Page 39 of Magic Forsaken

The block of ice hurtled through the window like a battering ram and struck the fae squarely in the chest. Threw him rightinto the middle of Oklahoma Avenue, where he hit with an audible thud, rolled twice, and narrowly avoided being hit by a pickup truck full of frat boys.

I heard a blaring horn, a chorus of expletives, and squealing tires, then saw a lump of clothes lying in the street, but I couldn’t spare the time to investigate.

An inhuman roar split the air, shooting straight through my head like a dagger and dropping me to my knees with the pain.

Somehow, I knew it was Callum. I whipped around with clenched teeth, expecting to see him buried beneath a thousand pounds of fur and fangs and claws.

My jaw dropped.

Callum remained standing, but the wolf lay on the ground, its belly exposed. It appeared completely untouched and its eyes were open, but it had also gone utterly limp—as if it were either unconscious or too terrified to move.

I hadn’t really stopped to think about what Callum’s role would signify to other shifters. Maybe part of me had assumed “King of the Shapeshifters” was a courtesy title, and Callum was little more than a figurehead.

But I would never make that mistake again.

Physically, he appeared the same, and yet, his presence had somehow grown to fill the space, emanating such a powerful sense of threat that I nearly bowed my head. His eyes glowed so brightly, I almost couldn’t stare directly at them. It was a struggle not to drop to the floor—to make myself smaller in hopes that he wouldn’t notice me.

Unlike the wolf, the lion kept coming, but it was more cautious now. Less sure of itself.

And when it sprang, Callum moved forward to meet it.

They called him demanding, responsible, and controlling, but no one who watched him fight could doubt that he applied those characteristics to himself first. He was almost too fast forthe eye to follow, blending perfect economy of motion with iron self-control—fluid, impossibly strong, and utterly mesmerizing.

Callum-ro-Deverin was a weapon, and he used his shifter speed and strength to slip beneath the airborne lion and catch one of its hind legs between his hands.

The other leg flailed, digging bloody furrows across Callum’s chest, but he shrugged them off, his shoulders bulging with the effort of maintaining his grip. An instant later, his whole body twisted to the left. The lion’s leg turned sideways, and it screamed, contorting in midair to swipe at Callum’s face with its front claws extended.

But Callum’s body continued to turn, and when he’d completed a full rotation, he let go. The lion flew across the room, hitting the wall with a ground-shaking thud.

I had to remember how to breathe.

“Are you finished?” Callum growled, his voice still hovering in that subterranean range that was more dragon than man.

The lion snarled and lurched drunkenly to its feet.

The king of the shifters snarled in answer. He crossed the floor in long, fluid strides and hammered a punch into the side of the lion’s jaw.

It staggered, and Callum hit it with his blazing amber stare. “Stay down!” he commanded, and the lion collapsed.

I was still not quite coherent when he turned away from the broken shifter and stalked towards me, past the still-motionless wolf, to stare intently into my face from those incandescent eyes.

“Where is it? Where is the fae?”

I pointed at the window. At the block of ice still sitting in the middle of the street outside.

Before I could tell him what had happened, Callum was already running. Heedless of the broken glass, he raced across the floor, somehow without slipping, and leaped straight through the broken window, landing on the sidewalk outside.

But the fae was already gone.

He’d been lying unconscious in the street one minute, and the next vanished, as if he’d blinked out of existence.

I moved to the window in a daze and watched as Callum walked into the road, his feet leaving bloody prints with each step. He bent down and picked something up. Hefted it in his palm. Swore viciously.

“Callum!”

Kira’s horrified voice penetrated the adrenaline-fueled haze that still held me in its grip.

I saw her racing towards us from the direction of The Portal, but it was as if she were moving in slow motion. Then I registered dark wings arrowing out of the sky as Draven joined her, followed by Faris’s bearded bulk appearing behind them.

---