Blood Pledged (Arcane Arts Academy #3) - Elena Lawson Page 0,96

to fall to the ground and let it consume me, and then sleep.

“Harper,” he said, more forcefully this time and pulled me up to look at him, startling at what he saw. The fear in his eyes was unmistakable. His grip on my arms tightened, almost painfully. “Let it go. Release it, now!”

It was sort of funny, how he looked when he was afraid. A bubble of laughter rose like a helium balloon behind my ribcage, expanding and rising, nothing to stop it from finding a place among the clouds. I couldn’t stop it.

I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. My sides were splitting, and the darkness laughed too. It held me, caressed me, whispered things.

The sound of my own broken laughter was foreign to my ears. As though it was coming from someone else.

My head jerked to the side and bright stars sparked in the dark spots around the edges of my vision. A screaming pain stung at my cheek and my ears rang with the sharp sound.

I blinked and the laughter stopped. I realized what I was doing and what was happening in a brief moment of clarity, and pushed with every ounce of my strength, driving the dark tendrils of magic latching onto me like vines back down where they came from. Into the bones of Rosewood Abbey, and further, into the foundation of the earth. The house shuddered and groaned. For a second, I was afraid the force of my release would tear it to splinters.

But it didn’t. After a moment, the shaking of the floor was gone, traded in for the shaking of my hands as I came back to myself.

“You’re okay.” Elias crushed me against the solid, steady warmth of his chest, holding me tightly as though he was afraid I might fall apart in his arms.

His body quaked against me as the weight gradually lifted from my bones and the air in my lungs started to do what it was supposed to again. I took a long breath and but stopped mid exhale, pushing myself out of Elias’ grasp.

Bianca.

On wobbly legs, I stood and moved to where Cal was laying her limp body on my bed. No. What have I done?

Rose knew this would happen. I was going to kill her. Could you kill a ghost? My hands tightened into claws at my sides. I knew one thing for certain—I would try.

“Move,” I said to Cal after he’d set her down, and shoved my way through to her, my pulse unsteady. It raced and then slowed and then skipped beats altogether.

“Is she…?” I heard Draven ask from somewhere behind me.

“No,” I snarled, and laid my hands on her chest, letting go of a sob when I felt the faint beating of her heart beneath the layers of lace on her corset. She’s alive.

Drawing on the little bits of energy I had left in my body, I gathered them for one more spell, twining all the scattered tendrils of magic cowering from the darkness inside into one healing sigil that grew from my still-bleeding palm in an orb of beautiful golden light.

I pressed it down into her chest. Please.

Please wake up.

Bianca sprang up a second later, gasping for breath, the whiteness staining her irises fading back to their usual light brown. “Harper?” Her voice was weak, but she was awake, alive. She squinted as though it were difficult to see me. Like part of her was still elsewhere.

“I’m here,” I said, grabbing her hand, realizing a little belatedly that I was getting my blood all over her. “I’m here. You’re okay.”

She swallowed and some of the color returned to her face. “No.” Her eyes finally focused on mine, fixing me with a fearful stare. “It’s not okay.”

“B?”

“I know where she is,” Bianca said. Her hands stiffened in mine, grabbing hold of me tighter, her terror seeping into me, too. “Donovan has her.”

32

Harper

“Are you sure?” I asked her for the fifth time. She couldn’t remember everything, just pieces, but she remembered following Donovan into a cold place. A large chamber that was accessed by a long turning staircase made of damp stone. The doorway to access it was either in the library or the faculty wing, she wasn’t sure.

“I think there were two entrances because I can remember him leading me through both before he…” She couldn’t finish, and I didn’t think I wanted to know what exactly he did to her down there.

“To a—a sort of basement?” I was trying to wrap my head around