“We have to get them back. Eleanor’s been after Charlie from the start. She wants her dead.” Gabriel’s beast seethed, his skin bubbling with his need to shift and his eyes glowing green with rage. His older brother dug his fingers in the dirt, his eyes burning.
Colin felt it too. His dragon burned with the need to get Leena back. His heart pounded relentlessly, and his skin felt too tight. His wings arched over his shoulders with his rage. He’d gut his mother with his own talons if she hurt a single hair on Leena’s head.
Through the panic and the pain, a voice like silver bells rang through Colin’s head.You’ll help me find the grimoire, won’t you?Queen Penelope would do anything to get that book. The Defenders of the Goddess had three kingdoms ready to go to war.
“We’re going to get them back,” he said. He was the leader of the resistance. All he had to do was pull the trigger.
Gabriel, Xavier, and the witches stared at him expectantly.
“How?” Avery asked.
“We go to war with Paragon.Now.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You stay away from her!” Raven screamed at Crimson. She clawed forward on the obsidian, scrambling to get her feet under her.
Crimson reached for Charlie, but her hands never connected with the child. Her body buckled in half as if something hard socked her in the stomach. The witch crumpled to the floor. Raven found the source of the blow in Leena, who was sneering at Crimson, her arms holding an invisible bow and arrow.
From the shadows, magic pulsed. Leena went flying, her back slapping the far wall hard enough that when she dropped to the floor, she didn’t get back up. Bright-red blood darkened her temple.
“Leena!” Raven cried.
Like something out of Raven’s darkest nightmares, Empress Eleanor stepped from the shadows and hovered over Crimson’s fallen body. She reached into Crimson’s gut, her hand passing right through her skin and bones, and withdrew whatever poison Leena had rooted there. The black veins that had branched out across Crimson’s flesh followed as if Eleanor had plucked them out, a weed by the roots. Leena’s poison arrow sizzled away in the palm of the empress’s bony hand.
Eleanor turned her full attention on Raven, pointing a long nail at Crimson, who was brushing off the remnants of elf magic from her torso, her teeth bared. “You forged a witch’s contract with this woman for your firstborn. She’s calling it in.”
Raven reached her arms out for Charlie. Crimson stepped between them and lifted the baby from the cold obsidian. Her little girl looked scared and confused in the stranger’s arms and started to wail.
“Put her down. You’re scaring her!”
“She’s mine now, Raven. We had an agreement.”
Raven’s mind couldn’t fathom what was happening. Crimson was here? Alive? All she could manage through the thickening lump in her throat was “How?”
Eleanor grinned. “You of all people should know that sometimes the dead don’t stay dead, Raven. After all, as I understand it, you resurrected my son once.”
Behind Eleanor, a peregrine falcon perched on the back of her throne and flapped its wings.
“You had it follow me to Earth?” Raven started putting it together. She’d seen that same bird in the tree on the beach in Aeaea and its silhouette outside the window at Blakemore’s. Eleanor must have used the falcon to learn about Crimson and then resurrected her with dark magic.
Raven’s heart pounded, panic gripping her. She reached for the first spell that came to mind. Forming a triangle with her fingers, she twisted it to the right and uttered, “Diaíresi.” The spell, meant to shred Eleanor, dissipated with a wave of the empress’s hand. Another fling of Eleanor’s wrist and Raven was bound in yellow lightning. She’d grown stronger. Much stronger. They were doomed.
The empress stared down her nose at her. “Give it up, Raven. Your heart rate is much too high, and you are far too unfocused to manage even a basic spell. And now I have this.” She bent down and picked up the golden grimoire. “Ransom!”
The captain of the guard manifested in the room, panting, hair matted in sweat. Wings spread, he gripped a sword in both hands. He sounded exasperated when he said, “Empress, Rogos and Darnuith have attacked. They’ve crossed the border into Hobble Glen! The Obsidian Guard is on the defensive. You must put me back.”
“Never mind that, Ransom. Once I use this child’s blood to complete my spell, I will turn them all to dust. Take these two to the dungeon.”
There was nothing Raven could do but scream as Ransom cuffed her and dragged her and an unconscious Leena away.
Raven hated the Obsidian Dungeon.She’d spent weeks here once, a pawn in Eleanor’s scheme to bring Gabriel into her twisted plan. The empress hadn’t succeeded, and Raven had sworn she’d never set foot here again. Yet here she was, and despite being exponentially more powerful than before, whatever enchantment was in the walls of this particular cell was strong enough to leave her magically impotent while Crimson held her baby upstairs.
She sat beside Leena’s unconscious body and cried, wept with the sort of despair she’d never felt before, not even when she was dying of cancer. This was far worse. Eleanor had the book, Crimson had Charlie, and the empress was going to win.
“Ow.” Leena woke and rubbed the back of her head. “Goddess, that woman is a demon in dragon skin.”
“You’re far more polite than I am.”
