He snaps, thoughts collapsing in his head until images flash by, too fast to be seen. He sinks deep into the pain I’m inflicting, but he struggles, too, as blood pours from his nose.
“I’ll kill you, whore!” he snarls. “Do worse to you than I did to her!”
I recognize Heather’s picture from the obituary, but for the first time I see her as he did. Saints above, she was unrecognizable when he finished with her, her face destroyed by fists and hexes. Her body broken. But he didn’t push her. She teetered along a cliff’s edge, waves crashing against the rocks below, and she reached for him.
She begged for her life, clutching a broken arm against her body, a twisted ankle making her footing uneven. Waves roared beneath her while a storm surged above her.
He could feel the spray of the sea on his face, how it cooled his rage into something… Something quieter. Not regret. Not even satisfaction.
Rightness.
At the first flash of lightning overhead, she fell.
Crashed to the rocks just as thunder cracked overhead.
He didn’t push her. She fell.
It was a tragic accident.
My intention snaps, the last daggers of my magic spearing into him. I sway on my feet, just as Heather swayed, just as Rad staggers to his feet.
“You’ll regret this, witch!”
I catch just one final thought before my affinity falters, one refrain that surfaces above his fear.
Halcyon will not spare you.
CHAPTER38
Isnatch up my scribe, fight my way to my feet and cast the strongest stunning spell I can imagine. My magic fails me, completely spent, nothing left within me to call. Simon lets out a scream and I race to his side. When I turn back to Rad, it’s just in time to see him vanish, an invisibility spell closing in around him.
Footsteps clatter into the temple as my fingers fumble around my scribe, trying to undo Simon’s bindings. When I can’t even manage that, I try to call my magic, to draw up the simplest strength sigil I can: the one Ian cast to save Cassian and Marcus, but no magic comes.
Charged alpha scents fill the air: bergamot and cedar, winter wind and pine and a new scent mixing with them: Earl Grey and rainy afternoons.
As soon as the stunning spell on him has been nullified, Cassian stumbles forward and runs to Simon’s side. He turns to Ian, panic in his eyes, but my imperious professor only nods as he goes to Simon, as he painstakingly draws the ember from my beta’s flesh into his own.
And then he staggers towards me and I’m in his arms, breathing in the spice of his cedar scent. “You cast a spell to break out of an omega trap with your own fucking blood,” he mutters. “I don’t know if you’re brilliant or insane, but you saved Simon’s life.”
I look up from Ian’s arms and meet Cassian’s gaze. There’s a sheen of tears in his dark eyes, but relief is clear in his slack jaw, the way he holds Simon’s hands in his as Doc examines the beta.
“Thank you,” he mouths, as though this whole thing wasn’t my fault.
“I can’t… I can’t cast,” I gasp, and then feel Ian’s fingers along my spine, the warmth of his touch through Luca’s borrowed tee shirt.
“You’re tapped out, my darling. You used everything you had within you, but it’ll come back with rest.”
I slump against him, feeling empty, yet heavy, my body a weight too great to hold up.
“Radcliffe got away,” Royal Detective Inspector Miller mutters and I realize Marcus must have called him. My honor guard, always trying to do the right and just thing. “I followed his trail, but he’s clever. I lost it just a few steps into the woods. We could do a searching spell, even get a K-9 unit out here, but I fear it’d already be too late.”
“He’s using magic tech,” I say, not moving from Ian’s arms. Not yet. “It renders him invisible and allows him to bypass the warding. He had help entering the wards around the omega residences at least once, but since then, I believe it’s been the tech. As if someone programmed the wards to look past it.”
“That’s a bold claim, Juniper,” Ian says quietly, stroking my hair. “Only three mages have access to those warding spells, and two of them are right here with you.”
Which only leaves Professor Cadigan.
“It could have been done under duress. Or someone outside Fairhaven was able to crack them.” I drop my voice low enough that only he’ll hear the rest. “He had help, I just couldn’t see who.”
