Page 72 of The Discovered
My eyes flew open to see him clutching the hand he had grabbed me with, which was red and blistered now, as if he’d touched it to a hot stove.
I sat up and reached out an arm, my palm pointed toward him. I lifted him up into the air with little effort.
“Wait, Áine, stop,” I heard Daelon say, but it barely registered. I was too immersed in my magick now.
I held Nathaniel midair as he flailed, his nostrils flaring and his glare sharp.
I smiled sweetly. “Doesn’t feel very good now, does it?”
“You stupid bitch. Do you have any idea who I am?” he spat. “You’d do well to do as you’re told. Or you will regret it.”
“I don’t think so,” I said coolly, my voice sounding slightly detached from myself. I didn’t care who he was. I wanted him to feel as helpless as I had just felt.
I let my hold over him travel up to his throat and squeeze at his airway. That was enough to finally wipe the smug arrogance from his features. He held his hands at his neck, wrestling with a force that eluded him. His eyes turned from dark to pleading as he struggled.
It was funny to me how cruel men cared so little about empathy until they needed to evoke it to save themselves.
Out of the corner of my vision I saw that Daelon had been freed from the paralysis, jumping to his feet and moving toward me. He stepped between me and Nathaniel, who was choking and sputtering.
“Enough.”
I am not your pet,I hissed telepathically.
“I know,” Daelon said with a roll of his eyes. “But we both know you don’t want to kill him. Because you’re better than him.”
I considered his words, reminded that I was pulling a page from Lucius’s playbook with this move. Daelon was right; I wasn’t him. I snapped out of my warpath and eased up on my attacker’s throat, and with a sigh I released him and let him fall to the ground in a heap.
He pushed himself up, dusting sand off his front as he fumed. “Consider whateverthisis,” he spat, rubbing his throat with one hand and gesturing to Daelon and me with the other, “over.”
And with a rush of wind, he disappeared.
Chapter21
Daelon offered me a hand, his eyes wild and features stricken with unfathomable anger. I took it and let him pull me to my feet. He turned away from me, running his hands through his hair before clasping them behind his head. He kicked the sand at his feet, sending the grains flying in the wind in their multi-colored shimmers.
I furrowed my brows, attempting to reel in my racing heart and erratic breathing. Every fiber of my being was still teeming with electricity and limitless potential. It was hard to make sense of the strange, rapidly escalated series of events I’d just bore witness to.
“How did you know him? And what did he mean byconsider this over?” If he was indicative of thewrong crowdof Daelon’s past, then I understood why he wanted to conceal it from me.
“It means we’ve run out of time.”
My heart dropped. The conversation between Daelon and Nathaniel played on a loop in my head as I struggled to make sense of the conflict. “What does that mean? And how did he find us?” I sucked in a breath, remembering how Lucius had found me somehow, too, at least mentally. How had he known what was happening? Did that mean we were in danger of him showing up now, too?
I paled, looking around the vacant beach. Daelon turned back to face me, his features stony now.
“Probably because of whatever happened in the ocean, when I lost you for a moment. I don’t know, maybe wherever you went was out of reach of my magick.”
We’ve run out of time. The words sent me into a tailspin, my gaze warping into tunnel vision as I stared at Daelon.
Something wasn’t adding up. Actually, alotof things weren’t adding up. How powerful was Nathaniel that even after Daelon threatened his life, he also still stopped me when my grip was around his throat? And how was he able to end our time together?
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, for what felt like the thousandth time, my voice strained. All of my pent-up frustration was rising up again. I was blind, and I wanted to rip the damned blindfold off.
I took a step toward a motionless Daelon, a thousand emotions cycling through his dark brown eyes.
“I—”
“What are the rumors about me? Why am I such a threat to Lucius, who by the way, is apparently aking? Whatever that means.”
