“Don’t pity me, Mr. Bright,” Drew says with a laugh, straining against the magical bonds that Abra has cast on his wrists. “With a face like yours…bet you need all the pity you can get.”
My father seems to disregard this. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and turns to me.
“Aurora.” He looks at me with a certain amount of softness for a moment. For that moment, I can almost believe that he’s really my father. That I’m really his daughter. It doesn’t last. “I’ll admit, I was surprised to find you with the emerald. Suppose that was your mother’s doing.”
I hear the swish of a blade being loosed as he curls his knotted fingers around the emerald and yanks it free from my neck.
Fuck.
“You don’t even know what this is, do you?” He holds it up to the light. “Stupid girl. I wanted a boy, you know. Your mother was the one who hoped for a daughter. Witches…more trouble than you’re worth.”
“You have no idea,” I tell him. If my wrists were free, I’d be putting even more scars on his awful face.
“No matter. You won’t be trouble for long.” The blade flashes before my eyes for a moment…then, my father presses it against my cheek. It’s so cold, it makes me shiver. “Your mother should have told you, I think. If she had…perhaps you would have chosen your sides with more care. I could have raised you right…ah. But it’s too late now. The lines have already been drawn.”
I don’t even feel the blade cut into my skin. It’s that sharp. But I feel the sting after. I feel the warmth of my blood running down my left cheek.
And as I feel it, I see the same blood well up on my father’s left cheek, a weaponless wound.
“You and I are bound together, Aurora. Also your mother’s doing, funnily enough. For better or for worse…for now.” He holds the emerald beneath my jaw, catching the dripping blood on its surface. I feel the magic pulse from the jewel as my blood sinks into it. It’s hot. Intense. Like a huge release of power.
It feels like something’s been broken. The breaks are off. Something’s been undone.
“You must be…what, twenty-five, Drew? Twenty-six, maybe?” My father shrugs, turning the emerald on Drew. “No matter. It will be enough.”
He holds the emerald over Drew’s head. I see a flash of fear jolt through Drew’s eyes as his head cracks back unnaturally.
I fight even harder against the invisible bonds at my wrists.
It’s not enough.
White wisps of mist begin pouring from Drew’s lips at my father’s unspoken command. The emerald sucks it all in, glowing brighter and brighter as it fills.
And the brighter the emerald glows…the paler Drew gets.
“You shouldn’t have brought this here today, Rory,” my father tells me casually. I can feel tears forming in my eyes as I realize what he’s doing to Drew—but there’s no stopping it. There’s nothing I can do. “If your mother had only told you…ah. But I’m so glad you did.”
“Rory,” Drew croaks. He can’t look at me. Can’t even raise his head now. “Rory—I’m sorry… I love…”
Then the emerald lights up in a blinding flash of light. When it recedes, Drew’s entire body slumps.
Like Cassandra’s at the gates of Aisling.
Like Dr. Belmont’s at the Warden’s dinner table.
Dead.
Gone.
“Such a waste.” But there’s not even a hint of regret in my father’s voice—or in his eyes as he turns his gaze back to me again. “Stupid girl. It’s high time you learned that meddling with things you don’t know has a price.”
Rory
“Noooooo!!!!”
The scream rips from my throat, raw and guttural and wrenching, tearing from my open mouth and ripping my heart wide open as I stare at Drew’s lifeless body slumped at my feet.
My best friend. My love. He’s gone. I failed him. He was willing to follow me to the ends of the earth, to give everything to protect me—including his life. And I stood by helplessly as he was murdered.
I hear a ringing in my ears, the echoing of my own screams off the walls of the dining room. And laughter. I hear sick, maniacal cackling cutting through it all.
Tearing my eyes from Drew, I lift my gaze to my father, stooped and aged only moments before, but now filled with renewed power as he clasps the emerald in his palm. He definitely isn’t youthful, still looking as if he’s a breath away from the grave, but he holds himself tall now, his eyes glowing with the power of Drew’s life force.
“Why?” I manage to croak out. “You could have just taken me. I would have gone freely if given the choice. Why did you have to kill him?”
I likely never would have gone willingly with my father. But if it meant saving Drew, perhaps I might. Now I have no choice but to face whatever ill fate my father has in store for me, and I’ve lost Drew in the process.
“All magic has a price, Aurora. You should know that by now. It just so happens that the most powerful magic often requires a life.” He shrugs as if that means nothing. How many lives has he taken in his quest for…for what? For ultimate power? It has to be more than that. What did he mean twenty-five or twenty-six years? Did he use Drew’s life to extend his own? Or is there something more behind his madness?
I’m still being held by Abra’s spell so I can’t move away from him as he leans in close, his breath stale and decayed, reeking of death itself. When he holds the emerald up to my mouth, I fear that I’m about to suffer the same fate as Drew. This is how I’ll die. Powerless and alone, my guardians taken out one by one to leave me defenseless.
My own power is weakened and I’m left with nothing to draw from. Nothing but the power from the people in this room, the ones still standing. The five of them are all standing once again—Xander’s mother and father having pulled themselves to their feet. They’re hanging back behind the Warden and Abra, who are keeping several feet back from my own father as he smiles wickedly.
“Now, what to do with your life? Now that you’re weakened and left with no one to protect you?” He echoes my own thoughts almost eerily.
Then I feel it. The touch of his magic, cold and dark and menacing. A shiver races through my body as my father probes my magical energy with his own.
“Mm, just as I thought. Not so powerful now, are you, Aurora?” He makes a tsking sound. “Just like your mother in the end. Thinking you know best, thinking you’re untouchable. Didn’t end so well for her, either.”
The rage that wells inside me as my father so callously talks about the deaths of the people I love is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It burns through me, racing like wildfire through my veins.
My father’s eyes widen with shock at the sudden surge of magic that comes from a deep, untapped well within me, a reserve I didn’t know I had. But then his black pupils light up with what I can only describe as greed.
“Yes, that’s it, Aurora.”
I feel his own magic wrap around mine in tendrils at the surge, pulling, drawing…feeding. He stands up straighter with every second, his whitened hair streaking with black now, his face smoothing slightly as I witness him age backward before my eyes.
And I not only feel myself weaken, I feel my very body begin to ache. My joints feel stiff, my skin feels thin, and a single lock of my raven hair turns silver. Our life forces, connected by the emerald. He’s drawing on mine, taking it from me to renew his own. That explains why he looked aged far beyond his years. It can only mean that as I’ve grown in power, his has faded right along with the decaying of his physical body.
As he grins maniacally, hovering over me now, the new knowledge lets me meet his smile right back with a triumphant, haughty one of my own.
Now, instead of resisting the assault of his magic, I reach out to, grasp onto it with my own and pull. The wisps of my diminishing energy clutch onto the slimy, inky black of his life force and I draw it into myself. I feel a wave of nausea. For a moment, I almost consider abandoning my plan, the blackness of his soul nea
rly more than I’m willing to touch a second longer. But it’s the only way. If I have any chance of gaining the upper hand and saving myself, I have no choice.
So I fight.
I draw on his magic with all that I have. The ease of it almost surprises me. I’m still stronger than I thought. And as I take in more and more of his magic, mine seems to grow exponentially in power. I glance around the room at the other standing there watching us and realize they’re all working together now to give my father their energies as well.
That’s a mistake. Because now they’re all weakened and vulnerable themselves. As the power inside me swells and grows, Abra’s spell pinning me to the wall is shattered with barely a thought tossed her way. I raise my hand and cast a white ignus in her direction, knocking her unconscious as it throws her back against the wall.
My father’s eyes widen in alarm as he realizes what’s happening. He pushes back, trying to gain the advantage again in this battle of magical dominance. But he’s too late. I’m already stronger than I’ve ever felt, and I haven’t even taken everything he’s got. I step forward, and he falters back, his hair colorless once again, his eyes fading, his skin sagging as he begins to stoop.
“Aurora, darling,” he says now, his raspy voice placating, as if this is all just one big misunderstanding. Fuck that.
I send a blast toward him, knocking him to his back, and now I’m the one hovering over him, smiling a wicked grin of my own. I can feel the tinges of darkness from the magic I’m now channeling oozing through my veins, and I try to disassociate from it. Try not to face the fact that I am in fact playing in things I shouldn’t be.
But as I see my guardians and Killian lying on the ground, Drew lifeless beside them, I know I can’t give up now. I don’t have their strength to draw on, to keep me from going too far with my magic—losing control as Bright witches do, as Mrs. North liked to say. But I know my heart. I know my intentions. I may be channeling dark magic, but only because it’s that or admit defeat.
Suddenly, I see a vision in my head, an image of the room, but from another perspective, one outside myself. My father chuckles darkly between fits of coughing, and I realize he’s projecting this into my head. The image is one of the five of them standing, each with a sapphire in their pockets, my father in the middle of them, holding the emerald necklace. And I know that he’s showing me what’s next. That the five of them will have the ability to travel into the past once they’ve disposed of me.
I’m not sure what he hoped to accomplish with that vision, but it only serves to stoke my blazing magic into a raging inferno. I hold up my hand and send a blast of magic to the five of them, zeroing in on the sapphires that I now know they each possess. There’s an explosion of blue-white light as my magic connects with the sapphires. I’m blinded for a moment, but when the light fades, I see that I’ve knocked all of them unconscious—all of them apart from my father, who now looks as if he’s taking his dying breath.
If I wanted to, I feel that I could kill him now. The emerald is blazing so brightly I can feel the heat from it, even from where it’s clasped in my father’s hand. The spell connecting our life forces. I’m not sure what other spells that stone has cast, but I know that it’s connected to necromancy. And while I may be funneling my father’s dark magic, that’s where I draw the line. I’m not going anywhere near that shit.
So I pull back momentarily, easing up on the stream of magic I’m draining from him. And that’s my big mistake. Because he takes the opportunity for all it’s worth, taking one last enormous pull of my magic. He pushes himself to his knees, then shoots me one last vision before he’s gone. Evaporating into thin air…and taking the emerald along with him.
What I see has me falling to my knees. The five of them again. Only this time, the four that are truly remaining are shown in their real image, sprawled across the floor of the dining room, but with singes holes in their clothing. My father is standing in the middle, clutching the emerald and smiling as he begins to fade into ether. He has a hole in the breast of his jacket as well. And what stands out the most—what my father wanted me to see—is that every last one of the sapphires is destroyed.
Then I’m back in my own head again, the vision gone, my magic snuffed out as I slump to the floor next to Drew’s body. And it all floods in at once, overwhelming my mind and my senses. The only thing I can think is: it’s over.
We’ve lost.
The sapphires. The emerald. Drew.
Everything we sought to accomplish was for naught. My men—my soul mates—were willing to sacrifice it all for me, accompany me on this fool’s mission and walk right into the enemy’s lair.
But Drew…Drew made the ultimate sacrifice. He gave his life for me. The man I’ve loved my entire life. Gone.
He may not have been my bonded guardian, but in my heart he was my soul mate. He was my guardian in the truest sense of the word, giving me his heart and soul and placing my life above his own.
I hear a rustle of fabric and look up from where I’m huddled over Drew’s still-warm body, my fingers clenched in his shirt. Through my tears, I see a struggling and gasping Killian push to all fours and crawl over to the Warden’s body, fumbling through the vile man’s pockets to discover what I already know.
That the sapphires are gone. Destroyed by my own hand.
This is all my fault, all of it. And for what? To uncover the secrets of my past? To satisfy some all-consuming curiosity
But Killian doesn’t look surprised to find no stone on the Warden’s body. In fact, he gives a grim nod, almost to himself, as if he’s only confirming what he already knew as well.
I watch, tears falling from my eyes, as he moves from the Warden to Mr. North, then to Mrs. North and Abra. Each time nodding. Finally, he lifts his gaze, and what I see there stuns me.
Triumph. Pride. Success.
As if this entire evening is what he’s been waiting for.
I straighten, staring back at him as he carefully rises to his feet, wincing in pain from the attacks that took all of my guardians down. He approaches me, his silver irises seeming to coalesce into a misty swirl as they bore in to mine.
Then the air in the room shifts.
“It’s time.”
A simple statement, one that could mean anything. But I know whatever it means holds more gravity than anything that’s come yet.
Killian’s eyes drop briefly to Drew’s lifeless body and he stretches a hand to mine. I let him help me to my feet, confused by what he’s saying and still trying to come to grips with everything that just happened.
When he grasps my fingers in his own, a blazing fire roars to life in my palm, his magic reaching out to mine in a way that can only mean one thing…
“Killian?” I whisper. “What’s going on?”
But I know what’s going on because I’ve felt this before. In spite of the destruction around us, bodies scattered like shrapnel, I can’t seem to look away from him. Can’t stop myself from stepping closer, right toward his waiting arms.
“What had to happen, my love.”
His words are confirmation enough, especially after seeing the look on his face as he confirmed the stones were gone. This is all part of some sick plan of fate. All along, Killian knew what we were walking into. He knew my father was the Chancellor. He knew I would destroy the stones. He must have even known that Drew would meet his end tonight.
I choke on a sob at the thought of Drew. I want to lash out at Killian, knock him back to the ground with a burst of my magic, make him hurt the way I’m hurting.
But I also want to fucking throw myself into his arms and seal the fate I know is coming. I feel drawn to him, a pull beyond my control, the magic now connecting us flowing freely, back and forth in the delicate give and take he first showed me.
As our fingers entwine, he lifts our hands to his lips and presses a delicate kiss to my palm. The light flares out in blinding white rays. The way it only could by a kiss from a guardian.
&nb
sp; Killian. He’s my guardian.
The look of reverence in eyes would make it clear enough even without the sudden flare of heat in my body, energy running through my limbs and meeting at my heart.
But there’s so much I don’t understand. The cost of our sacrifices tonight are too much to bear.
“Drew,” I whisper as Killian’s magic envelops me, the feeling of the draw of guardian bond beginning to take hold.
He nods. “We mustn’t wait too long.”
Before I can ask him what that means, he takes my hand and turns my finger to my own face, damp not only with tears but with the fresh blood still flowing from the gash on my cheek. Then he nudges me with his power, an encouragement, and I feel my own responding as if it recognizes his intent.
My fingertip begins to glow white-hot, warming my cheek as Killian draws his hands from the top of the wound, down over my cheekbone to the tip of my chin. Instantly, the pain ceases. I run my fingers over my cheek to find that the wound is healed, leaving behind a tender scar.
Killian runs his thumb over it as well, caressing my cheek, as he gazes at me tenderly. “Beautiful. Just how I remember you.”
There’s so much love and adoration in those time-wizened eyes. I don’t know whether he’s remembering me from the future or the past, but either way, I’m strangely aware that Killian knows me far better than I know him, and I wonder what he’s experienced that’s still ahead for me.
“Killian,” I whisper, my heart pounding out of my chest.
“Shh. Do you trust me, my love?”
Trust? What does trust even mean? It’s a concept that’s not as clear as it should be. The men around me trusted me—and look where that got them. I struggled to trust even my own guardians in the beginning. They’ve only just begun to trust each other. And Killian is asking me to trust him—knowing that I know he was aware of the events that transpired here tonight long before they happened. How he could have prevented all of this.
From the very moment I asked him at Aisling if he would take me into the past, he knew it would lead to this moment. To him becoming my guardian. Do I trust that all of this had to happen, as he just said?
Emerald Vows: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Marked Souls Book 3) Page 15
