Page 194 of Whispers of Wisteria
“Battle?” I repeated. “What battle?”
What in the world was going on?
‘Mu needed her,’ was Kasai’s cryptic reply. ‘So she was summoned.’
My hands went cold. “That’s not possible.”
‘I don’t know the details,’Kasai responded.‘But Kiania was fighting through contract with Mu.’
I covered my mouth.
Bianca.
“What is it?” Julian asked, and I glanced at him.
He couldn’t hear Kasai anymore. The energy had been broken.
“Bianca summoned Kiania,” I answered, clenching my fist. I’d joined their contract to prevent it from affecting her. I didn’t even know it could work in that way.
But if she summoned a shikigami, she’d be hurt. That magic was not compatible with her blood.
She would have been in so much pain.
“Why would she…” I began, not wanting to consider the implications.
“Because she would have been desperate,” Gregory snapped, completing the thought I didn’t want to acknowledge.
There was an ice-cold fury in his voice that I’d never heard before, and I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him.
It kept replaying in my thoughts.
Desperate.
My stomach began to turn.
I couldn’t allow myself to focus on the loss. If I did, there’d be no holding back. Already, I could feel the flames reaching for me, waiting to be released.
The world that Mu once believed in so much had failed her again. It was unforgivable.
But…
What if… maybe there was a chance.
An echoing roar shook the trees, and the glass shattered in the windows behind me. The knot in my stomach tightened.
Titus.
He’d been there. He’d been with her.
And there’d only be one reason he’d sound like that.
The thick gray clouds parted, the orange-red dawn had fully turned to morning, and Titus—in his fullest, most evolved form—flew toward us.
He roared again and my jaw tensed. He was going berserk. We had only moments before he destroyed everything.
I didn’t flinch as Titus practically crash-landed a few dozen feet away.
He turned human within a second, and I’d barely spotted Bianca before he folded around her. His body shielded her small form from view as his shoulders heaved in soundless cries.
