Page 255 of Bitten By the Fae
My brow furrowed.That’s impossible. I felt the fourth link, the?—
“Aflora!” Emelyn shrieked, forcing my attention to her and the threats surrounding us.
My lips parted in shock.
We were no longer in the training yard, but in the LethaForest.
And the encroaching shadows whispered danger.
Emelyn sent a sizzling web toward one, which resulted in a sharp, screeching echo to sound through the black tree trunks.
Hot, acrid smoke billowed in the air.
This was not the same part of the LethaForest I’d visited with my mates, but a deeper section that clearly didn’t see fae life often. Because streams of fiery liquid slicked the obsidian rocks, one of which was less than a foot from my prone form. Had I landed just a few inches to the left, I’d have been burned alive.
“Fae…,” I breathed, glancing around to gather my bearings.
The sky overhead lacked stars, the inky curtain creating an icy atmosphere that the flame streams heated and illuminated in shades of red and orange.
“Aflora!” Emelyn shouted again, fear etched into her voice.
A rock creature of some kind came toward her, the fingertips long talons of black flames. It lashed out at her, catching her wrist. She cried out in pain, her spells no match for the monster.
I forced myself to my feet, careful of the surrounding terrain, and searched for my wand.
Where did I?—
The thing’s talons whipped out of its opposite hand, encircling her throat and forcing me to act on instinct. A spell left my mouth—one I had never learned—and hit the being directly in the torso. The creature grated out a loud, crunching growl, then exploded into a mound of pebbles.
Emelyn crumpled to the ground, her neck and wrist charred from the creature’s grip. I leapt over one of the fiery streams, then a second one, and knelt at her side. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, the power zapped from her lifeless form.
Adrenaline spiked through my veins, my mind whirring with solutions I didn’t understand. They came from a place deep inside, a foreign strand tied to my Quandary magic. I yanked onit, bringing it to the front of my mind, and sorted through the web of magic before me.
Chaos echoed around me.
Two more rock creatures spurred to life with those deadly claws aiming for me and Emelyn. A spell flew from my mouth that created a defensive wall, more of Zeph’s energy surrounding us both while I tapped into the Quandary line that provided me with a strand of thought underlined in magic.
Words spilled from my mouth that didn’t belong to me but to something else.
No,someoneelse.
The Quandary link.
Who are you?I marveled even while I spoke, my mind fracturing beneath an assault of confusion and reality woven together as one.
Don’t think; do, a deep voice replied.
Familiar.
Warm.
Underlined in memories and dreams…
A vision of white hair flickered in my thoughts, there and gone in an instant as my mouth obeyed his command.
Yet he wasn’t so much talking to me as he was allowing me access to his mind and power and granting me the knowledge I needed to survive this insanity. It also wasn’t willing, more like my spirit demanding his compliance for my own survival.
And I felt him trying to pull back, to resurrect a barrier I’d unknowingly knocked down.
