Page 151 of The Seeker
“Where?” Ata asked.
She frowned when she realized where the massive movement of power was coming from. “He’s coming from the river. He’s coming right through the front gate.”
“Arrogant,” Sari said.
“Yes.” Ata’s paint was washed away. She had returned to the hardened warrior they met in the swamps. The two Dene Ghal stood on either side of her, their jovial expressions absent as they watched the Wolf strap twin silver blades to her waist and pick up a silver-tipped spear. “We go.”
I’m not ready yet!
Sari glanced at Meera as if reading her thoughts. “Come, sister. Go with me.”
Their mates were already at the house, assisting Patiala and waiting for word of the Fallen.
“Send a runner,” Sari said to the scribe by the door. “Bozidar approaches the house.”
As soon as Meera reached the door of the tent she smelled it. “Smoke?”
“The cane fields are on fire,” Ata said. “That’s not our concern. Begin the spell as we walk. It takes time to build.”
Ata sang with them as Sari and Meera walked hand in hand. The Dene Ghal siblings guarded their steps. Meera had heard the woman griping at her brother the night before, wishing her mate had come with her to fight instead of watching their young child.
Meera felt no such envy. She wished someone else had the burden of this magic because the spell, while she knew it would be effective, was also horrible.
They would have to wait until their mates were in agony, near death, before they unleashed its true power. Anything less than that meant the spell was unlikely to work.
“Ashmala, the star that shines
Ma’alk, the first eternal mind
Baruk, who blesses us
Taraná, who feeds us—”
Meera and Sariinvoked various names of the Creator-Who-Was as they walked across the warded ground of Havre Hélène.
It was a binding spell, whispered over and over, the simple brilliance of it centered on building and focusing empathy, a human trait unknown to the Fallen. For as Vasu had said, the Fallen were created to be servants of the Creator-Who-Was. They were not relational. They were created with no need for empathy. For those who followed the will of their maker, it was their highest and most primal need.
But empathy was human. Empathy was vulnerability. Empathy required something angels were not capable of.
Empathy, in the end, could destroy them.
The spell repeated and built, drawing on the mating magic of the Irina, with the singer focused entirely on her mate who would be provoking the rage and violence of the angel he was battling. Meera and Sari had to stay connected to their mates, understand and measure the pain, then release at the very moment it was strongest in order to fling the agony back to the angel. The spell would bind the violence and rage inflicted by the angel into its own soul, creating a self-repeating magic that would eat the monster from within.
She could already see Sari’s face tense with pain. Damien was being pummeled by something, but her voice never wavered.
Meera, on the other hand, felt nothing.
Rhys, what are you doing?
He ambled through centuries-old wards,a crooked old man who straightened as he grew closer. The swagger became pronounced halfway down the oak alley. His shoulders drew back. His chin jutted out at a petulant angle.
“The old man.” Rhys had known something was off about that human. The fact that not a single one of them had picked up any hint of magic from Bozidar’s disguise warned him that this evil could not be underestimated.
Damien stood next to Rhys, watching the man approach. “You know,” Damien mused, “they choose their human form.”
Rhys frowned. “And?”
“And this angel, somehow, decided that this form is attractive,” Damien muttered. “Is that a fake tan? I wonder if his teeth are capped like those politicians you see on the television. He looks like a politician.”
