Page 155 of A Bond with the Dark

I will choose Dom.

I nod.

“Sayah, no!” Dom says as Adaline presses the artifact into my hand. “Wait Sayah, don’t . . .”

“J, do your thing,” Everett says, and Jasantha’s eyes turn purple.

“No, Jasantha, don’t!” Dom begs.

Tears spill down my face as I walk back toward the warlock.

“Dominic, calm,” comes Jasantha’s capricious voice behind me, lulling Dom to let me do this.

As I walk by Bash, his lucent blue eyes tell me it’s all right.

The warlock, his garish eyes aglow with red, awaits me patiently.

“Have you made your choice then, phoenix?”

I nod. “Where is Scarlet?”

“I will tell you the location,” he begins.

“No. Bring her here now. I will not give you the artifact or make my choice until she is here.”

“Very well,” he intones, his aura smoking around him.

Tilting his head back, he spreads his arms and mumbles idioms that do not register in my vernacular. A few seconds later, dozens of wings flapping echo throughout the dark space. From the fireplace, smoke-like crows enter, swirling around the ground and rising upward like a dark inverted tornado. Slowly, Scarlet’s body appears, from toe to hip to head.

The gaunt appearance of Scarlet is unnerving. She’s bloody and beaten, chunks of flesh missing from her arms and legs that aren’t healing. Her skin is almost gray.

Her appearance doesn’t make sense for only being gone a few hours at most.

Adaline glances over her quickly, pulling up her chin to check her eyes, and nods at me to finish the deal.

The warlock holds his hand, and I place the artifact within it.

“And your choice?”

“Dom to have the inactivated mark. Bash to have the other.”

“Your wish is my command.” And the grin he gives me is so awful; his teeth are black save for one gold tooth, but the evil that emits from it freezes my blood.

Evaporating, pieces, and parts of him become those black smoke crows, each flying up and out of the fireplace until he is gone.

For a moment, I stand there, staring into the darkness, contemplating what I’d done. Although I know nothing of the phoenix blessing bestowed upon me, I’m sure that condemning one man’s soul to darkness is not part of it.

The shaking in my arms and legs makes it impossible to stand. I’m so lost as to what I’m supposed to do now.

Dom is not marked—or it’s inactivated—and that’s the only good thing that’s happened. But being the phoenix means I’m supposed to restore the balance, and I had thought that meant killing the warlocks who spell the grimspawns.

I can’t turn to anyone and ask the mounting questions in my mind.

Except for my aunts.

Hilda and Maggie have to know something, or at least have a way to figure out what my purpose is with this whole new life.

When I turn back around, something’s not right.

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