“Did you trust him?” I blurted out, eyelids fluttering shut.
“Who?”
“My Uncle Felix.” They were silent, and I was glad I couldn’t see their faces. “I don’t think I trust him,” I admitted in a whisper. “This spell feels wrong. He’s given me conflicting information, and he tricked me to get me into this house. I don’t trust any of his little games.”
Nothing. If I didn’t sense their presence at my back, I would have believed I was alone.
Breathing through the seconds, my fingers ripped the paper a tiny amount and I opened my eyes, ensuring I hadn’t made the words impossible to read. I’d only ripped through one. The Difrenen character stared back at me, the shadows hitting my little tear making the word read differently. Instead of ‘release’, it looked like it read ‘death’. I shuddered.
I should listen to an omen as strong as that, but I wasn’t seeing any other choices.
“We trusted him as much as we could trust someone who was our captor,” Waylon said.
“And what reasons did he give for you to trust him?”
Another silence, so long it was broken by Kirin giving a warning. “Thirty seconds.”
My spine tensed, breaths coming faster. Every part of me screamed against reading the words of the spell, but the instincts didn’t tell mewhyand I needed a why. I needed to know why my body would rather have me locked in a graveyard mansion for the rest of my short life, as opposed to getting myself out and letting the men come with me.
Reaching down, I grabbed the artifact. Power pulsed through me, my body thrumming with it. If I got lucky, it might be enough to bring down the seal on the house without killing me in the process.
That might be why.
My body was warning me away from pain and the potential of death.
Pushing a bit of magic against the artifact, it ricocheted back to me like a punch in the gut, ten times stronger. This artifact had to be illegal. We’d used some uncommon ingredients, but the strength shouldn’t be this high.
“Ten seconds.”
Kirin’s flat voice counted down slowly from there, every second hitting me with a force I’d never felt before. “One… and time.”
Voice flowing out of me, I remembered every word of the spell without need for the paper. I pushed every scrap of magic I had inside me into the unassuming piece of wood in my hand and it was shoved back at me bigger, more powerful than anything I’d ever felt before. Every piece of me itched and burned with the sudden intensity of magic. Dropping the useless spell paper, I grabbed my towel without breaking out of my word-filled trance, dabbing beads of sweat off my forehead and slinging it around my neck to sop up more sweat.
The men faded away as I got deeper into the spell, and so did everything else in the world. Soon, there was nothing in front of me. No tree branch. No house. Only a glowing red barrier with a crack in it. My mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear myself anymore.
“Leave here, Hadley. You’re ready.”
Words came from everywhere and nowhere, in a voice I’d never heard before in my life. Feminine and comforting, a warm hug around my soul.
“Fight him.”
My tongue stuttered, but kept going. Who? Felix was dead.
“Kill him.”
“Avenge me.”
“Avenge your parents.”
The same voice, but angry, rising to a screech. It triggered my memory of the ghost who had attacked me, made my scarred side throb despite barely being able to feel my own body. I was still speaking, but only on autopilot. My muscles trembled, and I fought the urge to curl up into a ball. I didn’t know if I could, or if the spell would force me to stay standing.
As if feeling my terror, the woman softened again.
“He made you strong. Make him regret it.”
I wanted to ask who she was talking about, but with that statement there was only one person it could be. My Uncle Felix was still alive, if this ethereal being was to be believed. Although, why should I believe her when she’d come to me during this spell sanctioned by him? This may be yet another game he’d chosen to play with me. Something to test my loyalty and see if I would stay on his side when faced with another option.
Obviously, I wouldn’t. I held no loyalty to him.
