Blake
I slowly place my fingertips against Dean’s forehead as he writhes, spasming as… his mind is torn to absolute shreds. It’s sloppy. Untrained. Memories sprint toward my powers, blooming into images that make my blood boil. Him hurting Marianna over and over again. The memories split and shatter before my eyes, but it’s not my doing.
I pull out of his mind and rise, my eyes on the two women standing shellshocked at the top of the stairs.
“Go to them. Go!” Soren barks, pinning an increasingly frantic Dean to the ground. I catch Soren’s gaze, and he nods, a silent comradery expanding in the space between us. He’s not going to let this man get back to his feet.
I’m at the top of the stairs in an instant. Marianna is kneeling at Skye’s side, begging her to wake up, to stop, but Marianna’s words are slurred as blood drips from her swollen, split lips. Bruises fan over her cheekbones and both eyes, and her nose is definitely broken. I grip the doorframe so tight it cracks to stop myself from returning downstairs to smash Dean’s head in with my boot, but Leona is suddenly at my side, her hand gripping my arm.
She pulls me out the haze of murderous rage and back into reality, where my daughter is…
I step out of Leona’s hold and kneel in front of Skye. Her nose is bleeding, and her arms are as cold as ice when I smooth my hands over her skin before gripping her, saying calmly, “Stop.”
She trembles, tears flooding down her cheeks. I can’t even look at Marianna right now. Otherwise, I’ll go absolutely, unapologetically feral and kill Dean so violently even the most skilled crime scene cleaners won’t be able to ride this house of his blood, but I feel Marianna’s presence beside me, her hand flat against my lower back.
“Skye, you have to stop,” I say as ice forms behind her eyes, her skin going frosty. But it’s useless. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She has no idea what she’s capable of, but I do.
She’s killing him. She wants to.
I can’t let her do that. She’s seven. She’s just a kid.
I caress her cheek, leaning my forehead against hers, and close my eyes.
Her powers are… everywhere. They’re just… bouncing, pinging off Dean’s memories and thoughts, wrapping around those glowing, spherical structures like talons before popping them like bubbles. I can feel her fear in her powers as she empties his mind, but her powers are so young, so excitable and untrained. She has no control over anything she’s doing. It’s an emotional response. Something I know so well. Something I had to train out of myself over the course of years until I was a shell of the person I was when I was her age.
The more I feel, the more dangerous I am… to myself and others.
I smooth my powers over hers, imagining them like a hand, reaching, gathering, finding the strands of violet and stardust and collecting them like a ball of string.
“Stop,” I whisper as my powers surge, but she won’t.
Marianna whimpers beside me, scooching closer, laying a hand on Skye’s thigh. “Please, baby. It’s time to wake up. You have to wake up now. Please–”
The tapestry flares to life. It takes me by surprise. She shouldn’t be able to access this yet, to travel through the planes of our world, to read between the stars, between the worlds of the living and the dead, but I’m watching her figure it out in real time, and I can’t… I can’t let it continue.
“No,” I breathe and yank on her powers, pulling her out of Dean’s mind in a final, desperate push.
But she’s done… so much damage. I can see that. I can feel it as my own powers retreat, and the tapestry begins to blur.
And she… my daughter, my powerful daughter… finds his tether to our world, his lifeline, and plucks it free of the tapestry in her final act of vengeance before my powers pull her out of Dean’s head.
The room erupts around me in startling clarity. I scoop Skye into my arms. She’s freezing, turning to ice in real time as her powers reach a critical low. She’s too young to be doing this. She doesn’t have her wolf yet to keep her warm, to balance her conflicting magic. “Blankets! We need–blankets.” Leona appears at my side and takes Skye from my arms, wrapping her in a thick robe. Marianna struggles to her feet but can’t manage it, and I catch her before she doubles over, her hand pressed to her stomach as she hisses in pain.
“Is–is she okay? Skye? Skye!” Marianna’s voice drops in anguish that cuts me to the bone. I steady her while she babbles, trying to reach for Skye, but a figure hovers in the doorway–two people. Soren and… Maeve.
Maeve drops the hood of her cloak and looks around the room, first at Marianna, then Leona, and Skye.
She stares at Skye for several seconds, stunned into silence, then her eyes turn to mine. “They both need the clinic. I’m taking all three of them there, now.”
“Marianna and Leona can’t handle the jump. They’ve never done it before,” I rush out, shaking my head with a hand extended in Skye’s direction. “Take Skye. She’s–she’s depleting–”
Maeve doesn’t waste an instant, and Leona doesn’t hesitate as she transfers Skye into Maeve’s arms, who cradles Skye, her eyes scanning her face, her still open eyes. Her powers fade, and Maeve… turns back to me.
“This whole time? This is what you were guarding?”
I nod, my mouth going impossibly dry. Marianna leans her head against my shoulder, panting in pain. Soren starts forward, leaning in to murmur something to Maeve, and then she just disappears in a haze of crimson smoke that fades from the space as quickly as it came.
I look at Soren, meeting his gaze. He gives him a short, simple nod to confirm that the man downstairs, the man who terrorized Marianna, Skye, and Leona for years… is dead.
“I’ve got guys on their way to deal with the body,” he says under his breath. “Take them to the castle–”
“I’ll stay behind for now,” Leona cuts in. “To deal with the guards who come. They’ll want to know–”
“There will be no guards,” Soren says, giving her a tight smile. “This is royal family business now. You’re protected.”
“And you can’t stay here,” I add, gathering Marianna into my arms. She feels lighter than usual. “We need to go.”
Leona glances between us, her big blue eyes swimming with emotion I can’t decipher. Relief, I think, takes up the most amount of space. She places her hand against her chest and breathes deeply before nodding. “I’m going to pack up a few things they’ll want.”
“That’s fine. Soren, will you escort her to the castle when she’s done?”
He nods.
Marianna is barely conscious. I move through the night, past the security gate where a guard is slumped, bleeding, trying to wave me down for help. I swipe a hand in his direction, and his eyes briefly light with my powers as they erase the memory of what happened to him. He’ll call for help, but by the time backup arrives to see him safely to a clinic either in town or at the castle, Soren and his friends will have already cleaned up the mess and disposed of Dean in their own way.
I have to give Soren credit. He’s not as bad as I wanted to think.
I shield Marianna with my powers–something I believe stems from our ability to jump from place to place–making us both invisible to wandering eyes. I move under a cloak of darkness around the backside of the palace where the clinic entrance rises into view. I drop the shields the second I reach the wide, glass doors, and within moments, I’m rushed in by witch nurses who take Marianna away, leaving me in the foyer slightly out of breath, my mind tangled by conflicting feelings I couldn’t put into words if I tried.
I don’t know what to do, so I follow them, weaving through sterile hallways and into a room with white walls that smells like astringent and the fresh, cotton scent of the nurse’s uniforms. I barely hear what the healer says to me, what her nurse underlings convey and relay in layman’s terms. I just stand there in the door and look at Marianna, a bloodied mess, and think about how I’d found her gripping the bannister, using her body as a physical shield to stop Dean from going upstairs.
I’d been a few minutes too late to stop this from happening completely.
I’ll carry that regret for the rest of my life.
Only when a familiar voice sounds out directly behind me do I break out of the haze and turn away from Marianna.
Maeve stands in the hallway looking grim, still wearing her crimson cloak and the casual, but pretty, dress she chose for her date night with Soren that was brutally called off.
“Where’s—”
“Skye is asleep upstairs in one of the guest rooms. Leona is with her now.”
I scrub my hand over my face and step into the hallway. One of the nurses closes the door to Marianna’s room behind me like they’ve been waiting for me to leave this entire time.
“Blake–”
“I can’t. Not right now. I can’t talk about this right now–”
“I’m fucking sorry, okay?”
I peek through my fingers at her, taken aback by her tone. Maeve isn’t a soft, understanding person by nature. She’s as cold as me, but instead of curling into herself, she lets her chaos show. But right now, she’s wary. Her eyes are lined with dark circles and full of what I can only describe as sorrow.
She steps closer, gritting her teeth before sighing, “She’s seven, Blake. You’ve been hiding her–them–for seven years? Why?”
“Why do you think?”
She searches my eyes, finding an answer, I suppose, because her shoulders slacken. She doesn’t say I hid them to keep them safe, that I hid them so other people wouldn’t know and find them, let the media terrorize them forever. No, her voice is soft as she says, “You thought Skye would turn out like you if you stuck around, huh?”
“I guess it wasn’t within my control after all.”
“You’re a fucking dumbass,” she says low in her throat, but her eyes are teasing. “Stupid idiot.”
“Do you have anything nice to say? I’ve had a long, terrible night.”
“You need to come to the gallery,” she says, her expression tightening. “Now.”
“I’m not leaving her here by herself.”
“I’ve already given the command to have her moved into the same suite her mom and Skye are staying in. Once she’s stable, she’ll be taken there. For now… I might have fucked up.” She winces and then purses her lips.
“What do you mean?” I’m on edge for multiple reasons now. I don’t like the look in her eyes.
“When you and Soren stole away from the restaurant without a word about where you were going, I went back to the castle in Veiled Valley and told my mom what happened, and… Grandma Ella just happened to be returning from Maatua with… your grandma.”
“No–”
“And now they’re all here. Uhm.” She knits her fingers together, looking surprisingly guilty. “They know.”
“Gods dammit, Maeve!”
“What the fuck else was I supposed to say when I felt Soren beating the ever living fuck out of a man through our bond in the middle of the Goddess damned night, Blake? Riddle me that! The three of them followed me back to Moonrise and demanded answers when I showed up here again with a little girl with the same eyes as you and Sarah. Maddy is–Maddy is beside herself–”
“My parents don’t know about her yet–”
“She’s beside herself with worry about you and Marianna, Blake. They’re in the gallery. I made them wait there for news, and now you need to explain what’s going on before Maddy has an aneurysm, okay?”
I turn back to Marianna’s room, but Maeve grabs my wrist.
“Please? We’re already preparing for war, Blake. No more secrets. No more schemes. We don’t have that kind of time or freedom anymore.”
The door to the room opens abruptly, and the healer steps out, looking incredibly upset. I stiffen, and Maeve bristles beside me.
“Are you her mate?” the healer asks, and not even remotely kindly.
“No, I’m not,” I gut out. The words sink, foul tasting.
“Where is her mate then? I need to speak with him. Warriors are going to be alerted–”
“Alerted to what?” Maeve chimes in, narrowing her eyes at the healer. “Is she all right?”
“No,” the healer snaps back, disgust lacing the word. “She’s under a binding spell, and it’s wreaking havoc on her body. She won’t heal. I can’t break it. It’s coming from her mark.”
Maeve’s jaw goes slack. I glance between the women, utterly confused. “What is going on?”
“That fucking bastard,” Maeve whisper snarls, shaking her head. To the healer, she says, “Keep her stable. I’ll be with you shortly.” She grips my arms and tears me away from the door while I try to dig in my heels.
“Enough, Blake. Things just changed. We’re dealing with dark magic now. You need to go to Crescent Falls as soon as fucking possible.”