mouth to defend herself, the shadow cats might have a way to lock on to her energy. They had tracked her there, but so far, they couldn’t get past Isai’s safeguards, let alone her own that she’d added to the complicated weave.
Julija. Her name was a hiss of displeasure accompanied by another, particularly vicious jab. The skin on her wrist suddenly split and blood began to drip to the floor. You will die there, wherever he has taken you. There is no one that can save you from the things I can do to you.
She managed to breathe through the pain, but when she crawled the scant foot to the bed to pull herself up, her face was reflected there. Her skin appeared to be sloughing off. Looking down she could see dark spots opening all over her skin. The pressure on her chest was tremendous, as if an elephant sat there. Her heart stumbled, and the air refused to go in or out of her lungs. She fell to the floor, the thick carpet cushioning her fall and preventing sound from escaping.
Julija stilled the chaos of her brain, the images telling her she would die in agony if she didn’t comply with her father’s demand. She had trained for this day. Was fully prepared. She just had to find a way to get enough air to carry out her plan.
As if Isai had heard her need, dirt and rock spewed into a mini volcano, erupting a few feet from her. He emerged, fully clothed, looking unstoppable. He crouched beside her, lifted her into his arms and took her mouth, pushing air into her lungs. Immediately, the paralysis left her, and she was breathing again.
He grinned at her and winked like a co-conspirator. He waved his hand in the air as if to say, “take over” and then he lifted her wrist to his mouth to capture the ruby red drops dripping from the tear. His tongue slid over the laceration and he licked up the few that were still running down her arm. He didn’t see the dark spots or the skin sloughing off her face.
He turned toward the sound of the frantic scratching. He held up his fingers, indicating two. She nodded in agreement. She was confident in her ability to manipulate illusions, to cast them and repel them, and to send them where she wanted them to go. She lifted her hands into the air and began to form a pattern using graceful movements of her arms, wrists, hands and fingers.
Scatter, dissipate, disperse, dispel,
I bind these illusions that were born by air.
Warrior bird, talons of steel,
Within this pattern turn and reveal.
Fire I call you and command you to burn,
All visible threads so none may return.
Anatolie’s scream of agony resounded through her mind. She bent her head, ashamed. She had always promised herself she wouldn’t use her abilities for anything but good. Hurting another being, even one such as her father, by using her gifts made her feel slightly sick.
Isai wrapped his arm around her waist and bent to brush kisses along the corner of her eye. His hands went to frame both sides of her head. There was a feeling of warmth and the piercing needle was gone, receding with the pain.
“He’s in my mind so he knows how to get to me.”
“You have a shield that is unbelievably strong.”
Her gaze jumped to his face, looked right into those sapphire eyes of his. What she saw there sent her stomach on a slow roll. “But you can get past it, right? I’ve felt you struggle a couple of times when you wanted to, but you didn’t. My father found a way.”
“That gives him access to you that we don’t want. Can you build one he cannot breach?”
Julija liked that he asked—that he thought she could. She hated to disappoint him. “I’ve tried so many times. It’s like he knows everything I’m doing almost before I do it and he knocks it down.”
His hand slid from her shoulder to her wrist and then his fingers closed around hers. Both were ignoring the yowling cats, or at least trying to. Now, the cats sounded desperate, like if they didn’t get to Julija, something terrible was going to happen.
“We can build one together if you trust me enough to allow me to help you.” He pulled her hand to his chin and regarded her intensely with his vividly colored eyes.