Page 137 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

I kept my steps measured and my head held high as I left beside Corentin.

We entered the tunnel, and he portaled us to my chamber.

Wild jerked upright. “What is it?”

Corey’s hands gripped my upper arms. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” I replied.

Wild was up, clad in sweatpants and totally disorientated. “What’s fuck?”

Corey answered, “There’s a group of young magus who are adamant they saw Rooke pull black blood out of Tempest. They’re talking about black smoke, dark magic, and then Tempest went and reduced her Ogham Staves to a black, smoking mess in the divination center just now.”

Rooke burst into the room. “We have a problem.”

She slammed the door behind her. “I just got baled up in apothecary by some proven. They wanted to know if your blood is black. I know you wanted to set a trap for Frond’s group, but I had to show them the old vial of blood to calm them down. Except one of them saw some of my notes on your blood before I banished them. They want to know why your blood is important.”

I sat on the bed. “It begins.”

A curious amusement found me. A relief.

I laughed.

Sven burst into the room. “We—” He glanced around. “You know.” He peered my way. “Is she broken?”

Corey nodded.

Rooke sat on the bed next to me. “What now?”

“It’s in the hands of the Mother,” I replied, then stood. “I have a training session to get to. Wild?”

“We need to leave,” he told me.

I shook my head. “No. We won’t abandon our home.”

“Our home is about to collapse,” he answered.

Then it would crush us alongside everyone else. I had no power in what lay ahead. I didn’t want it. I wanted those around me to choose. Perhaps that was idiotic with the demonic magic plaguing and dividing us.

But that was all I could do by refusing to run with Wild.

We must trust in the Mother.

I can’t trust anyone else when it comes to you, he told me. It’s impossible for me.

What about me? I asked him.

Yes, he reluctantly replied. I trust you with us.

Then trust me when I say that the Mother has guided us this far, and that nothing we’ve gone through has been easy. We will overcome this.

And if the coven can’t overcome themselves?

Then we won’t have to leave, I told him. We’ll be marched out.

Wild pulled me up and into his arms. “I want to be so angry at them for treating you this way. I can’t promise to act in the way you wish me to.”

“I don’t want you to act in any way other than what your instincts tell you,” I said up to him. “You think the way you do, and I think the way I do, and both are necessary.”

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