AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jin slung his arm around my back too, pressing his lips to my temple. The consort bond between us thrummed, and my spark shot up with a blaze of light. A strange giddiness rippled through me.
I had my consorts, their love feeding my magic. My love for them made me stronger than any of those enforcers could have imagined. I clasped onto that blaze inside me and whirled my arms through the air, gathering it and balling it together until the air rang with the power I held. Then I whipped it down the road.
The spell exploded through our attackers with a force that rattled the ground beneath our feet. I would have stumbled if Damon and Jin hadn’t still been holding me.
My impression of the figures down the road completely dimmed. Whatever I’d managed to do to them, they weren’t going to come at us again right now.
I exhaled shakily and squeezed the guys’ arms. Then I tugged them with me to the toppled SUV.
Ky and Gabriel were just easing Seth out through the doorway. The larger guy swayed a little as he clutched the frame, but he met my gaze steadily and smiled when he saw me. A purple-red bruise was spreading across his temple around a cut still seeping blood. My stomach turned at the sight of it.
I held out my hand as Gabriel hopped down. Seth grasped it and slid the rest of the way to the pavement with Gabriel bracing his other arm. Seth tested his balance on his feet and then pulled me into a massive hug.
“You’re okay,” he said.
“I’mokay?” I said. “Look at you. Get over here. I’ll patch you up as well as I can. You could have a concussion.”
He grimaced, but he walked with us to the side of the road. I knelt beside him, studying the wound. I’d studied plenty of healing spells—they were some of the most generally useful magic any witch could learn, so my tutors had spent a lot of time on them—but I hadn’t needed to cast anything major in the short time I’d actually had my magic. And you always had to be careful when manipulating someone’s body in any way.
I murmured a few focusing words under my breath and moved my fingers through the air over Seth’s temple in a delicate dance. Seal the skin, ease any swelling, numb the pain. The aches in my own body started to throb as I spun the careful spells. Gabriel might have saved me from the worst of the impact, but I’d banged myself up a fair bit.
When I finished, Seth’s skin was still bruised, but the cut was closed. He touched the spot gingerly and gave a hoarse chuckle. “It hardly even hurts. I’d say it’s like magic, but it actually was magic.”
“If you can make a joke like that, you really must be feeling better.” The urge gripped me, and I had to lean in to kiss him. “Don’t you ever get bashed up like that again,” I ordered him, my hands cupping his face and my nose brushing his.
He ran his thumb over my cheek. “I’ll do my best.”
I straightened up and glanced over the other guys. They all looked a tad dazed, but that wasn’t exactly surprising after what we’d just been through. Damon had taken that burn from the magical net, and his left elbow looked bruised. Gabriel’s arm was scratched where it must have collided with the window, but nothing deep. Ky and Jin seemed to have made it out pretty much unscathed.
I motioned Gabriel over. “You don’t have to—” he started as I took his arm, and I silenced him with a pointed look.
“Tell yourself you’re doing me a favor,” I said. “I’m going to be distracted as long as any of you are bleeding.”
He laughed. “All right, fine. But we don’t know if more of those Assembly assholes might be on their way, do we? We should get out of here fast.”
I couldn’t argue with that. My gut tightened as I worked a spell to knit his skin. When I stepped back, my spark was still blazing merrily inside me, but nowhere near as hotly as before.
I wasn’t worn out, no, but I was already on my way there. The tightness in my gut turned into a heavy stone that sank even deeper.
“I don’t think this is going to work.”
“What do you mean?” Ky asked.
“The whole idea of running away and finding some place to hide out… I don’t know if we can ever get far enough ahead of them to put down roots somewhere.” That dream we’d only just talked about had shattered like the car’s windows. I swallowed hard. “And I know for sure I won’t be able to keep this up indefinitely. I’m not omnipotent, as much as I’d like to be right now.”
“Well, we’re sure as hell not letting themwin,” Damon said.
Gabriel nodded. “What did you have in mind, Rose?”
He watched me with that assured calm he never seemed to lose—except for that one moment a few days ago when he’d broken down and admitted to me how broken he felt. He’d said he believed in me. Was he really that confident, all the way through, that I could get us out of this?
I had to believe that he was.Ihad to believe in me. The guys I’d brought into this dangerous witching world didn’t have anyone else to see them through it.
“If we can’t keep running,” I said, “then the only other option I can see is to fight. Whatever ways we can. Scare them, hurt them… Expose them to the rest of witching society if we can. If we can’t, at least make them believe they’re better off letting us go live our lives than keeping up the fight on their end.”
“I’m all for that,” Jin said. “How do we get started?”
“That’s the big question.” I let out a halting laugh. “Before we can strike back, I think we need a better idea of who we’re dealing with. Where they’re vulnerable. What proof we can gather.” I glanced down the road. “You know, there was a witch in New York City I talked to—Margo Elands. She’d researched some of the less-known witching history and gotten in trouble with the Assembly for talking about things they wanted to keep quiet. Maybe she’d be able to help us.” She might have something on them she hadn’t wanted to use herself.Herlife wasn’t on the line.
