Heart of Vengeance (Alice Worth #6) - Lisa Edmonds Page 0,114

what I saw, even as my dark magic sought out of the last of the shades and gravelings and turned them to dust.

Someone grabbed my arm so tightly I thought the bones would shatter, but even that pain didn’t register through the rush of power.

And just like that, the power vanished like someone had flipped a switch. With it went the pleasure, the pain, and my ability to stand. I dropped in a heap, too confused to do much more than breathe raggedly and cradle my arm. My vision swam and I shivered uncontrollably, though not from cold.

A dark figure crouched beside me. “I warned you if you weren’t careful, you wouldn’t be satisfied with the magic you were born with.”

Ronan.

I wanted to tell him I hadn’t had a choice, but the numbness gave way to agony. My entire body felt as though I was being crushed by stones. I set my jaw and tried not to cry out, but the pain was too much. I screamed.

Ronan cursed. His fingers brushed across my forehead and along my hairline. The touch was intimate and unwelcome, but the pain faded.

Finally, I took a shuddering breath and looked up into Ronan’s glacier-blue eyes. “Cut it out of me,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Please, cut it out of me, while I can still think straight. Before I turn into the monster who gave it to me.”

“No blade I know can do that,” he said, with real regret. “I would do this for you, if I could.”

“Why? Who am I to you?”

He stroked my hair, but not like a lover. His gentle touch reminded me of Sean or Nan comforting a distraught member of the pack. “I don’t know,” he told me. “But I’ve come to believe we were meant to take this journey together—the whole strange, misbegotten lot of us.”

“Speak for yourself, buddy,” Malcolm said, floating into view over Ronan’s shoulder. “Strange maybe, but hardly misbegotten.”

Malcolm had never said much about his parents other than that they’d died when he was young, but Lucy was the forbidden offspring of a Guardian and a human mother. I was part mage and part shifter, the product of a secret romance between my mother and Daniel. Born of my blood, infection by the werewolf virus, and shifter magic, Daisy was…whatever she was, given physical form by Miraç’s black magic. We were certainly a motley, mixed-up group. I thought of the strange glimpse of silver-blue I’d seen while I was destroying the shades and gravelings. Was Ronan giving us a clue about his own origin?

My hand caught his wrist. “What are you?”

“I am just as you see me, nothing more.” He glanced up, and his expression darkened. “Unfortunately, the Spartoi hasn’t succumbed to his wounds after all.”

I pushed myself up and looked toward the clearing. Bloody and breathing hard, Lucy stood just outside the Spartoi’s reach, sword in hand. The blade dripped graveling goop. Daisy stood on Kyrios’s chest, her paw pinning his sword arm to the ground and her teeth inches from his face.

“Why are you here?” Lucy demanded.

“I have tracked you since yesterday, when you defeated the Underworld creatures near Oakdale.” Kyrios spat out blood.

Son of a bitch. Not only had Ronan watched us fight the gravelings from some secret hiding place, but this Spartoi had been crouched in the bushes too. We should have sold tickets.

Lucy was getting madder by the second. “Why the hell did you track us?”

“I wished to know where the creatures came from, and I believed you might lead me to the source of their incursion.”

“Easier than doing any work yourself, I suppose,” Ronan said, earning a glower from the Spartoi.

“We’re here to put a stop to these invasions from the Underworld,” Lucy told Kyrios. “So either stop interfering with us or I’ll do what I have to do and text your prefect where to pick up your remains.”

“I alone will close this cursed door,” he ground out, his dark gaze on Daisy. “And I will certainly take this creature. It is magnificent.”

“Wrong answer,” Lucy said. “And not an option.”

Moving almost too fast for the human eye to see, Kyrios palmed some kind of gleaming dark blade in his left hand and drove it hilt-deep into Daisy’s side. My wolf let out a sharp sound of pain and staggered away from him. The mercenary soldier flipped to his feet and swung his sword at Daisy’s head.

Everyone reacted at once.

I was on my feet before I could form a conscious thought