Cursed by Flame (Dragonborn Daughters #3) - Kimber White Page 0,1

Battle Flag. I knew this one. It had to be fifty years old. My grandmother would have jammed to it. Well, she would have, if she’d been a normal person born in the nineteen seventies like everyone else’s grandmother if you were my age. My grandmother, on the other hand, was over a thousand years old.

“How dark do you want to go tonight, Phaedra?” the earth mage asked.

“Black as night,” I whispered, hating myself for it a little. Even pretending I wanted stolen magic felt awful. How many witches had suffered at the hands of the Ring to feed this need? How many humans had died from taking a hit off something they could never understand or handle?

But I needed to know. I needed this guy and all those point men in the corners of the room to think I was just another strung-out spellhead looking for a fix. It was the only way. I had to get in. I had to find out who they were stealing from and how.

“Right,” he laughed, then leaned in and licked me again. I focused on a spot of chipped paint in the ceiling. The Golden Taurus was nothing to look at from the outside. Just a run-down, faded green barn. But the inside had been glamoured into a dance club with gold mirror balls and laser lights. Five dance cages hung above us. Musclebound men wearing little more than chains spun and swayed in two of them. Women wearing less than I did thrust their hips in the other three. All of them floating on borrowed magic. Dazzled with it in the throes of ecstasy. They were the draw. Happy. Free. Everyone in the room wanted to be like them. For a price, they could be.

“Come on,” the earth mage said. He looped his fingers through mine. “Let me take you to the real party. You’re ready.”

He brought his fingers to his lips, still tasting my skin. He pulled me along, weaving us through the crowd.

He led me to a doorway directly beneath one of the dance cages. The dark-haired beauty within it clawed at me, catching a lock of my white-blonde hair.

“You’re going to be transported,” she said. “You wanna fly?”

Fire danced behind her eyes and I felt it on a visceral level. She blew me a kiss and sparks crackled at the end of her fingertips. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out that doesn’t belong to you!

Fire. That was my source. My kind of magic. I felt it heating my blood now. Bubbling up. Pushing to burst out.

I could do it. I could lay waste to every spellhead, every scumbag mystic dealer and magic thief in this place. I could turn the Golden Taurus to cinder, and only I would stand among the smoldering ruins. This was the Neutral Zone, sure. But Durness was my home. My coven’s Oasis Territory was just twenty-two miles northwest. Close enough, we could all feel the draw, the leeching off the Source. The perversion of it.

Only if I did that, I’d never find out how these thieves were accessing it. I would never find out what happened to the last innocent who disappeared from coven lands just six months ago.

Rose Kilgore. She was only sixteen. Still learning how to control her powers. And that’s what these leeches wanted. New witches, still green, could deliver one hell of a kick when they stole their powers.

“Come on,” the earth mage said. “I’ll hook you up with something real.”

“Where do you think you’re taking her, Rye?”

A voice, rich and deep. The sound of it skittered across my skin. I looked up and up. The bouncer blocked our path through the velvet curtain.

A shifter. His wolfish eyes glittered with his own magic. The real kind. Primal and dangerous. He let his fangs drop just enough to convey his threat to Rye. The mage still had a grip on my wrist.

“Heel, dog,” Rye laughed, though his voice had raised an octave. He was scared.

The bouncer crossed his arms and widened his stance, making an impenetrable wall with his body. Rippled biceps strained beneath the short sleeves of his black t-shirt.

His scent filled me. Wild. Primal. An Alpha. No question about it. In my mind’s eye, I could see his wolf. He would be black as midnight for sure. But his eyes glinted silvery blue. He’d be beautiful. He was beautiful. He stared at me, a muscle twitching in his angled jaw.

“Back off, Archer,” Rye