Page 170 of Magic of the Damned

Just a few inches from it, I grappled with the overwhelming urge to touch it. Don’t touch it, I commanded myself. But the demands of the enigmatic tool were too great.

“Luna,” Emoni’s concerned voice resonated in my mind, which was becoming increasingly fuzzy. Don’t touch it.

But it was demanding to be touched, held. Used.

I knew I shouldn’t and contracted my muscles to force resistance against the strong magical pull. Before I could reach for it, Dominic was at my side, pulling me away. Positioned in front of me, his body became a wall, preventing me nearing it.

It didn’t stop the need. And when he picked up the object, Emoni grabbed my arm and jerked me to her before I could touch it. She kept a firm hold on me.

“Luna,” she said. I didn’t respond. She cupped my face and searched it for information. I wanted to speak, but words just didn’t come freely. They felt locked. There was only one goal: Touch the ivory knot.

“What is this?” She lifted my arm to inspect the mark. It throbbed and felt warm. Her urgency made her touch rougher than I’m sure she intended. Her nails digging into my skin was enough of a jolt of pain to clear my head a little. My thoughts were split between listening to my friend and my curiosity about the object. Desire to answer her question and to hold the magical tool.

Dominic growled out an angry spew of curses. Walking around us, he stopped spewing long enough to whisper an invocation. Similar sigils that he’d used to restrict his sister and a witch’s magic during a fight formed a circle around us. The enigmatic pull of the magic stopped, my head cleared, and the need to grab the object stopped. I was unable to explain what had happened or make sense of it because my attention was drawn to Emoni’s series of questions.

“Why is she marked? What did you do? Why is this happening to us?” Followed by a promise of bodily harm, removal of their magic, teaching them true fear, and an impressive list of threats she didn’t have the physical strength to perform, wasn’t anatomically able to perform, and without magic and preternatural speed or strength could never perform.

“How are you, without any magic, planning to destroy all magic?” I asked in response to one of the more unreasonable threats. Her smirk mirrored mine, and the tight grip she had on my arm loosened, but her attention stayed on the symbol.

“I don’t have a plan, but anger makes a lot of things possible,” she snapped with a laugh at her own ridiculous response. I needed her calm, because anger from Dominic and Anand was rampaging through the room.

With the infinity knot in his hand, fire blazed from Dominic’s other hand.

“Do not destroy it!” Areleus commanded in a surly voice, a quick slice of his finger in the air extinguishing the fire. “Not yet,” he tacked on at the challenge in Dominic’s expression that overtook his look of surprise at his presence.

“What happened?” Areleus asked me.

“Magic touched me. Lured?” I said, my explanation lacking a surety they all wanted. It was an alluring pull of magic, but nothing like Dominic’s, which teased and seduced me. Instead, it was a command to be obeyed.

“Magic pulled me to it.” With more confidence, I told them about the flare of heat, the symbol forming on my arm that remained, and the urge I felt to touch the object.

“They want her!” Areleus said. “If she had touched it, I suspect a spell similar to the temporalibus would have put someone in her place.”

“Not possible without something of hers: hair, blood, intimate clothing,” Dominic said.

“Or phone.” I was positive I’d left it at Peter’s, or during my last visit. Could anything of mine have been used?

“Perhaps they know of a spell that wouldn’t require those things,” Dominic speculated.

“It would have switched me with Peter?” I asked. Had he been abducted or had he left willingly? Was he being used as a pawn again?

“I doubt it. Probably with someone inconsequential. An unknowing or unwilling participant.” A person minding their own business and swooshed into an unknown apartment. I hated the feeling when the temporalibus was used and I’d found myself swept away and in the Perils prison where Peter had been housed.

“Ophelia—that’s the name she gave me. And she does consider Peter inconsequential.”

Dominic shook his head, frowning at the ward that enclosed me. “Probably not now. He’s an asset who likely has had his magic returned. There is power in numbers, which is why they want you. Three people with their magic would be formidable.”

“Why?” Emoni blurted. “She lacks the very thing you all seem to have too much of, a thirst for power and violence. She’d be no help to anyone.”

It was probably the first time that being useless was an attribute.

“I’m sure there’d be a line of people willing to possess that magic. I don’t understand why it has to be her.” Emoni’s voice broke at the end with a desperation of a seemingly hopeless situation. I was starting to feel it, too.

“Because she’s able to carry the magic. It’s her magic,” Areleus said, keen eyes on me. He stepped toward me, eying the ward that surrounded me and Emoni, but was quickly blocked by Dominic before he could further close the distance.

A cynical smile curled Areleus’s lips. “And because Luna possesses the one thing that the other Casters do not. Immunity. Whether she burns down the world, puts us or others in danger, or becomes a complete menace, my son will not hurt her.”

I’d never heard acknowledging a link sound so tyrannically cruel.

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