Page 70 of Gemini Hunted
Without even waiting for me to nod, he levitates and zips off into the darkness.
Darn it.
Every gnawing niggle of insecurity I’ve ever felt, every insidious whisper of doubt I’ve ever heard (and they’ve been filling my ears all my life), every haunting fear that I’ll never be good enough, never be brave enough, never be worthy enough, roots my feet to the floor in a paralysis of dread.
What are you even doing here, McSnicker? You’re a pathetic excuse for a witch. You’re a reject. A freak. A failure. You’re going tofailand get everyone killed—
“Steady,chere,”Jae murmurs in my ear, because of course he feels what I feel. He hears what I hear—that din of corrosive voices that’s eroding my meager supply of courage. “I believe in you, me. And Draco, he believes in you too. Time to be showing the world what you can do now.”
I’ve never fought for what I love.
Never.
I’ve always justhidden.
So it feels way beyond the realm of the possible to believe a weak witch like me—Mallory McSnicker, the class klutz, the school geek, the laughing joke of the whole Icarus Academy—can even save myself.
Much less all of us.
But Jae believes.
Believes inme.
Maybe he believes enough for both of us.
I duck my head over the thicket of impenetrable text, press a shaky hand to my gut to quiet the butterfly nerves doing backflips in my belly, fling myself headlong into the first incomprehensible sentence in a blind leap of faith…
…and speak aloud the words of that awful spell.
Chapter Fifteen
Zara
The first clue I get that something’s gone sideways is that hyena.
The thing explodes from the clotted shadows that fill the cavern and bounds straight for our charmed circle. Which, as we’ve already established,isn’tcharmed against flesh-and-blood shifters.
Over Mallory’s turned shoulder, I glimpse a flash of spotted fur, powerful fangs snarling in a grizzly muzzle, an electric flicker of eyes pulsing an eerie blue. Massive shoulders bunch under a matted pelt. Then the monster launches through the air in a leap.
Straight at Mal’s defenseless back.
I suck in a breath and roar in the lightning voice,“STOP!”
The resonant vibrato of my voice mingles with a deafening peal of thunder. Neo barely snatches the duffel from my shoulder in time before an ultraviolet crackle runs over my scalp and down my body.
That shit lights up the black pit of this basement like St. Elmo’s Fire.
For just a blink, my lightning gives us all plenty of light. Hyenas are pouring into the room. My guys playing offense, the ones whose protective perimeter was supposed to keep thosehyenas out of thedomus—Ronin and Max and my two Fae—they’re nowhere to be seen.
Which is not a good sign.
My chest clenches like a fist. My tummy twists in a tapeworm of anxiety.
Then the hyena leaping for Mal’s exposed back just… ignites. That shaggy spotted fur bursts into green flame.
That’s a whole new problem.
That combustible flash of pus-green fire, appearing out of nowhere to engulf the attacking hyena, isnotmy witchcraft.
