Daimon (Guardians of Hades #6) - Felicity Heaton Page 0,123

mind, banishing it as determination flooded her, had her running through every spell she knew.

She had studied the basics of necromancy and she was talented at healing. If she combined the two, would it be enough to pull a living person back from the brink of death?

She looked down at Daimon, heart breaking and tears filling her eyes.

It was worth a shot.

“Hey!” Valen barked as she held her hand out and one of the knives he wore strapped to his ribs shot into her palm.

His golden eyes widened and he lunged for her as she brought it down towards Daimon’s throat.

Keras grabbed her before he could, hauling her away from their brother, and she loosed a frustrated grunt when she tried to break free of his grip and couldn’t.

“I can save him.” She thought she could anyway. “Let me go.”

Keras didn’t look convinced.

“Let her try.” Ares sagged beside her, shaking his head, his dark eyes bleak. “I’ve done all I can.”

Keras kept hold of her, and just as she was about to lash out at him with the knife, he released her.

She twisted back towards Daimon and carefully nicked his bare shoulder, just enough to draw a few drops of blood. She cut the tips of her index and middle finger and pressed them to the blood on Daimon’s shoulder. Her eyes slipped shut as she focused on the powerful connection that formed between them.

Cass started with the healing spell first, weaving the strongest one she could manage, and began threading it with incantations she had read in an ancient tome, one that had felt closest to the truth about necromancy to her.

With the tracking spell still active, she could see Daimon as he lay before her, could see Keras as he came to kneel on the other side of him and pressed his fingers to Daimon’s throat.

“Is it working?” Ares said.

Keras nodded. “His pulse is getting stronger.”

Cass was careful to keep the focus of the spell heavily on the healing side, holding back the darker magic that rose within her, flooding her with cold.

“We need to be ready to move him the moment he’s strong enough.” Keras’s tone had her focus slipping and the hairs on the back of her neck rising. “This was all too easy.”

He was right about that.

“Maybe they figured he was dead and useless to them?” Valen sounded hopeful.

“Maybe it’s a trap?” Marek offered as a counterpoint.

She was inclined to go with Marek’s theory.

Focusing harder, she funnelled the healing spell into Daimon, thawing the ice in his veins with it as the darker magic pooled around his heart and his brain.

“Think he might come back wrong?” Valen whispered.

“Not helping,” Ares muttered before she could say it.

“Just asking is all. I want him back as much as everyone else, but what if he comes back with a craving for brains?”

Cass frowned but didn’t take her focus away from slowly healing Daimon’s vital organs as she bit out, “He wasn’t dead.”

But he had been close.

His lungs had taken a beating, were slow to respond as she poured the healing spell into them. The darker magic crawled down from his heart, spreading over his lungs, and she did her best to guide it, but it didn’t feel entirely under her control. It was like it had a mind of its own. She could direct the healing spell, but the one intended to revive the dead was doing its own thing.

Cass focused on building a tether between her and the spell.

Something it didn’t like.

She was beginning to understand why the great covens of the world had banned necromancy.

The spell strained against her, attempting to pull away from her. Not good. She narrowed all her focus down to it, releasing her control over the healing spell, and commanded it to return to her. When it didn’t, she worked backwards over the incantation she had used to form it, pulling it apart piece by piece.

Something it really didn’t like.

Daimon jacked up off the floor and roared.

“Brains?” Valen murmured, a worried note in his voice.

Cass shoved her hands against Daimon’s chest to hold him down and pumped another spell into him, one she hoped would contain his ice for at least a few minutes because she couldn’t do this alone. “I’m starting to see why witches avoid necromancy. A little help?”

Marek and Valen moved to pin Daimon down for her.

His eyes shot open, irises pure white ringed with glowing blue.

Cass grabbed the sides of his head and leaned over him, stared into