Page 122 of Winterfall Destiny

"I've potent magic. That's all. So does he." I gesture at Jamie. "He practices psychometry."

"Are you saying you're single school magic?" asks the stocky guy. "All witch recruits are dual magic users. What makes you special?"

"Are we given a shifter to kill, or do we hunt them?" asks Jamie and I half-choke at his direct question.

The focus on me swerves. "Kill?" The girl on the floor gawks. "Someone told you to kill a shifter?"

"Any opponent," he continues nonchalantly. "In order to prove ourselves and get the blood."

"Whoa." Carter blinks. "Who told you that?"

"Fuck," mutters the other guy and pushes a hand through his hair. "This is insane. What are we doing here?"

“I can’t kill,” rasps out Melissa.

Yet you chose to join an army. Or did you?

As the conversation continues, a creeping dread fills me. Is the Dominion using witches against their own instead of shifters this time? With Anastasia and the Blackwoods out of the picture, the main witch influence over the Dominion ended, too.

"Something's off. Why the questions?" Carter shoves Jamie to one side to examine me closer, and as Jamie slices him a pissed off look, I grab his arm, squeezing a warning to stay calm.

The witch doesn't reach out to me physically, but attempts to seize my mind. I fight against laughing at Carter's unsubtle try and slam up a wall to reflect his forceful assault against me.

The sitting girl stands, and my pulse picks up as the group surround us. Would these witches embrace us for solidarity or attack us for our differences?

"Are you Confed?" she asks, too loudly as a hemia group on the floor stop chatting, looking up, card game paused.

"No. We want the bastards taken down as much as you do." I open my mind enough for them to glimpse that truth, but nothing more.

"Hey, witchy girl," calls a guy from the floor, tapping his hand of cards against his long chin. Everybody ignores them. "Blondie."

Fuck. Now what?

He's exactly the type of hemia that targets humans—good-looking guy with an easy-going smile and mesmerising green eyes. His resemblance to actors who play vamps in TV shows would make his activities laughably easy. How many humans has he killed? How many would he kill if the First or the Dominion revealed the supernatural world?

Side by side, Jamie's body touches me, and I link fingers, reassuring myself that nothing in this place neutralises magic as his locks with mine.

"Are you pissed off with hemia, and that's why you joined?" he asks me. "Didn't like your sister choosing one of us?"

I frown, genuinely confused. "I don't have a sister."

A straggly haired guy beside him ignores me and laughs. "Did your family hate the hemia wiping out her magic?"

"At least she only lost her magic and not her life," says the first guy. "Have Mummy and Daddy sent you to find her?"

"I don't have a sister," I repeat.

He springs to his feet, the vamp taller than the witches, and I clench my teeth against another person attempting to intimidate us. "A girl who looks like you hung around a few days ago. Weird girl."

"A nut job," pipes up another. "Wouldn't speak to others, and if anyone approached her—witch or hemia—she clawed their faces. Strong mental barrier, too."

"The Dominion recruiting psychos makes sense," says Jamie with a hint of unhelpful scorn. "Just saying."

"Yeah, well, nobody liked the loner who wasn't a team player," says the vamp, and nods at me. "Your sister disappeared. Sometimes recruits do if they're not worthy."

Her description. The oxygen in the stifling space grows thinner. "What was this girl's name?"

He shrugs and looks at his friend. "She never told us. I only heard Art use her name once. Mary?"

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