Page 105 of Mage Massacres

Palmer’s hand tightened on my left knee as Vaughn’s fingertips swirled in a pattern on my right thigh. The motions were soothing, pulling me away from the edge of my fury.

“Why did you leave?” I asked Raguel, still frustrated, but equally curious.

I would stick to the facts.

He rubbed his eyes, mouth turned down in a frown as he spoke.

“Amelia left us one night but never told us where she was going. I figured it out six days later. I was too late, though. Amelia was already trapped in the Fae realm. She followed Alric there with intentions of killing him after he threatened your life when you were born. She didn’t tell us this information immediately. She wrote it in a series of letters addressed to all of us.

“When I went after her, I asked my co-mates not to come for me unless I called out to them. I went to kill Alric once I learned that Amelia failed, and then I would free her. But I became trapped, too—the spell he used to control me closed access to my mate bonds. I couldn’t feel them until after our fight yesterday.

“I need to thank you for that. Without death, I wouldn’t have been able to break Alric’s hold over me. I could feel him controlling me, funneling my magic into himself. I’ve been close enough to death to smell the reaper’s sickly sweet scent, though I haven’t been able to stop my heart to rid myself of the warped angelic magic.”

Dad nodded, his dirty blonde hair tumbling around his face. “We could occasionally feel traces of the mate bonds with Rig and Amelia. The pull is that strong. We thought one of them was near the guild because Nate was injured about a decade ago, and he healed much faster than usual. We turned Belfast upside down as we searched, but we were still empty-handed.

“A few years after Rig and Amelia went missing, Lucy called to tell us that Alric had been seen in the Underworld. It was then that we found out the tomes had been stolen and the Embers had been killed. That’s also why we didn’t want you to attend their memorial, though we quickly realized that we wouldn’t be able to keep you away.”

Papi glanced at me before adding, “You guys found the tomes with Satan, but there were pages already missing in some of the books from before. Lucy suspects that those spells were what helped Alric create the drug that you’ve been trying to stop. But he also thinks that those pages helped Alric control Raguel and that he has the spell to strip you of the mimicry.

“At first, he tried to create issues in the Underworld on his own. We assume he thought he could further impair the relationship that Rig and Lucy had been mending after centuries–”

The angel snorted, correcting the time frame. “Millennia, Sam.”

Papi rolled his eyes. “Millennia of hatred toward one another.”

“Hate is such a strong word,” Raguel commented. “Can we call it unfriendly competition?”

“You had him thrown from heaven,” Papi stated in exasperation.

“All in the name of justice,” the angel agreed.

Dad chuckled as Papi squeezed his temples.

“You tried to kill me before Amelia kicked your ass.”

Raguel scoffed. “Foreplay.”

I cleared my throat, entirely too uncomfortable with that answer. “Tell me more about Alric.”

The angel shrugged. “I told you a little already, but... He’s Amelia’s older half-brother. Same mother, different fathers. He’s been angry for centuries because their mother turned the guild over to Amelia instead of him. He was the firstborn, so he thought the title was his for the taking. He wanted the power that came with it.”

“The documents we found at the guild said Alric was dead well before Sloane was born,” Palmer announced, pulling the file from wherever he’d stashed it to his hand.

Dad accepted the papers, muttering, “I’m sure they did a great job of faking it too. I’d like to see him try it now. With all of today’s technology, he’d be fucked.”

“Why did he want to kill me?” I pressed. “Why threaten a newborn child?”

“I didn’t understand that at first either. Not until he told me a few years ago. I guess he thought he would have killed you by now.”

Raguel looked pained at his suggestion and shook his head before continuing.

“A seer told Alric that a child of Kings would be unstoppable. Naturally, he thought the seer was talking about one of his future children, so he left his mate and their first child to begin having kids with other species. He wanted to see who would become the strongest.

“Later, that same seer told him that the Kings’ child was the daughter of wrath and vengeance. And he knew then that the prophecy wasn’t about his child but his sister’s. He didn’t listen to what the seer told him; otherwise, he’d have heard everything the first time.”

“The daughter of wrath and vengeance, a monstrous predator of bloodlust and magic, created by an unholy allegiance,” Papi quoted. “You’ve spent time with the Fates recently, right? What did they tell you?”

I closed my eyes, recalling the trip Stone and I took to visit Ūnus, Duo, and Trēs. I’d memorized every word they said to me, hoping to decipher their hidden agenda when I got a moment of peace. I slid the memory into the minds of my parents, mates, and friends. There were too many of us not to figure it out.