, attempting to coax it back to a low simmer beneath my skin. I couldn’t afford a magical explosion in the middle of the night. I’d wake the whole house.
As I worked to calm myself, I heard a door clatter closed somewhere near the front of the house and I stabilized myself with a hand clasped tightly on the back of the armchair beside the bookcase. I could tell right away that it was either Cal or Adrian rushing through the house on stomping feet.
The tightness in my chest, and the last dregs of the weakness in my muscle tissue evaporated as he neared, our familiar bond bringing me back to a gasping full strength.
Adrian appeared in the wide doorway, his hair disheveled and glowing yellow-eyes wild—his chest heaving as forceful breaths sawed in and out through his clenched teeth. When our eyes locked, he stilled. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought his heart stopped in his chest by the way his eyes widened, and his pace paled—lips parting as he took me in.
“Harper?” he asked, as though he thought I may be an apparition and not truly here at all.
I grimaced. Shit. So, someone had noticed I was gone.
The pained expression he wore as he closed the gap between us and wrenched the armchair out of the way to send it crashing into the side table—both bits of furniture sent tumbling to the floor—spoke of his worry. Wordlessly, Adrian drew me to him, and I felt the tightness across his chest as he folded me roughly into his arms.
His elongated claws scratched against my arms, but I didn’t shy away from them, I buried myself deeper, nuzzling into him. Shivering as the rightness of our bond soothed me into a state less catatonic than a moment before.
“You scared the fucking shit out of me,” he said, strained.
The quick thunderous beating of his heart behind his breastbone confirmed his words.
My lips parted to reply, but where did I start? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the pewter mask discarded on the hardwood floor not more than a couple of feet from where I landed. It’d come back with me.
I thought I’d dropped it in the chamber, but whatever magic it possessed had sent it back to La Casa Rosa. The place where it belonged.
Because it was my fathers.
I was trying to make sense of it all in my head, on the verge of figuring something out, when Adrian gripped me by the arms and pulled back enough to look me in the eyes. The tension I found there made me nervous. I’d never seen Adrian like this. Never this shaken—not when he tore off Sterling’s head. And not when we were in that dungeon with Donovan, all of us on the verge of being slaughtered.
He was always hard. Calloused. This wasn’t like him.
“Don’t ever disappear like that again,” he said, shaking me when I didn’t answer right away. “You hear me?” he growled.
I nodded quickly. “I hear you,” I blurted, a bit intimidated by the panic in his gaze. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He kissed me.
I gasped against his lips as they formed around mine and h
e stole all the breath from my body. An exhilarating spark raced down through my being and reverberated out to my limbs, electrifying my fingertips with the rush of power I’d been working to suppress since being freed of the bindstone.
A small sound escaped my throat as my stomach flipped and my thighs squeezed, that sizzling warmth heating me from the inside out as he fisted a hand into my hair, holding me to him. The kiss was fast and unyielding at first, and when his body softened, so did the kiss—it morphed into the gentlest brush of lips—whisper soft.
My toes curled.
When he tried to pull away, I found I wasn’t finished and I yanked him back to me, eager to taste more of him—to breathe in his whiskey and cedar scent—sharp and yet smooth. His body—though smaller than Cal’s, and wirier than Elias’, was taut as a bowstring. Every bit of him was rock hard. He was lithe—slim, but running my fingertips down the washboard of his abs, I knew it didn’t mean he was any less strong.
Adrian let out a small sound of surprise, but quickly recovered, pressing me almost savagely into the bookcase. Several tomes fell at the impact and thudded onto the floor. The gasp that left my lips as the air was pushed from my lungs was swallowed up as he kissed me fiercely, the spines of the books at my back digging into the muscle between my shoulder blades.
It was like he was punishing me for making him worry…but damn if I didn’t enjoy it.
Adrian flicked his tongue against my lips, and I parted them, granting him entry. As he delved into my mouth, growling, I felt the press of his hardened length against my groin and I fought to catch my breath, arching my back to press more firmly against him.
That same sound I’d heard only a couple minutes before—of a door smacking closed against a frame drew me out of my lustful delirium and Adrian’s kisses slowed, and then stopped.
The heavy stomps of bare feet coming down the hall could only be one person.
I disentangled myself from Adrian’s grasp, blushing. He eyed me deviously, biting his lower lip as his still-glowing lupine gaze traveled the length of my body—leaving a burning trail everywhere he looked.
He shook his head and tore his gaze away as Cal burst into the room. “Where were you?” he demanded the moment he laid eyes on me—the words a bark shouted through half canine and half-human teeth.
I’d have trembled at his tone if it weren’t for the fact that he was butt fucking naked.
Like—naked as the day he was born naked.
Standing there as though it were the most natural thing in the world naked.
The muscle I’d seen before across his shoulders and down his back, across his chest and in his calves didn’t stop at those places. A mouse-like squee of sound managed to get through my sealed lips as I took in the thick muscle of his thighs. The deep carved V-shape carved into his lower abs leading down to…holy. fucking. shit.
A blur of black moving into the room like a curl of fire-smoke preceded the entry of Draven, looking not nearly as disheveled as my familiars with his hair perfectly imperfect and his usual slouching stance, not even crinkle in his shirt or a scuff on his shoes. Only his bright green eyes, staring at me like he was only just seeing me for the first time, betrayed he had worried for my safety at all.
That look was quickly erased as he turned to glance at Cal and quickly averted his gaze, momentary disgust tainting his features. “Would you put some fucking clothes on?” Draven sneered. “We’re not all animals here.”
He moved to a trunk near the far wall and drew out a ratty looking blanket, chucking it roughly at Cal, who without missing a beat or even a hint of blush, wrapped it around his middle like he would a towel. All the while staring at me, seething, making me feel like I was two inches tall.
“It’s not my fault,” I blurted, hating how the pitch of my voice sounded. Hell, I was the one who was just magically teleported to a land thousands of miles away and almost discovered by a group of fifty masked fuckers in an underground chamber laced with fucking bindstone.
I stomped over to where the mask lay innocently against the floor and snatched it up. “It was this thing. I didn’t know it would transport me all the way to fucking Emeris.”
Elias walked in just then, looking as though he’d only just rolled out of bed and hadn’t heard all the ruckus downstairs until just now. But upon hearing me, his gaze locked onto the mask gripped in my hand and his hand fell from rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
The collective intake of breath and the tepid silence that followed told me they were all shocked at my words.
“What did you just say?” Elias asked incredulously.
I sighed, bowing my head. “Somebody want to put on some coffee?”
I had a lot of explaining to do, and since the whole house was awake now, anyway…
18
Shaking from the amount of caffeine pulsing through my veins, but bone weary from all the hours spent going over and over all that’d happened with the guys, my eyes were near closing as they continued to discuss it without me.
Though my muscles kept twitching from all the coffee, and I couldn’t seem to stop bouncing my right foot. I needed a shower—or maybe a bath. Something to level me out. And then sleep. I needed a lot of sleep.
“Wait, so you said there was a symbol on the back of the throne, right?” Elias asked, the hundredth question he’s hurled at me in the last couple hours.
He wasn’t happy at all that he’d slept through my ‘going missing’ and none of the other guys had woken him up. But thanks to them, Elias was probably the most well-rested, and sharpest, of us right now. With Draven a close second, but I was sure that was only because the guys had somehow trained himself to go on living without the need for a thing so trivial as REM sleep.
I nodded, blinking my bleary, burning eyes back to a state near open. “Mmmhmm,” I replied sleepily, leaning heavily into Cal’s side on the sofa. He wrapped his arm around me, and I shivered at his warmth, giving him a small grin he didn’t return.
He’d been tense since I told them what happened. He didn’t like that I was there all alone—without their protection—and he was angry that I’d been so naïve as to keep the mask from them and to put it on even though you knew there was something fucky with it—and while all of us were sleeping!
But it seemed, at least for now, I was forgiven. I nestled into the crook of his arm and he gave me a little squeeze to let me know he wasn’t angry anymore.
Elias rose from the sofa and disappeared out the door. I was too sleepy to wonder where he’d gone, the tapping of my foot finally stopping as I drew my legs up onto the sofa and closed my eyes.
“Is this it?” Elias asked, bringing me out of the beginnings of a blackout sleep. I blinked back to semi-wakefulness and saw he was holding a piece of parchment out for me to see.
I squinted to make out the lines he’d drawn there through the blur.
“Man, she needs to sleep,” Cal chided him. “She can barely keep her eyes open.”
“Is this it?” Elias insisted, pushing the page a little closer to my face.
It took me a moment, but I found I did recognize it. Elias wouldn’t get any points for being a particularly good artist. It wasn’t exact, and the lines were sloppy. But it was the same symbol I’d seen on the throne—the one I’d found to be familiar, but couldn’t place.
Elias rocked back on his heels and let the bit of paper fall into his lap. He laughed once—a tight, dry sound.
“What is it?” Draven asked him, retrieving the paper from Elias’ lap on the floor.
Groggily, I tilted my head to see Draven standing above me. There was a crease between his brows and his crystalline eyes were hard as he glared down at Elias and then at me. “Are you sure?” he asked.
I nodded, not even caring at this point what they were all so worked up about. Cal was right—I needed to sleep.
“It’s Manifesto.”
I couldn’t be sure I’d heard the words or thought them myself—filling in the blanks with wha
t I already knew but couldn’t place.
All those people—those witches—were members of the rebel group known as Manifesto…
When I awoke, I found myself in a bed that smelled of fresh pine and warm spice. Elias. I reached for him, but my fingers found only more smooth sheets beneath the warmth of the covers.
“Elias?” I croaked into the darkness, but there came no answer.
Rolling onto my back, I felt a slight pounding behind my ocular cavities and groaned. I needed to get myself some food and water before throbbing turned into a full-blown migraine. I was still skeptical the storm a couple months before at the academy was caused by my riotous magic, but I didn’t want to chance bringing La Casa Rosa down on our heads in case it was true.
Though, thinking back to the last near-migraine I’d had, about a month before, it had been uncommonly stormy that night, too. The full moon almost completely obscured by black clouds. I pinched the bridge of my nose to alleviate the feeling and forced myself to sit up, blinking rapidly to attempt to speed up my eyes adjusting to the dark.
Giving up, I flicked my wrist and whispered, “Lucidus,” allowing only a flicker of power into the sigil to make it glow so faintly it was more of a bluish flicker than a true light. I didn’t want to set off the migraine.
I stepped out of bed and hissed as my feet hit cold tile, gritting my teeth as I settled them onto the floor and tip toed over to the closet to pull out something to change into after I had a nice long shower. Glancing down at what I was wearing now, I realized I couldn’t remember changing into the silken pajamas I’d bought Bianca at the mall.
My face warmed as I stroked a hand down the front of the soft material. The thought of Elias helping me to change without my even remembering it sent a shiver of delight and a bolt of dread curling together up my spine. I tended to sleep with my eyes slitted—almost half open. The whites showing—mouth hanging open.
