Page 118 of Stolen
No more words.
I’m already moving, the zareth burning in my veins like a flare guiding me home.
I race through the shattered remnants of the keep’s eastern archway, the halls echoing with the chaos still settling from battle.
Faster.
The bond pulls me like gravity, and I round the last corner just in time to see her.
Myrrin.
My whole heart.
She’s standing in front of the children, brave and determined, but not armed for fighting whatever this sick magic is that is pulsating in the air.
My eyes widen. She is facing Dauphiné. And fuck, there is something wrong with her.
The noblewoman glows with sickening dark light.
Around Dauphiné’s neck pulses a locket, grotesque with power, veins of shadow crawling across her throat.
And then, before I can do anything, Jules moves.
She doesn’t hesitate.
Doesn’t falter.
She lunges forward—beautiful, fierce, and so fucking breakableit guts me to see her like this—and she plunges her blade into Dauphiné’s cursed locket with a cry that shatters something inside me.
“No!” I roar, the sound tearing from my throat like a wounded beast.
I see it all—see what’s happening before it fully unfolds.
The locket shrieks, magic fracturing outward, blood spilling from it like it’s a living thing.
Blades hanging in the air above the children begin to tremble, to fall.
Jules moves, using her body to shield the children.
And I roar my fear and fury.
“Myrrin!”
A wall of wind answers my call as I scream her name, my hands carving ancient runes into the air, the breath of the North rising to obey.
“GO! NOW!” I bellow at the elements, the air exploding forward.
Steel is snatched mid-descent.
Blades deflected.
And time itself stutters just long enough.
I reach her as she collapses, her arms outstretched, cradling as much of the children’s small, slumbering bodies beneath her own as she can.
Her blade lies shattered at her side.
The scent of blood and scorched magic hangs in the air like smoke after a fire.
