Page 14 of Mantle

I didn’t get the chance to utter another word, as a violent explosion of white light ripped through the area—white light that didn’t actually belong to Cassius.

Blue hair caught my eye, just a moment before a white shimmering wall shot up from the grass beneath my feet and then surrounded me in a magical cube.

Ketheron slammed his fist against it, but it didn’t breach.

“Leave her now,” a familiar voice spoke, and I spun inside the protective cube to see Nyx standing there, his palms fired our way, him being the one who’d erected a ward—a ward within another. He winked at me. “Found a loophole.” His gaze flicked to a stunned, yet highly impressed Kai. “Learned from the best.”

Ketheron pulled up short as he took Nyx in. “Hybrid. I know you.”

Nyx frowned. “What? Never seen you before.”

“You were asleep.”

“What are you—”

“I have no quarrel with you. I feel your love for her, like the others. Lay down your claim and I will not retaliate for this interference. You will be spared.”

I saw Nyx about to tell him that wasn’t going to happen, even as he started forward to strengthen the spell, but a pained cry from Ketheron had the battlefield stunned into silence.

He staggered back and pulled at his hair.

“I don’t want it!” he screamed out into the night.

“What’s happening?” I asked, pushing against the cube to draw closer.

He grimaced, digging his fingers into his scalp and making himself bleed because of it. “It’s not mine… it’s his. They’re making me… they’re making me take it.”

“Take—”

In a flash of golden light, he teleported away, the dome collapsing immediately afterward.

I scanned the area, searching every which way.

There was no sign of him.

In the next moment, I was enveloped by my men and my family wrapping themselves around me, savoring the fact that I was all right.

I would have been, though.

I would have also had answers if they’d listened to me.

If they hadn’t thought I’d been coerced.

And now the very being I needed to learn more about was gone.

In the ozone.

“Death circles you…”

He was the threat, he’d come here to kill me.

But he hadn’t. Why?

I needed that answer and many more, but getting them had been compromised by this interference.

I knew they cared for me, that it had come from a good place, and I could feel their love surrounding me, the fact that they’d fought for me.

But the upsetting truth was that the stakes were too high to continue operating this way.

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