Page 1 of Magic Unleashed

Prologue

New Orleans was a city of secrets, and the Duvall sisters were amongst its most dangerous.

Phoenix’s fingers traced the edges of the journal she’d received on her sixteenth birthday, its leather cover worn from years of use. The thick, old pages, filled with intricate sketches of demons and detailed descriptions, were a haunting reminder of her destiny. It was the same for each of her sisters—Geneva, Savannah, and Catalina.

On their sixteenth birthday, each sister was given her own Grimm File, handed down through the generations from Charlotte Grimm, the only sister of the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Most people believed that the Grimm Brothers had merely recorded and published folktales, but in truth, they had recorded the exploits of their sister, who had been a demon-hunting fae like those who followed her. Fae blood ran strong in their line, and in each generation, the duty to hunt the creatures that could give children nightmares fell to one of the descendants of the eldest sister. In the case of the Duvall sisters, it and the original files from which the folklore sprang had fallen to them.

The night each of them was given her own handwritten copy of the Grimm Files changed their lives forever.

Banished from the realm of the fae, their mother and aunt had made a home for themselves in the Crescent City, their shimmering wings forever clipped by love and exile. Their mother had fallen in love with a mortal, a choice that had cost her everything. And yet, the love she and their father shared had created something more powerful than the Fae Council could ever anticipate—four daughters, each destined to face the darkest of evils.

New Orleans thrummed with life beneath their feet, but it was the darkness that whispered their names. The girls were ready, trained from childhood to wield magic like a weapon,their curvy bodies trained and honed into fighting machines. But there was one thing they hadn’t been prepared for—their fated mates.

A slow, cold shiver ran down each of their spines as their aunt’s words echoed in their minds. "You won’t know your full power until you find him. And when you do... everything will change."

Each of the sisters had grown stronger, their powers simmering just beneath the surface, but without their mate, they were only half of what they could be. The journal had warned them of it. The hunt was inevitable, not just for the demons they were bound to destroy but for the one soul who could unlock their true potential.

The Grimm Files were more than a curse. They were a prophecy. One that could either save the world—or destroy it.

Chapter

One

PHOENIX

Standing on the small balcony off her bedroom in her family’s Garden District home in New Orleans, Phoenix’s eyes flickered to the shadows outside. She couldn’t help but feel it—something was coming. Something dark. Something unstoppable. And she was running out of time.

In the distance, thunder rumbled. And in the heart of the city, inside her, the magic stirred.

The hunt had begun.

The New Orleans night pulsed with an energy most couldn't feel. Phoenix felt it, though—a dissonant hum beneath the drone of traffic and the distant wail of sirens. She perched on the edge of a gargoyle, forty stories up, her leather jacket snapping in the wind. Below, the city sprawled like a glittering circuit board, oblivious to the predator in its midst.

Her senses were hyperalert. It was as if she could feel the elemental energy of the city creeping along her flesh and seeping into her bones—never a good sign.

Phoenix rolled her shoulders, gritting her teeth. "I know," she whispered to the wind. "I feel it, too."

The wrongness grew stronger. Somewhere in the tangle of streets and alleys below, something that didn't belong in this world was making its move.

Phoenix's eyes, unnaturally green even for a faery, scanned the city below. There—three blocks east. A flicker of sickly yellow light pulsed from an alleyway. If she squinted, she could almost see the miasma of corruption spreading from that spot, invisible to human eyes but clear as day to her heightened senses.

"Showtime," she muttered, a grim smile tugging at her lips.

Without hesitation, Phoenix stepped off the gargoyle's head. For a heartbeat, she plummeted, the wind screaming past her ears. Then, without conscious direction, her wings sprang to life, unfurling as they did so to beat silently against the night sky.

Phoenix flew through the concrete canyons, exhilaration surging through her veins.

This was what she lived for. The hunt. The chance to keep the darkness at bay for one more night.

She landed in a crouch at the alley's mouth, the asphalt cracking beneath her feet. The stench of brimstone and rotting meat assaulted her nostrils. Phoenix's lip curled in disgust.

The thick, humid air of New Orleans clung to Phoenix’s skin like a second layer as she moved silently through the narrow streets. It was well past midnight, the time when the city’s heartbeats slowed, but the darkness? The darkness never truly slept. Especially not in the Crescent City, where the shadows whispered of danger and magic alike.

Her boots clicked against the uneven cobblestones, the weight of her weapons a comforting presence against her thighs. The twin knives sheathed at her hips hummed with an energy that only she could feel—a magic older than the city itself, passeddown through her family line. Tonight, that magic would be tested.

Something wasn’t right.

Phoenix could feel it deep in her bones, the same way she had felt it on the night she first received her Grimm File. The pull of demonic energy slithered across her skin, a dark, oily sensation that made her stomach churn. The wards she and her sisters had set up around the city were supposed to keep such threats at bay, but demons were clever. Persistent.

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