Page 82 of Fallen Heirs

“Exactly. Then I can put him out of commission. At least, magically speaking. We still have the vampire side to contend with.”

“While the infection is ravaging his power, he’ll be compromised.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Of course, there is one issue, an issue you seem to be trying to ignore and work around instead.”

“What’s that?”

“You didn’t annihilate the magic entirely.” He gestured back over there and I watched as the silver flames started to grow again.

“It’s not like he can regenerate his magic like you can.”

“We don’t know that. Constantine was able to infuse his magic into other beings and have them wield it as theirs. That’s a formidable achievement. He also gave my ex-wife a magical transfusion, something exceptionally rare and difficult to achieve. Even without the use of black magic, he is extremely powerful. After me and my son, he is the most powerful wielder of dark magic across the realms. He’s also an elder vampire, well-learned and possessing a wealth of experience. Not to mention, he is a gifted strategist.Nothingis off the table when it comes to him. Nothing can be discounted.”

I shoved a hand through my hair. “It’s a violation of the natural order to destroy magic entirely. An upset to the balance. My mom did that when she rid the world of black magic and she had to pay the ultimate price for it. For me to do what you’re asking, I’ll have to tap into darkness, the act isn’t that of a Light magic being.”

“You already straddle the line between both the dark and the light by having this ability in the first place.”

“I know, but—”

“You were born to walk that line. Just like my son. All that you’ve experienced has prepared you for such a thing.”

“You’re saying Constantine inadvertently created a monster?”

“In essence. A monster specifically geared toward his destruction. His hubris in believing he could control a celestial being led to the greatest mistake of his existence—making an enemy out of you.”

“You know, you pushing me to do this, to actually wipe out someone’s dark magic entirely, is majorly detrimental to you. If I break through this barrier and manage it, the threat I am is unimaginable.”

“That’s the thing, Alena. From observing this ability of yours over the last few days, studying the way it works, the nature of it, there is no doubt in my mind that you can do more than extinguish a stream and what is being thrown at you, but that you can wipe it from a magic-wielder entirely. To create the failsafe, I need to capture the essence of that, the moment that occurs.”

I shifted my weight and sucked in a breath. “All right. I can do this.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that you can.”

“It might take some time.”

“Then we best continue.” He gestured at our targets in the distance. “Now try again.”

21

~Xavier~

“This is becoming a habit,” my dad groused as we rematerialized outside one of his safehouses.

“What is?”

“You keeping information from me.”

Yeah, it hadn’t exactly gone over well with him when I’d come to him at theExemplarcompound and revealed what I’d kept from him.

Knowing him as well as I did, it had been clear that he hadn’t just been aggravated about the information itself, but he’d also been hurt that I hadn’t confided in him.

We’d spent a lot of time in the research center at the compound as he’d examined me and managed to use a spell to backtrack what had happened during the attack when one of the sorcerers had stolen a sliver of my magic, so that he’d been able to see exactly what had happened for himself.

But he hadn’t gotten the answers that he’d wanted.

So we’d left to come here to one of his safehouse mansions with his most beloved lab that possessed equipment that was beyond what existed atExemplar.It also contained his grimoires and samples of both our magic and our blood, alongwith all the research he’d done into both trying to reverse the vampiric change for me and in trying to find a way to return my magic to me when Constantine had taken it wholly. This place was much more conducive to what we were trying to do and figure out.

He’d left Dante Wilhelm in charge while he saw to this matter.

Apparently, the two of them had been working a lot more closely together over the last few weeks since the loss of Abigail. They’d put their differences aside, perhaps even overcoming them altogether for all I knew, and Wilhem had stepped in several times to take some of the weight off my dad and enable him to move back and forth betweenExemplarandSabre Tech.

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