Page 46 of Haunted

I don’t watch the empress as she spars. I seclude myself in my room but open a gate to our connection. I’m curious about it. I haven’t explored all that it’s capable of. Her sight becomes mine.

She’s sparring with the commander. The fight is brutal, as if both brother and sister are releasing some pent-up aggressions. The empress takes a hit in the stomach, and I collapse onto my bed with a grunt.

“Is that all you have?” she growls at her brother. She rubs her stomach, but a second later, she whirls her staff above her head. I’m thrilled that they aren’t fighting with blades. I’m not ready for the pain of cuts and stabs.

She knocks the commander off his feet, but he rolls away before she can clobber him. Once he’s upright, she does a fantastical kick that spins her through the air. Her foot smashes into the side of his head, and Meuric goes flying.

The reverberations pulse up my calf, but she doesn’t slow.

I want to mess with both of them. I whisper the incantation for concealment into her mind, a spell that hides her physical form. I don’t know if she’s aware of my thoughts until I find herself repeating the spell in her mind, as if it’s a tune stuck in her head.

I hear it as an echo.

I almost laugh. After three chants, she winks out of sight. I only know this because the audience gasps, and the commander whirls in a circle, looking for her.

I jump up from the bed. Who would have thought?

She stares at her hands that aren’t there. Everything touching her has vanished, including her staff. She steps around Meuric. She doesn’t say anything as she gauges everyone’s reaction.

She growls. “Caedryn.”

I laugh outright, and the empress startles.

Meuric rounds on her, and his staff flashes out. The empress blocks his strike.

“Nice trick, sister.” His staff flies again and makes contact with hers. The commander takes pleasure in this new challenge. He draws on his dark power to compensate. I imagine his hearing heightens to trace her footfalls.

They end up in a clash of staffs that involves them shoving against each other, staffs crossed. They are close enough I see the sweat on Meuric’s face.

“Block his connection,” Meuric hisses. “He’s in your head right now.”

“I’m in his head, you mean.” She shoves Meuric to the ground and pins him with the end of her staff, but he grabs her staff and flips her over his head. She lands with a thud so hard I collapse onto the floor, the wind thrown from me.

By the Creator.

I black out.

I come to with a crushing weight over my heart.

I grunt and try to rise, but the weight has me pinned. I touch my chest, and my hands meet a smooth rod and follow it upward—the end of a staff I can’t see?

“You forgot to give me the counter chant to your invisibility spell,” the empress says.

I drop my head back and smile. Now that I know she’s standing over me, I sense the cold of her presence.

“You still let him beat you,” I say.

“I always will.” She doesn’t remove the staff from my chest. “But he was quite excited by the added challenge.”

“Glad I could be of service.”

The pressure on my chest ceases when she takes her staff away. It materializes when it clatters to the floor, thrown from her grasp. I’m not surprised when a new, invisible weight lands on me as the empress straddles my waist.

I’m oddly aroused by my invisible seductress.

“What’s the counter chant?” she asks.

“You don’t want to stay invisible?”

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