Page 66 of Wicked Heirs

Two trees were on fire and so much worse than that was the sight of two people bound opposite one another and being ravaged by said flames.

“Break the dome,” I told her. “Now,” I grunted at trying to hold a memory steady like this for more than a few seconds. It wasn’t something I’d done before, and it was taxing on my body and power alike.

I felt the soft heat of her magic then, followed by Talon’s roar coming closer.

I shot out my hand, opening my eyes and grasping him by the throat just before he could slam into her in a lunging attack.

My purple shimmering glow held him still and then he was jolting as I took Alena’s memory I was holding steady and fed it into his consciousness.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

“Sorry for—ah!No!”

He was seeing his parents dying, being burned alive.

He had to, he wouldn’t believe me otherwise.

He wouldn’t believeher.

He squeezed his eyes shut as I carefully gave him the whole memory, the entire picture of what had taken place that day.

When I was done, I pulled my power back and so did Xavier, and we watched as Talon just remained standing there with his eyes shut.

“Constantine used black magic to force my mom to unleash her phoenix fire while he had them bound together. He made her burn my father alive and then… what I heard about later from the autopsy… he used an iron blade to destroy their ashes with black magic so they couldn’t resurrect,” he uttered.

Tears started to fall, rolling down his face.

And then he collapsed to his knees and let out an awful agonized cry that cut painfully through the night.

Finally, he was letting it all out.

After all this time.

12

~Xavier~

Her thick eyelashes fluttered with a delicacy akin to the wings of a butterfly newly emerged from its cocoon; hesitant but possessing an innocent curiosity. She carefully tried to avoid direct eye contact, her easy ability to do so leading me to infer that it was a well-practiced skill—one she had taken great pains to perfect. Or perhaps one that great pain had led her to perfect. Her eyes were guarded pools of such a rare shade of blue that I could only recall having ever seen it once before—

“When? When had he seen it before?” I asked myself aloud as my pen stilled across the pages of my writing journal.

“Okay, need to work on the character’s backstory in more depth. These questions should be answerable immediately.”

Damnation,I detested when I got stuck abruptly after penning away for a good couple of hours. Alas, it was part of the writing process.

I sighed and closed my journal. I needed to take a break.

I ran my fingers over the title on the front of the black, leather bound cover.

Love Me Dirty.

It was the latest romance novel I was working on.

Aside from minor issues like the one I’d just run into, I was also ill-equipped for the raunchy scenes I’d written into the story. I mean, I had a vivid imagination and I understood the basics of lust and passion, but I’d never actually experienced it before myself. I was worried it might come through in what I was writing. I’d wanted to show the scenes to Talon because he liked dirty stuff, but he’d just make fun of me for needing to ask. And Orpheus wouldn’t like them anyway. They might be dirty and hot, but they weren’t dark and depraved, the way he liked it.

The way he really liked it, something I doubted very much he’d made Alena aware of.

She wouldn’t have been that comfortable with him right after like I’d seen a few days ago when we’d performed that spell together to help Talon.

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