by Emma Dawn
“Auralee, don’t make me finish this,” I said. “I don’t want to kill you.”
“You could never kill me. I am the oracle!” She screamed the words and then choked on the last one. I didn’t have to look to know that the leopard had the snake in its mouth and was bearing down. It was like having two TV screens playing behind my eyes at the same time. My actions and the leopards were tied. I could see through her eyes while she fought the snake.
I swayed where I stood and looked to my right shoulder where two puncture marks stared back at me. There was venom in the snake, and it was flowing through me now, through my magic, and I slumped to my knees. But I knew instinctually that I needed to stay awake so the magic in me could finish what was started.
Auralee gurgled and tried to scream around the pressure on her neck. I put my hands on the stone and kept my focus on finishing her off. Not that it would stop the venom, but at least, she would be gone and my four men would no longer have to worry about her.
From the pit, Gavin yelled up. “You have more power than her, Dominique! Call on it, now!”
His words were like a lash and I bore down on the sensation of pulling the magic through me, up through the stones of the floor, out through my body and into the leopard.
My eyes flickered open in time to see Auralee bucking hard against the bonds that held her around her throat, her feet kicking and scrambling, moving slower and slower, until there was nothing but the occasional twitch, and then she was still.
I slumped where I was and released the death grip I had on the floor. I’d broken several fingernails and found myself staring at chunks of stone that I’d ripped up in my efforts.
The poison made me sluggish as I pushed to my feet. I turned to see Ella, the fairy who’d duped me, working at the lock on the pit. It sprang open as I took a step and Gavin pushed his way out.
Blond like me, blue eyes like me, but that was where the similarities ended. His face was lined and drawn, his body gaunt but there was a fierceness I recognized as one that I, too, carried.
I managed to speak around the growing pull to lie down. “Are you really my father?”
“I am.”
“Then help me save Rose,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, she cannot be saved.”
I took a step back, then another and another. “Then you are dead to me.”
His eyes widened as I turned and began to make my way back the way I’d come. Too long, this had taken too long and yet . . .I knew I never would have found that extra connection to my power without Gavin’s command. I never would have found the anger to deal with Auralee.
I had my hand on the wall of the catacombs and used it to guide me along through the darkness.
“Dominique, wait!” Ella called and then she was there in front of me illuminating the path. “You will get lost down here.”
“Help me get to the third level,” I whispered. “I freed him. That was what you wanted. Right?”
She nodded. I pointed a single finger at her.
“Then you owe me.”
“He’s your father.” She frowned and I shook my head.
“No, my father would fight by my side to save Rose. Gavin is not my father.”
Oh, those words should not have cut so deeply, but they did. Here I was, a thirty-five-year-old woman still wanting a father that doted on her. But to be fair, I had that. The man who’d raised me had loved and protected me even though I was not of his blood. My back straightened. “I have a father. He might not be alive. But he would’ve helped me if I asked him.”
Ella’s shoulders and wings drooped, and then she nodded. “Follow me.”
I couldn’t move at the speed that I’d come in with, but I did everything I could to keep going at a good clip. My limbs were sluggish from the venom, and my vision kept blurring and doubling, but I didn’t slow.
“The venom will ease,” Ella said softly. “It would have only killed you if your magic had not been stronger.”
I frowned. “You mean the leopard?”
Ella spun. “What leopard?”
Was I the only one to see the forms the magic took? I shook my head. Right now, that didn’t matter. What mattered was getting to . . .there, where the stairs led upward. I grabbed the railing and pulled myself up step by step. A part of me had thought Gavin would come after me, that he would say he would help me. That he hadn’t said it all.
I sighed, finally at the top and pushed the door open. No one was in the main hall that I could see. Ella flitted out ahead of me and then motioned with the tip of her head to follow her
I stumbled along, slowly feeling the sensation come back to my limbs. Each step I took was a little stronger, a little surer. When we reached the first set of stairs, I took them quickly, running up them. The second set of stairs I took two at a time.
“Here, this is the place.” Elle floated in front of a simple door. There wasn’t a single piece of artwork or ornamental design to say what might lay on the other side.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I can go no farther.”
“Thank you.” I stepped past her and put my hands on the door. This was it. Rose was on the other side and I needed to save her.
I bit my lower lip and thought about the leopard. I put a hand out and called the magic up around me until the leopard came into existence once more. There was no drain on my body, just a sense of wellbeing. As if I had been waiting for this moment my whole life.
The leopard tipped its head at me, blinking large green eyes.
I pushed the door open to my future—however long or short it might be.
Chapter 12
The room I stepped into with my magic padding along in the shape of a leopard was open to the elements. The ceiling had been replaced with a storm, the clouds full to bursting with rain, lightning dancing down here and there with no discernable end.
The edges of the room were designed to look like a forest of trees, complete with a river running through the middle of it.
But my eyes were drawn to the slab in the center and the woman lying on it.
“Rose!” I screamed her name in the hopes it would wake her. Beside me the leopard roared, its snarl filling the air alongside my voice.
She didn’t move. I ran toward her, full well knowing there would be a trap. With a flick of my hand, I sent the leopard out ahead of me. Her claws slashed and danced through bindings that were at first invisible. As my magic flared, so did the defenses.
My leopard leapt through the last of the magic and landed on the slab next to Rose. I skidded to a stop, reaching out carefully to take Rose’s hand. “Rose. Honey, wake up. Please.”
“You can’t wake her.”
I spun to see Etterson stroll toward me. He wore a cloak of silver and his hair had been slicked back. “And when Auralee and I are done, we will have her power and yours. To be fair, Auralee will have your power and I will have Rose’s. But I believe that is semantics.”
I straightened my back. “You are not hurting Rose again, you asshole.”
“Ah, so you figured it out? That I was the cause of her accident?”
I glared at him and my leopard snarled, a low rumble that should have warned him off but it was like he didn’t see her.
He smiled and began to pace around us. “Let me show you something.” He snapped his fingers and his magic flowed away from us to the edges of the room. It wrapped around a bundle and brought it forward, laying it on the slab next to Rose.
I stared at it, my heart pounding as I saw the lines under the cloth. The sharp point of the horn. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“It’s how we make the transfer. We need the horn, and in taking the horn, well . . .there are casualties.” He shrugged and snapped his fingers. The cloth whipped off to show me a brand-new unicorn foal, its violet eyes blinking under the sudden light. A golden and silver twisted horn stuck out twelve inches from its head.
There was a cry, like a woman calling her chil
d, from the side of the room and I looked to see a full-grown unicorn straining at bonds that cut into her pristine white hide.
“Four deaths for your power?” I whipped around at him, my anger and magic growing.
“A small price to pay.” He grinned and I glared at him.
“You’ll have to go through me first.”
“Ah, you and your men?” He tipped his head and I followed the direction of his motion.
Bound hand and foot were all four of my men, including a slumped over Diego.
I thought my heart would gallop out of control, fear at the helm.
“You are not strong enough, even if you were trained to stop me,” Etterson, or I suppose Eric, said.
“Doesn’t mean I won’t try,” I said, a plan already forming. I wasn’t going to tell him Auralee was dead, not yet.
He arched an eyebrow. “Well, try then. Throw yourself at me.”
I didn’t know how hard it was to capture a unicorn, but I was banking on the fact it probably took both him and Auralee. I didn’t move, but instead whispered low to my leopard. “Free the mother.”
“What did you say?” Eric frowned at me.
“I said . . .” I glanced over my shoulder as my leopard cut through the bonds holding the unicorn mare. “Free the mother.”
“NO!” Eric roared.
The unicorn raced toward us, light of foot and moving faster than any normal horse. I scooped the foal off the table and laid it on the far side. I had to take this distraction for what it was.
Eric roared with anger and I spun as he reached out, his magic coiling around the unicorn. Snake magic, just like Auralee’s. No, I couldn’t let this happen. I stumbled toward them, and ended up with my hand on the unicorn’s side. I grabbed hold of the magic bonds that Eric fought to put back on the mother.
Something in me went wild with fury. He would chain a unicorn, kill an innocent, hurt my men, destroy my world for his own greed.
No, that was not happening. I screamed my rage as I tore through the bonds and then my leopard was there, attacking Eric’s legs. He went down and the unicorn reared up, landing on his middle with her cloven hooves. They dug into his belly and he stared up in shock as she lunged forward, her horn driving straight through his head.
I took a step back, then another and another. My magic was out of control. I could feel it spinning like the storm above me.
I looked up in time to see the storm dancing and raging, moving faster and faster.
“A trap!” Sterling yelled. “It’s a final trap Eric set. We have to get out of here!”
Except there was no time. I could feel the pressure against my skin. No training under my belt, no true understanding of what my magic could do and yet I knew there was only me left. My men were bound.
Rose was dying.
And we would all die if I did nothing. I raised my hands over my head and opened myself to the power that had been coursing through my veins my whole life. The power that had been denied to me.
“Don’t try to stop it!” Corbin yelled. “It will suck your power from you and kill you!”
I looked at him, at all four of them, though Lucas’s eyes were still hard. “I have to try.”
Even if it killed me, I would do all I could to stop this storm. To save the five souls I loved the most, to save the two unicorns that would die if I did nothing.
I flexed my fingers and breathed through the tremendous pressure that poured up through me, like a wave of power that started at the soles of my feet and snapped like the crack of a whip.
The storm circled me and slammed into my power, drawing it from me. I worked to try and cut it off, to cut off the source of the power that had created the storm but I didn’t understand how it worked. Sweat rolled down my face and I didn’t know how long I stood there with my arms above my head only that they had begun to shake.
I was not going to win this battle.
“Get out of here, get the unicorns, and get out of here.” I took one hand down and sent my leopard to the men, removing their bindings.
I knew they would wonder why I wouldn’t tell them to take Rose. It was simple. I could feel her heart faltering, could feel death at her side. There would be no saving her, and stopping the storm, which meant I had to make that choice. I would do this, and I would die with her. Friends to the end.
I pulled my hand from them and put it into the air again, the world around me, nothing but power and magic. The purple threads of all I was spun into the storm as the minutes ticked by.
Hands reached for me and I sent out a wave of pressure, flinging the men away from me. “Let me save you,” I cried out. “Let me do something good for my last moments.”
They were arguing, and then there was a tingle of magic coursing along my skin, a magic I knew. Corbin stepped up beside me, the black lines of his magic emerging, dancing along my body.
“I will stand with you.”
Tears streamed down my face. “I don’t want you to die.”
He nodded. “My life for yours. Until death will we part.”
A second band of magic, deep green coiled up into the storm, wrapping around my purple threads. Sterling stood in front of me. “I am with you, Dominique. We will face this together and live or die, we will stand.”
A couldn’t stop the sob because I did not want them to die. And yet for the first time, I knew I would not be alone again. They had made their choice, and that choice was to be with me no matter the cost.
There was a moment where I thought the storm would abate and then it roared back, swallowing the three streams of magic as if they were nothing.
Corbin groaned. “Hang on. Without the knowledge of pulling the spell apart, it is power against power. This has Auralee written all over it.”
He was right and he was wrong. I could see her signature, but I could also see Eric’s, and two others. One more familiar than the other.
“Four,” I breathed out. “There are four signatures in the storm.”
“Then I guess I should help,” Lucas said softly. He was at my back, but I didn’t turn, not wanting to take my eyes off the storm as it grew. His hand brushed against the back of my neck. “Forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive, Chuckles,” I said softly. “I love you unconditionally.”
His magic flared blue and dark, wrapped around ours and then shot into the sky. For just a moment, I thought it would be enough, that we’d be able to pull the storm down.
But instead, it grew larger, more violent.
A tornado touched down across the room, spinning and weaving toward us. My arms dripped with sweat and all I could do was stare at the natural disaster coming our way.
“Help us,” I whispered but wasn’t sure who I was whispering to. But it was answered.
There was a scream and something hard and pointed pressed against my back. Strength and understanding ripped through me and I saw what I needed to do. The storm was a recipe with ingredients to it. If I took one out, the entire thing would collapse. So simple, and yet not one of us had thought of it.
One aspect . . .I stared at the heavy clouds as the wind whipped around us. One aspect like the rain being held in the clouds. I wove my magic through the underbelly of the dark clouds and pulled them open, like unzipping a bag of rice.
The rain exploded out of the clouds, all the energy of the storm sucked into the fall of the water. I pulled my magic away as did Corbin, Sterling, and Lucas.
The storm still rumbled above us but the tornado eased and the power that left my hair standing on end was gone.
“How did you do that?” Corbin twisted to look at me and I turned to look at the unicorn mare.
“I had help. Thank you.” I put my hand to my heart and bowed my head, the movements automatic.
She tipped her head and gave a low snort.
There were no words and yet we understood one another. As long as I lived, I would fight for the unicorns, to keep them from this kind of horror.
“Ro
se.” Her name breathed through me. I ran to her side and took her hands. The touch of the unicorn’s horn had opened more than how to tackle the storm. I knew how to use my power, all of it.
I sent it into Rose. To her head where the injury was, to the back of her neck, to her heart. A piece at a time, I healed the wounds she’d suffered.
I smiled down at her. “Rose, wake up.”
She didn’t move. I stared at her. “Rose?”
The unicorn stepped up beside me and her hide shivered as she shifted …a beautiful woman stood where she’d been only a second before.
“She sleeps in the land of the dead, child. Her heart has found something she cannot leave.”
I stared at her. “How do I bring her back?”
She shook her head. “You do not. Either she will find her way back or she will stay forever lost. You have given her the chance to make that choice.”
“She’s a mage, too, isn’t she?”
Her violet eyes sparkled. “She is. But she is a mage of war, not of healing like you. That is often the way with siblings.”
My jaw dropped open. “She’s . . .my sister?”
“Your father was a busy man.” She drew a breath. “You have earned the respect of my people. You risked your life to save all of us.”
“I could not have done it without you.”
She shook her head. “Let me tell you something. What do you see when you look at me?”
“Right now, a beautiful woman.” I frowned. “Why?”
“Your Cabal sees a unicorn. You are a healer, but you are also a woman of divination. You see through the shadows and magic to the truth of things. They will never see the magic the way you do. Be ready for that.” She tipped her head to one side. “One of your men is sick. You should attend to him.”
I held my hand out to her. “If you have need of me…”
“We will come for you.” Her smile was beauty incarnate and it drew tears to my eyes as she stepped back and her body shimmered and shifted into that of a four-legged unicorn.
She spun, called out with a high whinny and then she and her foal bolted across the room.
I watched them go only for a moment before I turned from them to run in the other direction.
