“To live,” he said. “I am broken. She broke me—she and the man who contributed only genetic material. So, when I learned who I was, I had to go my own way.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
A quick calculation told me that was approximately when the Reeds’ house had been burned down. I’d wondered how far he’d gone.
“This isn’t the way,” I said.
“It’s been so easy for you, hasn’t it?”
His eyes searched mine, his magic a flurry of emotions. But he hadn’t hurt me. Yet. So I kept him talking.
“Easy?” I asked.
“The child of privilege, of power. Of magic.”
He used one hand to grip my chin. I tried to move, but he’d managed to pin me in place with magic. I fought back against the sudden claustrophobia of his imprisonment. I wanted to get information, but not this way.
“Unhand me,” I said, “or you will lose that hand to my blade.”
There was another burst of magic behind me. Another fight had begun.
Black’s fingers gripped harder, and his gaze searched deeper, staring through me to the thing that he wanted, but wasn’t sure I possessed.
Monster crouched low, evidently certain that I was a better ally than Black.
“I see what you are,” he said, “and what you have. And it doesn’t belong to you.”
“It doesn’t belong to you either,” I said, feeling suddenly very protective of monster. “It belongs to no one.”
I felt its joy at that admission, and then its horror as Black’s fingers on my chin, digging into flesh, began to reach down magically, spearing through my aura to what lay beneath.
To monster.
There was a flash of success in Black’s eyes as I sweated beneath his fingers and tried to push past his magic to escape him. But he’d just drunk from a ley line, and he was riding that power. Havingfound monster, he was like a child with a kite, trying to spool monster toward him. Trying to rip monster out of my body.
I screamed, as I felt like he was ripping organs from my chest. “Not. Yours.”
That was all I managed in the midst of having a layer of my innermost self physically peeled away. I grabbed monster with as much inner strength as I could manage, held it tight. It didn’t resist. It wanted freedom, and understood that was not what Black was offering. Black didn’t care about its sentience. Black wanted its essence—the magic his mother had created.
The pain was unimaginable, the fear just as keen. Black’s ley line experiment might have been ended—or at least slowed—by the destruction of the building and the magic Sorcha had apparently planted there. But if he took monster, he’d have part of a creature that Sorcha had managed to make sentient.
“No,” I said, pouring all the strength I had left into holding on to monster.
“She is my mother. Her magic belongs to me,” he said, nails drawing blood along my jaw.
And that was his mistake.
Magic was now a full riot behind us. Black looked up, loosening his grip and the chain of his power. I knocked his hand away from my face, then kicked him in the side. But his other hand still gripped my sword wrist, and that tightened. He spun me in front of him as Connor rushed us.
Connor looked like an avenging angel. Beautiful and fallen and furious. His eyes widened instantaneously when he realized Black intended to use me as a shield. And in that moment, I heard his voice in my head, clear as the ringing of a bell.
Down.
I didn’t stop to think, but dropped to my knees. Connor hit Black, who dropped my arm. They rolled, and Connor bloodiedBlack’s nose with a wicked punch. They rolled again, and Black threw back an arm, gathered black smoke into his hand. A blue fireball flew from behind me, struck the ground near Black’s hand, causing his smoke to transform into steam.
I wanted to jump in, but was afraid I’d hurt Connor in that tangle of limbs. And my vision was blurry, presumably from Black’s attempt to split me open.
