“You don’t seem sad about it,” I murmur, catching him shrugging from the corner of my eye.
“I put them there.”
I gulp at the calmness his voice holds as he continues to explain some pretty heavy facts.
“So this wasn’t their mission too?” I ask, finally turning back to him.
“Overturning The Sanctum? Yes. Taking their place? No.”
Someone got a little power hungry, it seems. Did Kael agree with him and overpower his parents? If so, why is he at The Vale and not standing by his brother’s side?
I shake the tingles of worry from my limbs, refusing to let my opinion of him soften. Offering a meek smile to the current Forrester driving me insane, I take a step back.
“Well, if this is all, I think I’ve seen enough. You can take me back now,” I state, and he slowly shakes his head as his eyes devour mine.
“That’s not how this works,” he rasps, and I roll my eyes, unable to hide the disdain any longer.
Instead of offering him a response, I turn for the door, ready to see myself out, but before I can reach the obstacle blocking my exit, his fingers coil around my wrist.
I move without thinking, spinning on the spot to snarl at him. His fingers may be wrapped around my wrist, but the hold isn’t tight, so when I shove against his chest, there’s no restraint. Not from his grasp, and not my magic as it finally makes an appearance, zapping at my palms as Jude freezes against my touch.
The somewhat familiar sensation of magic transitioning between me and another washes over me as Jude’s head snaps back, his eyelids at half mast as his lips part and his skin pales, but he doesn’t drop to his knees like the others.
A groan rips from his lips, startling me as my veins thrum with magic, and it takes me a second to understand what I’m witnessing.
He… likes it. It’s as if he’s relishing in the tingles, the draining sensation. Startled, I snap my hands from his chest, and his hold on my wrist falls away, allowing me to stumble back a step. I gape at him in a mixture of horror and disbelief, watching as he runs his tongue over his bottom lip and cups his dick through his pants, making it clear how he feels.
I need to get the hell out of here right now.
With my pulse pounding in my ears, I spin back toward the exit, ready to run for my life, but the door opens before I can reach it, revealing another obstacle in my path: Walker.
“I think it’s best we put my little weapon with the others for now. Hopefully, she’ll see reason soon,” Jude orders from behind me, and Walker nods.
It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t bring myself to turn back and argue with him right now. Walker takes my silence as acceptance, wrapping his hand around my upper arm as he tugs me into the hallway, returning to where we started without a word. We cross over the symbolic marble on the floor, cutting straight through the hallway dead ahead, before he leads me down a set of stairs. After the first two steps, the marble turns tostone, the color, life, and grandeur leaving, and it makes sense why when we reach the bottom and Walker unlocks a steel-barred door.
The others.
There are no windows and I’m standing at the threshold of the only door. There are only stone walls and wooden benches, each filled with people. There must be at least twenty in here, each as drained and exhausted as the last, none of them filling me with any hope as I glance at Walker.
For what, I don’t know, but whatever hope lingers in my gut is diminished when he edges me further into the room before slamming the door shut behind me.
What the fuck?
Disbelief claws inside of me as I return my attention to the room and the people blinking back at me.
“Are you his latest victim?” a blonde girl asks, curling her hair behind her ear as she stares at me expectantly, and I gape at her for a moment before I shake my head.
“What does that mean?”
A brunette woman sitting in the far corner of the room stands, a sad, defeated smile on her lips, nodding at me. “Sweetie, it means, just like us, he wants you for your powers.”
4
RION
“She’s where?”
My heart races as my mind repeats his words over and over, but as they attempt to sink in, they cut through my soul like a jagged knife, bleeding me out when I see the resolution in his eyes.
