Page 123 of Love & Heart Braking

I clicked on the folder titled Ripps, already knowing what this must be. Inside, I found the evidence documents pertaining to the column Soleil had written against the banking moguls, including the column itself.

I clicked on the folder for the Opifis, who she’d blasted today. Another column. I clicked on a family she hadn’t yet published anything about.

The Hucses.

It contained a typed file, but when I clicked on it, only a partially written column was there—a few sentences and nothing more. Damn. A few more clicks showed some completed yet-to-be-published columns, and the others were several paragraphs.

The Hucses’ story was the smallest. I could see why that might be the hardest to write.

Should I even send another column to Nepos Notice? If I didn’t, wouldn’t the public of Nepos rise up and demand answers? Soleil had told them that if the columns stopped, it was because the twelve had discovered her identity.

Though, if the columns stopped printing, the twelve would know Soleil was behind them because they’d just trapped her. Which would make her predicament worse.

I exited out of everything and grabbed my tote, hurrying to lock up. I jumped into the carriage, and it rolled away, destination the Cinereses’ estate.

My head whirled, but I had to get into the game. I was dancing a dangerous line by going to the phoenixes’ abode at all after Saturday. They knew what had happened at the Dethnels. They knew Soleil had been involved. I was her best friend. Entering their place tonight was either stupid or ingenious.

After an afternoon of back and forth as to whether to go, I’d decided that I had to keep playing this game. There were answers to be had about whatever the Cinereses were up to, and I had a feeling those answers were in the lab. I just had to find them, and maybe our shitty alliance could make this go away.

The carriage rattled down the burned remnants of the cypress tunnel, and the sight only served to sadden me further. It felt like so long ago that Soleil and I were weaving through the skies on a drunken revenge mission.

I focused on calming myself as the towers came into view.

I had to go in strong.

The carriage stopped, and I leaped out, ignoring the butler’s scathing shout as he shuffled down the steps.

“I don’t have all night,” I replied, gesturing ahead of me.

Shocked—likely at my appalling manners—the butler hobbled in a circle and led me into the towers. We made our painstaking way around the stone halls, then entered the garden, taking the perimeter path before turning into the thicket of shrubs and trees concealing the lab.

The healing elemental was already inside. “You’re late.”

“And you were late last time. Guess we’re even.” I was in no mood for his narcissistic crap.

My comment bounced off his ego. He studied the clipboard. “We’re testing your magic today. Take off your coat.”

I sat on the bed and shrugged out of my jacket. The healer hooked me up to what had to be one hundred electrodes, then rolled in six machines to connect me up.

He read off the clipboard. “I want you to summon your magic in increasing levels of strength. Are you capable of this?”

“Yes.”

“Summon your magic. Don’t release it yet.”

I did as asked and a few of the machines beeped. The healer jotted the readings down, and I stemmed the flow.

“Allow your magic to show this time,” he ordered.

Getting annoyed about his lack of manners would only piss me off—asking him to use them would be like asking a banshee not to scream.

I let pink flow down my arms to dance between my fingertips.

We continued like this for the next hour, increasing the flow of my magic in increments as he took readings. When he directed me to blast my power toward a paper target, all of the machines beeped frantically.

“The signature does register in your bones,” he whispered, reading off a machine that hadn’t sounded until that round. “I told them. They said I was crazy when the results from the deceased heart elemental bones came back negative.”

Any mention of bones had me slightly uneasy for the obvious reason that I’d prefer for them to stay within my body. “What does that mean?”

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