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“Damn it, Harrison, back away. Leah, if you won’t run, protect yourself. Now.” Jacob’s words sent Leah back up in flames, the flickering fire lifting her hair like a blazing wind.
Harrison took a step back. Sara followed. She could see a small creature moving from the corner of her eye and with an instinct born of their connection she knew it was Ric. They had something planned.
She just needed to be a distraction. And damn it, she needed answers. “Who, Sara? Who called you that? Who is he?”
Small icicles had formed along the strands of hair framing Sara’s face, giving her a sparkling visage that made her more hauntingly beautiful than she’d been moments before. Made her look alive. “Mama says I’m a good girl. Says I’m not cold.”
“You’re not, Sara. It wasn’t your fault. Sweetheart, stop this now before you get hurt.” Tears were pouring down Esther Gryffin’s cheeks, and Harrison felt a knot in the pit of her stomach.
“No, it wasn’t, love. It was mine. You know that. Everyone knows that.” The warmth and kindness in Jacob’s voice as he edged closer to his sister melted Harrison’s heart. It was obvious this girl was sick, and just as obvious that he loved her.
Sara shook her head wildly, the ice forming on her body crashing to the frosty tile at her feet. “No, no, no. Not yours. Not your fault. He said we were cold hearted. Said Mama was an ice queen. Hated us.” She wavered, holding the back of a chair for balance, the wood instantly cracking and bending with the magic coming off her in frigid waves.
She wasn’t sure how she knew, but, as if by magic, she did. Esther began to ramble as Jacob got closer, confirming her suspicions.
She reached out her hands toward her eldest daughter, as though pleading. “You didn’t know what you were doing. It was an accident. Jacob should have protected his father. He was born a siren. He could have stopped him from dying.”
Leah gasped. “Dying? But Father is still—”
“Alive?” Jacob’s laugh was harsh. He’d stopped moving at his mother’s words, disbelief and rage radiating off his large form. “You mean the one walled up behind a prison of ice years ago? The one she decided she had to keep safe from me?” He shook his head. “You’ve been taught about Magian matches, Leah. You know there are two men for one woman.”
Sara had killed one of her fathers? Harrison felt as though she’d been punched in the solar plexus, but she wasn’t sure the feeling was hers. Poor Jacob. Had his mother told him he was responsible all this time?
His sister was crying now. Crying sharp shards of ice that cut into her skin, causing her to bleed. “We have hearts, Mama. They aren’t frozen.” She pointed at Harrison and screamed. “Jacob loves me. My brother still loves me. I’m not cold.”
She saw the pointing daggers of ice arcing overhead toward her, but she couldn’t move. Leah pushed her back, charring her dress as she shielded Harrison from the attack. She fell, watching through the flames as Ric transformed from a small rodent into his true form, his hand coming down where Sara’s neck met her shoulder. She crumpled to the ground and the ice around her began to melt. They were safe. For now.
Leah’s flames disappeared, and Harrison stood, pulling the weeping girl close. What a horrible way to discover the truth. For all of them.
Jacob turned to his mother. “Why?”
Esther Gryffin took several steps back, wringing her hands. “You were the only way out. Your father had just lost his brother, I’d lost my husband, such as he was, and Sara was…is…fragile.” She lifted her wobbling chin. “If you had stayed with her as I’d told you to, instead of going off to play with your friends, it never would have happened. You could have controlled her, kept her from overhearing our fight.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “All these years I’d believed my power killed him. You let me believe it. I was five years old, and you had me branded as a murderer.”
Tears were running down Harrison’s cheeks, and she could see Ric wasn’t far behind. So much pain for this one woman’s pride.
Esther was crying too. “We had to bribe the Magian magisters to keep it quiet. We had to leave our home. I would not have the world whispering about Sara’s condition, about my lack of a complete triad.” She reached out to her son beseechingly. “I knew if we could just get you matched then everything would go back to how it was. Everything would go back.”
Leah pulled away from Harrison. “You can’t take this back, Mother. What you’ve done to Jacob, to Sara by refusing to get her help. As far as I’m concerned you are the only one to blame.”
Jacob turned to look at his sister’s prone form and noticed Harrison. For an instant she saw yearning, but just as quickly it disappeared, replaced by a cruel kind of resolve. “You were leaving, yes? Don’t let us keep you.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion. He wanted her to go? Now? After all she’d just discovere
d? She couldn’t leave him to suffer through this alone. “But, I—”
His loud, booming voice echoed through the dining hall and out into the foyer. “You are no longer welcome here, Ms. Abbott. There was no true consummation, and there will never be.” He strode toward her and wrapped his fingers around her arm in a punishing grip.
He spoke the words that formed the portal, holding her fast as she struggled to escape his hold. “This is not where you belong.”
He shoved her toward the vortex, and she felt it pulling her in swiftly. She wanted to speak, to tell him what she thought of his dictatorial behavior, to tell him she was sorry about what had happened, and that she didn’t blame him. To tell him she could stay. But she was too angry to speak. Too shocked that he was actually sending her someplace she didn’t want to go. Again.
“Harry…”
Damn it, not now. A wave of dizziness hit her at the lip of the portal, just before she fell in, and she saw her brother’s face. “Lorie?”
Her magic flowed through her, arcs of blue lightning mingling with the energy of the magical vortex. What was happening?
