Page 52 of Rose and Shadows
He had that now in us.
But Victor Halrow aimed to steal that away.
It made me so fucking sick to my stomach.
So much so, I’d literally been sick—vomiting again so many times since Lazriel had been gone.
The act of the kidnapping itself was bad enough. And then there was the demented sadism that Victor was capable of, along with his deranged fixation on Lazriel.
But it was also the fact that Lazriel had come so very far.
He’d conquered the repression he’d been trapped within his whole life.
He’d accepted himself in so many ways and not just become comfortable with who he truly was and all the facets of himself, but come to revel in it as well. That was no small feat.
Victor Halrow was known for his mind games, which had become apparent with every encounter he’d had with Lazriel. And I just… I was so scared for Lazriel that the sick son of a bitch would cut into all that progress, undermine it, maybe even twist it.
The four of us coming together had helped each of us deal with things we hadn’t thought possible to properly overcome. But things worked between us because we’d each evolved, we’d each worked at it, at what we had. So if Victor… twisted Lazriel up… it could…no. Stop. Just fucking stop it!
He wouldn’t succeed. Not only was Lazriel strong, adaptable, and possessing a warrior’s heart and courage,Iwas also working on ensuring Victor didn’t get that far where his sadism and psychotic rhetoric would have time to get it’s claws—or talons—into Lazriel.
Cassius had passed on the intel I’d given him that Sorin had blurted out in his rage—that Gregor Varsellis, a Light Fae, was the leader ofPuritas.Ryker Morgan had been made aware and the Guardian Movement was already now working that angle, because with a name came connections—contacts, trails to follow.
Cassius was currently with Vorzyr and Jaxon at the Shifter Stabilization Unit, mobilizing key personnel and trackers there to seek out Victor’s location.
All tracking spells had failed. We’d even had Ariana and Cornelius combine their massive power to perform a souped-up version of a tracking spell, and that had resulted in nothing. No fucking leads at all.
So when magic failed, there was animal instinct.
We also had Kai working with Lucian to basically meld the magic and instinctual approach as one. They were trying to track the trajectory of the portal that Victor had formed with that Specus Relic.
Basically, everyone was on it. All bases were covered.
And I was supposed to be keeping my mind occupied by attending classes. I also had Graceyn fromThrynemessaging me constantly wanting an update on Sorin. She didn’t know what had gone down there. I was supposed to be working on locating my despicable parents. But I couldn’t focus on any of that until Lazriel was home safe.
Besides, I had my own strategy on how to find my sweetheart love—one nobody else was even going to attempt, because of the risks. With Cassius occupied and Sylas underground and working the angle of The Shadowed in order to find Lazriel, there was no interference to be had. I could get down to this.
Unfortunately, not without a load of guilt bearing down on me. Or Lazriel’s words to me in Sorin’s cell swirling around my mind, despite my best efforts to focus on our other banter, our love, times of fun and elation.
“You care about people, value life and choices. Shit, you’re the glue that holds our foursome together. But if you do something like this, so against your nature, it’ll change you. And that will also change us. And we’re too fucking awesome together as a unit to let anything—or anyone—fuck with that, right?”
He’d been right in that situation, when I’d come close to murdering my brother.
But this was different.
I sucked in a breath and shifted a little in my cross-legged position on the floor of my dorm room. A circle of my frost surrounded me as I sat in the fixed point at the center. Just a foot in front of me and still within the boundary was an open vial filled with several drops of blood.
Victor Halrow’s blood.
After that monster had snatched Lazriel and escaped through the portal he’d created, Cassius had been frantically trying to latch onto the portal’s residue and use that to force it back open. While he’d been doing that, I’d noticed blood on the ground. A quick magical assessment on the blood had identified it as Victor’s, and then I’d gathered it with my power and sealed it away. In case the tracking experts we had in play hadn’t succeeded. And they hadn’t.
Just not as yet—that was what Cassius kept telling me.
It wasn’t good enough.
Of course, I knew they were all busting their asses, and I valued and appreciated that,butit wasn’t good enough in the sense that the longer Victor had free reign with Lazriel, the more severe the damage could become.
No.
