Page 148 of Cursed Heirs

“You left me alone for a whole hour. I didn’t see you watching in the back of myHerbs, Healing, and Chlorokinesisclass at all.”

“I still had eyes on.”

She thought for a moment. “The Professor?”

“That’s right.”

“But you wanted me to think I was there unsupervised?”

I nodded. “To see how you responded, if you’re ready for me to pull back a little.”

“And?”

“AndI didn’t get a call, so it went well. Now we’ll do it a few more times and see how you fare with that.”

“What aboutMagic in Combat?Marlowe’s not here, but they’ve got another professor subbing.”

“No. Not yet.”

“You know, standing around and just watching you training the army and being unable to participate… it’s not easy. It doesn’t sit well with me.”

“We knew none of this would be easy, Alena.”

She clenched her fists down by her sides.

Her eyes flamed with her golden power and those awful flecks of black that were there now too.

I readied myself in case I had to call my power to defend against an outburst from her.

But then she sucked in a breath and took a step back. “Okay.”

“Yeah?” I asked carefully.

“Yeah. You’re right. I’m not ready for that. Maybe I won’t be all the while this black magic is inside me.”

“No, you will be. We can work through this, control it. My father managed it for years. But there’s an added complication in your case and it’s triggering it, causing more outbursts than it normally would.”

“I know,” she actually admitted, surprising me. She’d told us what had happened when we’d spent that night out in the woods, but she hadn’t said a word about her own feelings concerning it, she’d just told it like a play-by-play, completely unemotionally.

We hadn’t pushed her, because telling us what had happened, what that monster had done to her, had taken a lot for her as it was.

But the problem was, the black magic running through her veins had a penchant for driving that which we tried to bury to the surface. It used unresolved or painful issues as fuel for its twisted brutality.

“I understand if you’re not ready to—”

She grasped my hand.

A choked gasp left Talon just behind me and I couldn’t say I was above it either. Hell, I was just as shocked as he was.

But she didn’t need that reaction from me.

I didn’t move a muscle as she gingerly ran her fingers over mine, before turning my hand over and softly touching my palm.

As she did the same with the other one, she blinked up at me, her eyes swimming with emotion as she uttered on a strained whisper, “You father showed you what the monster did to me, didn’t he?”

I swallowed hard. “Alena—”

She stepped closer and dropped my hands. “The way you’ve been with me… you saw, didn’t you? You already knew before I told you that night?”

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