Page 181 of Bitten By the Fae
I shivered and felt Zeph’s lips ghost across my temple, the touch brief but there. “I’ve got you,” he vowed, the words meant for my ears alone.
How would I explain to him what I felt? Had it even been real?
He slowly started to sit up, his palm against my breastbone keeping me down on the ground as he glanced around. Afterseveral moments of searching, his touch eased, and he moved his hand to my shoulder to pull me upward.
“It’s done,” he said gruffly, the words carrying across the now silent field.
“The source is calm,” Kols replied, his statement clear despite the distance.
No one uttered a sound, everyone gaping at the rocks and ash littering the grounds.
Then someone screamed in the distance, causing Zeph to jump to his feet.
“Go,” Shade said, appearing beside me. The statement must have been meant for Zeph, because he took off at a sprint, Kols hot on his tail, along with several other students.
Cries pelted the air, all coming from the same direction. Shade practically yanked me to my feet, his palm finding my lower back as he guided me through the wreckage toward the commotion rising ahead. It didn’t take long for us to find the cause.
The Death Blood Education Building had been reduced to a pile of rubble, the once proud spire a cascade of obsidian rocks without any structure.
And above the destruction was a single word written in red flames, the smoke spiraling up into the sky in lethal ropes that resembled chains.
It was a word I knew well.
Because I’d sung it many times before, as had my mother.
“Alqisian,” I whispered.
“Yes,” Shade replied just as softly. “Do you know what it means?”
“Not the translation of it, no.”
He swallowed, his focus shifting from the rubble to me. “Retribution.”
“Retribution,” I repeated, my voice just as low as his. “Meaning what?”
Shade gave me a grim look, his icy blue eyes holding a myriad of secrets underlined in pain. “It means the future is officially now.”
Chapter Fifteen
AFLORA
Silence.
It started after Shade’s revelation and continued long after he left with Kols and Tray to attend an emergency Council meeting. I sat on the couch between Zeph and Ella.
None of us knew what to say.
Ella glanced at me, her lips twisting like she wanted to say something, only she kept deciding not to speak. I understood why.
She’d recognized the word because of my song. It was one of the primary phrases repeated throughout the ballad. And it’d been written in fire above the destroyed Death Blood Education Building.
I couldn’t explain that. Just as I couldn’t explain how I’d recognized the magic. It wasn’t mine but felt so familiar. Like I knew the fae who cast the spell.
Impossible, I thought for the millionth time.It’s just not possible.
Who could it be? My parents? I nearly laughed at the thought. They were dead. I felt their souls depart when the earth source moved to me. And why would they attack the Academy?
However, I’d sensed something ancestral about the magic, like it was somehow connected to me, yet not.
