Page 55 of Cursed Heirs

No answer.

I tried again.

Talon pressed his ear to the door and called on his senses.

Frowning, he reported, “She’s not in there.”

“All right, then we’ll do a locator spell,” I said, turning to get right to it.

“Wait,” Elliot said, holding up his hand. “Something is amiss.”

His eyes narrowed and he hissed, “It’s strong.”

In the next moment, he was blasting open the door.

He rushed inside with us right behind him.

A sudden sickly feeling enveloped me and I grimaced, taking a staggering step back.

“Black magic,” I realized aloud.

“Yes,” Elliot confirmed, his indigo fire aflame. “The signature belongs to Constantine.”

He concentrated, then reported, “He convinced her to step outside the ward.” His gaze flicked to us, as he told us gravely, “He has her.”

12

~Xavier~

I could hear them yelling as I remained curled up in bed staring at the ceiling.

The shouting match that had been going on for the last fifteen minutes straight didn’t show any sign of cooling down.

Not with two Type A and volatile-when-they-were-provoked personalities in Abigail Rose and Orpheus Hart going head to head.

“If you’d deigned to respond to any of the urgent messages I left you—through many different means, I might add—this could have been avoided!”

“We’re in the middle of a high-level emergency situation, youngling.”

“And once again, your daughter plays second toExemplar.”

“How dare you?”

My dad’s voice came through, the voice of diplomatic reason as usual,“Let’s not focus on condemnation and blame. That won’t aid the situation in the least.”

“I’m not my father, Abigail. I can admit that I was also at fault. I should have kept a closer eye on her instead of allowingher space. I should have spelled her to calm her down so I could cast Constantine from her mind.”

“I know you’re not him. And it’s not your fault. Nor could you have done much of anything, not without venturing into the forbidden magical arts.”

“Black magic?”Talon asked, having been quiet until now. It meant he was drowning in his fear and upset over Alena being missingandwith that monster.

He wasn’t the only one.

Except I wasn’t drowning.

I knew it was bad. I could recognize the emotion of it. But I just couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything.

After what I’d tried to do, numbness had been the only way to avoid attempting something like it again.

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