Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,124

shown up on Sixth and Jarrod had realized that his last best hope wasn’t going to happen, he’d tried with every fiber of his being to take it in stride.

He’d remained calm. He’d stayed on the sidelines. He’d been a fucking team player and distracted himself with plans and chaos gods and enigmatic clan leaders who could get inside his head. He’d been good, damn it. He’d never gone full incubus or caused anyone to live their worst fears or used the darkest of his dark magic spells, the ones he kept quiet about, the ones he had no idea why he’d ever learned.

All the while, Jarrod had steadfastly maintained some sort of stupid, worthless hope that there was still the slightest chance everything would be okay. It was pigheaded, really. Deep down, he knew that too. Yet, that was exactly what he did even now as he took the stairs two at a time and spoke the words of the entry spell that made the new level appear before him, stretching out the levels above and below as if he were Harry Potter about to catch a train at platform nine and three-quarters.

Except it wasn’t a platform but a garage level, and it wasn’t a train but probably more like a motorcycle. And if anything, Jarrod was a Malfoy, not a Potter.

He transitioned through the barrier as if getting an electricity bath like Nicola Tesla. And as he stepped out the other side, he slowed, taking in his surroundings with a now fulfilled sense of dread. It was the exact same scene from his vision; a large group of people, mostly in black, were gathered closely together. At their center was something important, something that bowed their collective heads and silenced their lips.

Sterling found himself walking forward. His feet now moved as if he were in that vision, in that dream, drawing closer to the ruinous subject of his personal prophecy with each step. As he moved, the sea of faceless onlookers parted for him. Did they know he was meant to be there? Could they sense that fate would have him look upon that final image? Is that why they stepped aside until at last, he’d waged his way to the center and was steeling himself to his core.

Before him lie two dead bodies, not one. Jarrod blinked, at once confused. He vaguely recognized these women, but they were certainly not vital to him.

The woman between them was important to him. However, she was very much alive.

She was injured and had been bandaged. But she was alive.

Across from Jarrod stood Mace, Cain, and a few of the Monsters clan members Jarrod recognized from earlier. There was also a man there who was very obviously a sentinel. They had a look about them of perfect proportionality, a kind of attractiveness that was classical, like the subject of an Italian renaissance painting. By the way the sentinel couldn’t take his eyes off Annaleia, Jarrod imagined he was her sentinel.

But why was he there?

“Anna….”

Annaleia startled where she sat on her knees between the bodies, each of her hands grasping ineffectively onto one of theirs. Slowly, she straightened, turning to look at him over her shoulder.

Oh no, he realized when he saw the look in her eyes. Oh no, it’s this again.

And there it was.

This was the reason he was there, the reason he’d had the vision. It had to be. This right here was the reason the wardens and sovereigns had parted and allowed him through. It was because they knew he’d been there that night fifty years ago. The night she’d had to make a choice like this one.

Annaleia Faith was being forced to make the decision she hated more than anything in the world. Circumstance had thrust upon her the same one she’d faced fifty years ago, the night she became Withered.

Jarrod had been there that night.

She’d been faced with so much that fateful day. It hadn’t been a simple matter for her to give herself up to him. It had meant so much more to her than casual sex. She’d had to come to grips with dying, coming back to life, seeing her family dead – saving them. And then Jarrod had… he had taken her to his bed, this tiny figure filled with so much turmoil and so many choices. It seemed so callous now. He’d been desperate and time had been short, but despite the anima, the life he’d seen in her even then, Anna was