Page 52 of Destined Dawn
Another part of my past torn away from me.
With another kind of instinct, my five mates stand and form a tight circle around me, removing me from Kennedy’s path – wherever the hell he is. I can sense he’s nearby but I can’t see him at all.
Then he steps silently over the sand dunes ahead of us and I can see he’s flanked by others – not ordinary guards or soldiers this time but magicals dressed with that emblem of the fist. Fierce looking – the magical aura around them strong. Kennedy’s face remains cased in shadow but nonetheless, it’s clear he’s sneering at us.
“You know, I had a feeling – one doesn’t have to be a seerto perceive these things actually – that you would end up here eventually, Rhianna Blackwaters. I had a feeling you wouldn’t be able to resist seeking out this prophecy some among us seem to believe applies to you – the chancellor, Moreau’s friend the mutt. It truly is gob-smacking the things that will fall from people’s mouths with the right …”
“Torture,” Spencer snarls, his body straining as he struggles to keep the beast contained.
“Encouragement,” the Lord Protector corrects with a slight smile. “Of course, the chancellor always was a fool and as for the mutt,” he snorts, “those prophecies are not worth the paper they were written on, and this girl is nothing special. Never was. Never will be.”
“Then why don’t you leave her and us alone,” Stone growls. “She’s no threat, of no interest. We’ll take her over the ocean to Aropia and you’ll never have to hear from us again.”
“I don’t think so, Phoenix Stone. Hope is a very dangerous thing. I’m sure you are aware of that. And if people get the idea in their heads that this girl is someone special, someone who is going to save them from their miserable existences, who knows what that might lead to.” He smiles slyly at us. It makes me fucking nervous. “Can you imagine? No, I think it better that she remains here with me. Where I can keep a watchful eye on her. So hand her over and it will save me from having to kill you all.”
“Not going to happen, Uncle,” Azlan says. “She’s staying with us.”
“Your disobedience has grown rather wearisome, nephew. How fortunate that your sister shows more promise than you do. Far more obedient. Far more compliant and malleable – especially receptive to corrective punishment.”
Azlan takes a step forward, jumping down from the boat,both his hands curling into fists, his magic all of a sudden dangerous.
“You touch one hair on Ellie’s head…”
“You’ll what?” his uncle laughs. “You’re outnumbered and if you think you’re going to simply disappear into thin air again like you did before, I will have to disappoint you.”
Without warning, he flings his magic forward. I’m ready for his trick this time and so are Stone and Renzo. All three of us deflect that magic that had encased our hands and locked away our magic last time. No way will it ensnare us a second time. It boomerangs back in Kennedy’s direction, but with a simple flick of his wrist, the magic falters, tumbling to the ground.
The Lord Protector huffs in annoyance.
“Let me make myself abundantly clear. You are either with me or against me. You will either hand the girl over and pledge your allegiance to me, or you will be treated as traitors and executed immediately.”
“Ha!” Renzo says. “The only person who’s popping his clogs LP, is you. Didn’t you read the prophecy? She’s,” he points at me, “your one-way ticket out of here. And I don’t think that ticket is taking you any place nice.”
The Lord Protector growls and flings his arms forward a second time, the many magicals at his side all doing the same so that a torrent of magic comes blasting our way.
“So be it!” I hear him yell over the thunder of magic. “You’ve chosen your path. Prepare to meet your end.”
I watch that assault of magic blasting towards us as if it’s moving in slow motion and for once all my optimism and perseverance whistles away like smoke on the breeze. This man is prepared to kill his own son simply because of an old verse written out on a piece of yellowing paper. He’s that twisted. I don’t see how we can escape this. We aredoomed. The magic is too vast and too powerful. There are too many of them. And they aren’t like the gang members in the woods, or the soldiers who tried to kidnap me at the graveyard. They aren’t even like the ghouls out there in the mist.
These magicals are better trained and more skillful, the force of their magic scorchingly hot against my face, much of it dark; I can sense it – magic that was meant to be outcast along with those magicals in the West.
The prophecy was wrong. Or maybe it never applied to me in the first place.
I close my eyes, ready to accept my fate, ready to feel that magic melt the skin from my bones.
It doesn’t come. There’s a flash so bright I see it behind my closed lids and when I open my eyes I find my mates are not frozen in terror like I am but fighting back.
“Rhianna,” Stone calls, “we need you.”
I step closer to them and I set my magic free, let it flow through my body and out through my fingertips, let it hunt out the magic of my mates, seeking it out like it was always meant to be combined. Our magic spins and twists together in a cacophony of colors and it hits the incoming magic with such force all of us are blown backwards.
“Shit,” Renzo says, the colors of the magic reflected in his wide, excitable eyes.
“You aren’t going to take Rhianna,” Tristan calls out to his dad over the hiss and crackle of magic. “You aren’t going to take any of us.” His face is more determined than I’ve ever seen it before, his brow already caked in sweat, the fair hair on his forehead turning damp. I’ve always known Tristan Kennedy was powerful, now I see just how powerful he is as his magic soars against his dad’s. “So fucking stand down, resign your post. Concede!”
“More!” the Lord Protector roars to his followers and their magic pushes against ours.
My own magic strains at the edges and I’m aware I have more in me, more to give, that dark magic of my own. I think of my aunt’s message, of Pip, and I think of Spencer, my only mate not to have sealed the bond.
