Chapter 23 23

Chapter 23 23


Eudora's POV

My heart was bursting out of my fucking ears as I stood behind the closed door. I knew the wood would be thick, solid oak but I still put my ear to it, listening for sounds from the stairs.
Oberon had gone out there by himself to save me and Marjah. Without hesitation, had inserted himself between us and danger. And I was meant to cower like some feeble damsel while he fought into Esmeralda's snare?

Every natural impulse was screaming at me to act. To act. To help.

Esmeralda’s voice came through the door, sounding honey sweet and poisonous. “You see, Oberon, all of this could be solved. So easy. We both get what we want."

“I do not want to know anything,” answered Oberon, with cold severity.

"Are you sure about that?" Esmeralda's laugh was bitter. "Send the girl away. Annul the marriage. Claim that marriage was never consummated, which is true and known. They can keep the witches in ignorance. We can call her unsuitable. That the bond did not take. “Then you will and I can start again what we have.''

The never consummated caught in my breath. Because she was right. It was true. Our attachment was not physical. This marriage of ours could be easily, legally dissolved without question.

Would Oberon consider it? To save Marjah? To bring this conflict to an end and stop the bloodletting?

My chest constricted with a combination of terror and something that seemed an awful lot like hope.

“I’m not giving you Nym,” Oberon’s voice was hard, final. "And the marriage stands. There will be no annulment."

I was so relieved that I fell to my knees. He had chosen me. Unequivocally. Publicly. Before the very woman he’d once loved and hated with all her warriors.

"Even if it results in the death of your cousin"? Esmeralda challenged. "For I will kill her, Oberon. Right here. Right now. Not unless you give me what I want.”

I heard a steels drawn. The hiss of a blade exiting its scabbard. Then Marjah's pained gasp.
I could not wait anymore. Could not have this happen while waiting to see if my cousin would make it.

My hand moved to the moonstone pendant on my neck. It was warm, its merry beat pulsing gently against my skin. It had burned Oberon the time he attempted to take it off. Seraphina had said it would keep me safe.

But perhaps it could do more than defend. Maybe I could use it. Use the power it represented.

I closed my eyes, recalling the type of strength I gained when the vault collapsed days ago. When my witch blood had risen in desperation. When the purple lightning had shot out of my hands and exploded through the walls of solid stone.

I had suppressed it since. Buried it. Fearful of what I could not govern. Afraid of becoming something dangerous.

But now Oberon and Marjah relied on me. And fear was a luxury I could not have.

I sucked in my breath and accessed that power. Dipped down into my bloodline, to the witch heritage my mother had brought with her. That my grandmother had wielded. That even a woman older than myself zens of women before me had been ordered to do.

It responded immediately.

I saw purple light crackling at my fingers, as they danced like lightning over my knuckles. The pendant began to heat up, and therm it was hot to the touch, a soft red glow opened magic pulsed through the amazon around my head.

I felt it coursing in my veins, running down into a depth of something deep and primeval. Something that was dormant in me all my life, waiting to be released.

Power. Raw, untamed, magnificent power.

My mother's magic. My grandmother's. There was generations of witch power flowing through my veins, answering to my summons.

I opened my eyes, and somehow I was not in doubt that they were now glowing purple. Bright and otherworldly. Just like my mother’s had, back in the scant memories I had of her using magic.

Then I pushed open the door.

All eyes were on me and the stair scene froze. Five pairs of widened eyes, then -- shocked and terrified.
Esmeralda's mouth fell open. “It can’t be,” she breathed, retreating a step. "You don't just suddenly have witch magic with no training. without years and years of study and practice. You shouldn’t be able to do this.”

I reached out and power ripped to life like a living thing around me. It wanted to be used. Wanted to protect. Wanted to take anyone who threatened mine out of the picture.

"Let my cousin go," I said. My voice sounded alien, competing with the other voices. Ancient voices. The voices of all the women who had been where I was, offering me their power.
The warrior with Marjah took a step back, the pressure on her throat released. I witnessed fear flash over his countenance.

Oberon looked at me with a dazed expression of awe and concern. His eyes were open wide and his body was taught. “Eudora, you get your butt back in this house!” he barked, his voice cracking. "For what you are doing, you do not know. Untrained magic is dangerous."

But I could not. Would not obey. Not when I finally had power to shield loved ones. Not when I could at last be more than a helpless captive.

“I know what I’m doing,” I told him, although that wasn’t entirely accurate. It was power that felt both familiar and foreign. Like remembering a dream. "I am protecting my family."

Esmeralda got over the shock it caused soon, and her face went hard. “So the little princess has claws after all,” she sneered. "How interesting. But untrained magic is unsafe, girl.” The chances are good you will harm both yourself and your wonderful mate as much as anyone else. You make one false step, and you could crash this whole tower down on all our heads.”

She made a sharp impatient gesture to her warriors. "Take her. Now. Before she hurts someone."

Two of them advanced on me, pulling out weapons. They were big men, fighters by training. The way things were supposed to work, I'd have been at their mercy.

But he wasn’t living in normal times.

I instinctively responded by reaching out my hand. An energy bolt flared from my hand, a surge of magical force which arced into both fighters at once.

They flew backwards like they weighted none, hitting the stone wall with enough force to cause it to crack. They slumped to the ground, felled unconscious or dead. I could not tell which.
I looked down at my hand, stunned by what belonged to me there. By the ease of it. The power felt good. Intoxicating. Finally scratching that itch that had tormented me my whole life.

But it also felt foreign. Wrong somehow. Like wearing someone else's skin. Like borrowing power that didn’t really belong to me.

While Oberon had them distracted, he shifted. He moved part way, flowing between man and wolf. His claws extended, deadly sharp. His eyes blazed gold.

He had disarmed the warrior who held Marjah within seconds. The blade fell with a clatter against the stone ground. The warrior began backing up with his hands in the air.

Marjah dropped to the pavement, groaning but alive. Her face and neck were bloody, but I could see her breathing. Could glimpse her eyes barely crack open.

Esmeralda yelled with rage, a pure growl of bitter rage. She dropped one to her belt, then drew a blade except the one that still shone in torch light.

But Oberon was not what she was trying to hit.

She was aiming for me.

The blade even flew from her hand with a lazy casualness in its end-over-end trajectory through the air. Aimed straight at my heart and shooting to kill.

I attempted to call my powers once more; wanted to put something in the way, some shield or barrier against his weapon. But nothing came. The well inside me was empty. I had burned out in that one explosion.

As I watched the blade arc towards me, time seemed to slow. I could see every rotation. Could track its path. Could do nothing to stop it.

Oberon was there then, moving too quickly to be natural. He seemed to materialize out of thin air in front of me and the knife.

His hand jumped out and caught the dagger in mid air. He gripped it so hard his hand was bloody and dripping onto the stone.

For a moment, we locked eyes over the distance between us and in that instant I saw everything he felt. The fear of losing me. The desperation. The love he had been struggling so much to avoid.

“Mine,” He snarled, the word filled with his wolf’s force. With something primal and possessive. "She's mine and you don't touch mine.”

He tossed the blade, and a smile spread over Esmeralda’s face as it soared toward her with lethal accuracy. It went true, screeching across the room and into the wall near her face. A clear warning. A promise of what awaited her if she gave it another go.

Esmeralda jumped back and clung to the wall. For the first time I saw was true fear in her bright green eyes.

But as Oberon lunged to seize her, to put an end to this once and for all, the other warriors pressed in on him. Blocking his path. Protecting their leader.

And I saw something that chilled my blood.

Their eyes were starting to register differences. The whites fading to gray. The irises darkening. Black, seeping out from the edges like ink through water.

Just as the diseased prisoner in the dungeons was foul.

They were transforming. Right here in the tower. Right in front of us.

Esmeralda had not only harbored traitors within the palace. She'd brought Ruminant animals with her, Ruminant infected wolves. Which had put the enemy on the inside of our walls.
“And they were all staring at me.” All directing their shifting eyes toward me.

They both spoke with one voice. That same layered, inhuman sound. "Vessel. Vessel. The vessel is here. Must take the vessel. Must bring her home."