AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I thought back to seeing Troy affected by Lilith, to how his eyes had blackened and his body had twisted to his wolf form. I’d seen it plenty of times since then, when I’d used my power to tear Lilith’s influence from the afflicted one at a time. I gulped, hard. “Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea and the marks to show for it. There’s no reason to be killing off people who can be saved.”
He did everything up to rolling his eyes at me, as if I were an idiot who had no idea about the real world.
“What group is hit the hardest by Lilith’s influence?” Grant asked.
“The southern mages have had to be dealt with most severely.”
Grant cracked his knuckles, and I dropped my gaze to find he’d drawn his hand into a fist. “And let me guess?” he said. “Those mages nearer to your own status have been placed in special cells to keep them safe?”
Jameson fidgeted. “We lack the resources to properly restrainallmages in that condition. Hard choices had to be made.”
Grant lifted his hand, palm out, to silence Jameson as if the acting Magistrate were nothing but a complaining child. “Not a single mage will be put down without one of your own caste and group going as well. If you have room for the rich and powerful, you have room for the ones who aren’t.”
Jameson pressed his lips together, as though he had to hold in the words that wanted to escape. Still, whether it was fear, pragmatics or bureaucracy, he managed to keep himself silent before nodded and walking away.
“Southern mages?” I asked.
“It’s a polite way to say mages without money, power or influence.”
I frowned as I pieced it together. “So Jameson is just killing off the mages he sees as unimportant?”
“While saving his friends or those who he thinks can give him something in return. I’d love to say this is new behavior, but it isn’t.” He sighed before taking a moment to unclench his first. “The fact is that the guild’s built on the idea of politics and power. It isn’t here to help but to rule, to drain the people beneath it of everything they have.”
I set my hand on his arm. “I happen to know someone who could burn it to the ground.”
He twisted slightly to meet my gaze. “Sorry, Ava, but stone walls don’t burn.” Still, his tone sounded eased, as if the joke were what he’d really needed.
“I’m serious. Isn’t there something we can do?”
“We?”
“Well, I don’t have a lot of tricks, but the couple I have are a doozy. You went to hell for me. What’s a little war and genocide for you?”
He reached out and caught the front of my jacket before tugging it, pulling me forward and claiming a kiss.
It was odd, as he didn’t tend to kiss me in public, not around the guild at least. Jameson had walked up on us, but that had been an accident. I hadn’t felt like a dirty secret, more like something valuable that he didn’t want others to take advantage of.
Whether he didn’t care anymore or just couldn’t resist, I wasn’t sure.
And when his lips took mine? I didn’t care.
Too soon, we broke apart, and a look to my side dried up the lust he’d stoked inside me.
Theentireroom stood there, mouths open, staring at us.
“What are they looking at?” I asked Grant, as if we’d broken an unwritten rule I didn’t know about. Was there some prudish no PDA thing in the bylaws? “Am I going to be killed for molesting their precious Magistrate or something?”
Grant laughed, then nodded at the seat beside the main throne. “Well, that little display makes it clear you and I are a set package, that they’d be stupid to try and come against either of us.”
“So?”
“So, any hopes they had about trying to backstab me just crumbled away, because now they know I have a reaper guarding my back.”
Even though I still hated the term ‘reaper’, something warm filled me. As I took my spot, as the council stared at Grant and me, and I sat tall, I realized what it was.
Pride.
Maybe I didn’t love what I’d become—or what I’d learned I always was—but the looks on their faces screamed the truth loud and clear.
I finally felt useful, as if I had a place that mattered.
Maybe being a reaper wasn’t all bad…
