“You came here for your lioness,” he says, watching my face. “I had the same dream a very long time ago when you were just a boy, but it’s different for me. I only got small pieces of your future. I wasn’t standing in it. I have some strange connection to you, to your magic, that I can’t explain.”
He leans down and grins in my face, close enough that I can feel my own magic crackling underneath his skin. “But it’s certainly useful.”
“Let go.” My voice comes out thin and shaking.
“There’s something special about this thread between us.” His hand tightens on my arm. “I can feed off your magic. I can’t use your sisters because I don’t have a bond with them. But I have one with you.”
Another burst of magic hits him, involuntary and desperate, and Eric goes flying. He slams into the cottage door and the wood cracks down the middle, but he recovers fast and stands upright. He dusts himself off and rolls his neck.
“Well.” He flexes his hands. “I suppose that will do. Just enough to get what I’m out here for.”
I try to rise and my arms buckle. Eric walks back over and plants his boot in my stomach, kicking me onto my back, and I curl around the pain with a groan.
“We are bound by blood,” he says, standing over me. “I can only take so much, but the power you hold, son...” He shakes his head. “You’re technically a god.” He shrugs. “A stupid one. But hey.”
He holds his hand up and tears the air open. The portal splits and I can see the other side—night streets and tall buildings and the distant sound of traffic. Downtown Detroit.
I manage to sit up, my body screaming, my magic flickering in my veins.
Eric steps through the portal and turns to look at me from the other side with the city lights behind him. “Your lioness is beautiful. I understand why you’d make such a stupid decision.” He looks around and lets out a slow breath. “Damn. Your magic is strong. I won’t have it in my system for long. It fades over time.”
The grin drops and something cold and flat replaces it. This is the real Eric. I’m looking at a man with absolutely nothing behind his eyes.
“The good thing about me is I don’t love anyone. Not even you. So this makes killing you once I get ahold of dark magic again so much easier.”
My hands drop to my sides and I stare at him through the closing portal because there’s nothing left in me to say.
“Make sure you take care of your lioness.” The portal starts to shrink and Eric holds my gaze through the narrowing gap. “Just so you know, you’ve altered the future just slightly. But not completely. There’s still a chance you’ll lose her.”
“Fuck you!”
The portal closes. The night air goes still and I’m alone in the Market, sitting on the ground with blood on my face and my magic guttering, knowing I just did exactly what he needed me to do.
I press my face into my hands.
I fell for it. Tiana told me he was manipulating me and I looked her in the face and went back to him anyway. Every conversation, every time he called me son, I let myself believe it was real because I wanted a father so bad I stopped thinking. And he knew that. He was counting on it.
And I don’t even understand what he was trying to tell me at the end. Altered the future slightly but not completely? There’s still a chance I’ll lose her?
I need to go to King Amir. I need to confess everything to my mother and tell them they were right all along. I need to?—
The cottage glows behind me.
I spin around. The door that Eric cracked on his way out is pulsing with golden and blue light swirling together, and the seal I broke is collapsing inward. The darkness on the other side is moving.
I try to conjure my magic and it responds, barely. A flicker of blue that dances across my palms and fades, then catches again, steadier this time but nowhere near full strength.
The first figure steps through the door, a warlock with wild eyes and magic crackling at his fingertips. He sees me and stops. Another one comes through behind him, then another, and then they’re pouring out of the Glen, breathing air they haven’t tasted in years, and every single one of them is looking at me.
I force myself to my feet. My legs shake and the Market tips sideways but I plant my boots on the ground and hold my hands out with blue light flickering between my fingers.
The first spell hits me in the chest and sends me flying backward, but my magic throws up a shield before the second one can land. Blue light domes over my body and absorbs the next blast, then the next.
I lie inside the shield staring up at the night sky through the blue glow. My body is wrecked, my magic guttering, and I’mwondering how much longer it’s going to fight for me before it runs out too.
19
Mara
