Page 11 of The Aether

The sight of her helpless visage was tragic.

Christ, this moment was torturous for him, too. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was able to see what he was about to do. Her inner Oracle was developing and attempting to culminate as her greatest ability. From here on out, she would catch glimpses of the various outcomes of his confrontation with Vivian. And if he wasn’t mistaken, in all of them, she’d see her mother die.

Vivian, fierce, tall, and more beautiful than imaginable, charged into the room. She summed up the scene in seconds.

“Damian!” she gasped.

“You lied to me,” he spat as he stormed farther into the room. “You swore to me she had no magic.”

“She doesn’t,” she squeaked.

“Liar!”he shouted. Fear for Sabrina and an aching sense of betrayal fueled his anger, and the air around them contracted. “You bound her powers.”

“With good reason, Damian.” Her voice trembled, but she stood her ground. With her chin up and the arrogant tilt of her head, she resembled a warrior queen. Damian respected her courage.

“So you don’t intend to deny it?” he asked, chillingly soft.

He stalked her, and for every step she backed, he took one forward, until he judged the distance to the wall would be adequate for his needs.

“No,” she said defiantly.

Damian almost hated her for her confession. Not only had she denied Sabrina and him the years together that would form a tight father-daughter bond, but Beastie had lost essential training time she needed to learn how to protect herself until she became the reigning Aether. Vivian had foolishly risked Sabrina’s life with her antics.

“You heartless bitch.”His voice was low and lethal, the last Vivian would hear as he flicked a wrist in her direction, effortlessly flinging her against the wall. Killing her.

“No!”

The horror behind Sabrina’s emotion-packed cry overpowered Damian’s hold on her voice. Her raw anguish echoed around the foyer and created destruction to the century-old house. The chandelier shook, decorative paper curled back from the walls, and the solid wood door cracked down the center. The floor slats buckled beneath his feet, and he had the damnedest time remaining upright.

With narrowed eyes, he tilted his head and carefully watched his daughter, prepared to mitigate her grief-based destruction.

When Sabrina would have run to Vivian’s side, he grabbed her by her sparkling Unicorn t-shirt. Stopping her was essential to his plan. If she was as strong as he suspected, she might be able to revive her mother with little effort.

Fueled by her hurt and fury, Beastie fought him with every ounce of strength her young body possessed. Kicking, hitting, biting. She was ineffectual against a grown man like him, but Damian still held tight to her wiggling form.

Vivian’s sisters huddled together in the double doorway to the sunroom, afraid to make a sound for fear of drawing his notice and rage down upon themselves. He paid them no mind, instead focusing all his attention on his spitting-mad daughter.

With a suddenness that caught him unaware, her body convulsed, and for a heart-stopping second, he knew true fear. Had he made a mistake in unleashing her magic by killing Vivian? Had the binding Viv created been to protect their daughter from harm? And the most pressing concern: was it too much power for Sabrina’s small body to absorb at once?

Her dark eyes, identical to his, stared off into the distance as her tiny frame trembled under his hold. Right when he was about to summon the Goddess for assistance, Sabrina snapped out of her trance and glared at him.

“You’ll pay for this,” she spat, her young voice quivering. Her pain seared his insides, and he wanted to ease her suffering more than he wanted to draw his next breath, but she wasn’t done. “You’ll burn like the devil, and the Darkness will get you.”

He felt the blood drain from his face, and he eyed her warily.

Had she cursed him, or was her knowledge straight from the future? Would he suffer the same affliction as his mother?

Ruthlessly, he tamped down his flash of uncertainty. He’d seen none of that for himself, and he had to put her words down to a distraught child’s rebellion.

“Be quiet, Beastie. If you don’t want your beloved aunts to suffer the same fate as your duplicitous mother, you’ll do exactly as I say.”

“If you hurt them, I’ll kill you,” she swore.

Where she found her courage was anyone’s guess. No one in their right mind would go against so formidable an Aether as he. Damian observed his daughter with pride, though he’d never let it show to the outside world. She not only had her mother’s courage, she had her temperament. Reckless and daring to the end.

Vivian’s binding spell had ruined his plans. But not in the way any of the Stephens women believed. Unlike his mother, he’d never had any intention of harnessing his daughter’s powers for his own. Instead, his intent was to teach her to work side by side with him—to learn to controlallthe elemental forces. She had it in her to one day be stronger than him, and Vivian shouldn’t have interfered. Beastie would be further along by now if she’d been at home with him, where she belonged.

Deep down, where his humanity still existed, Damian regretted his temper. Vivian wasn’t exactly as dead as they all believed; however, she wouldn’t be waking anytime soon. Or at least, not without his supernatural assistance.

---