Page 27 of Mage Massacres

He pointed at me. “You made a hole in the wall, and then you tore the entire fucking wall down. You can’t repair the hole anymore. You have to build the wall all over again.”

I stood to pace. I was angry with myself, but I was getting pissed at the guys. I understood that I fucked up. I didn’t need them to keep explaining this shit to me.

I stopped in front of Briggs, hating that I had to lift my chin to meet him eye-to-eye. I locked my jaw as the aggression I felt dripped from my voice.

“I will right my wrongs with her. I don’t need you or anyone else to continue reminding me.”

My ass hit the chair behind me before I knew what happened. My eyes were unfocused. My nose ached, the pain ricocheting through my face in throbbing waves of pain that made my ears ring. I’d felt worse, but I was still stunned.

And Briggs stared down at me with a blank expression.

“That's for lying to me—countless times. I’ve been by your side through so much bullshit, Palmer. So much fucking bullshit…” He shook his head and his hand as he walked away.

Novak blew out a long breath as he appraised me.

“Go ahead,” I grumbled. “Say it.”

“I’m not in the mood to tell you that I was right. I just hope that you feel at least half as shitty as I do.”

“I don’t feel good about any of it.”

He leaned down, his golden eyes bright as he glared at me. “I don’t care how you feel about the rest of this shit. I care about her. I love her. I won’t be making the same mistake again, and I hope you’ve learned something from all this.”

Before I could say anything to him, he reached back, grabbing a cloth napkin off the table to throw at me.

“Wipe your fucking nose, man. You’re bleeding.”

He left, sticking his hands in his pockets as he ambled out of the room. I felt him withdraw from my mind, and the speed of his mental retreat made me wince. It was the equivalent of a door slamming shut inside my head.

My brother opened and closed his mouth a few times, then shook his head and scratched his forehead. Any other time I would have chuckled at a speechless Murph.

“What did you do?” Miller whispered, and I let my shoulders droop as I blindly wiped the blood from my face.

“I fucked up,” I repeated for the hundredth time today.

“We gathered that much.” Murphy grunted when Millie smacked his chest.

“I took the spell you helped me make, and I made some minor alterations to it,” I admitted.

My sister covered her mouth with her hand as she nodded for me to keep going.

“I asked Sloane to cast it with me, but I didn’t tell her that it would kill me.”

Miller gasped, and I tensed, waiting for her to throw something at me. “How much did you change, Palmer? It wasn’t supposed to kill you; knock you out maybe, but nothing more.”

“I made it stronger. I needed to know that he couldn’t find her, Mills. I can’t let him find her.”

She stood from her chair, walking around the table to take the napkin from me. She dipped it in a glass of water that had been left and began wiping the dried blood from my face.

“I see what you were trying to do. I think it goes without saying that you went about it the wrong way.”

She angled my head toward the light, and her kind eyes sparkled as she grinned at me. The gray depths were so much like mine and Murphy’s, but they held a yellow ring around her irises.

“We could tell something was bothering you,” Murph said quietly. “I’ve never seen you feel guilty about anything. If you’re not the loveable yet cocky arsehole we’ve had to put up with all our lives, who are you?”

“What are ye goin’ to do about it, then?” she questioned, sounding too much like our Ma as she ignored our brother.

“I don’t know, Mills. And I don’t have a baldy about where to start. I’ll figure it out, though. I have to.”