Page 18 of Knight's End
Chapter Five
"Shite!" Blue’s exclamation was an understatement.
I met Connor's eyes, and saw my own devastation and frustration reflected there. His blue-green eyes were troubled as he ran a hand through his curls. He exhaled harshly.
“Why did she touch it? Shouldn’t she have known better than to touch it?” I whispered.
Connor shook his head. “She was enamored by it. For all we know, it could have an attraction spell on it, drawing people to it.”
Declan immediately jumped to the practicalities. "We need to make sure no one else can find this place. We need to destroy that room and knock down this building."
Blue released me and stood, leaving Connor to hold me. He turned to Declan and crossed his arms. "Shouldn’t we find a way to use these amulets? They’re an amazing weapon," my newest knight argued.
"If we can't touch them without dying ourselves, they're not much of a weapon." Declan’s sarcasm was not subtle. His lips thinned and he shook his head as he stared at Blue.
"What if we tried to wrap our sleeve around our hands? Picked them up through clothing? "
"Go ahead. Be my guest." Declan gestured toward the ladder.
Blue wrinkled his nose in frustration. "There has to be a way to use these. Someone made them without dying."
"That someone was a wizard, most likely. An insane wizard. And who says they didn’t die? What if they made those as a batch? What if there is an attraction spell like Connor proposed?” Declan said.
"If only we could levitate them or something…" Blue gazed down at the pit, which had gone black again as Connor and I had slowly dimmed our powers. “We could wish for the ability to carry them without their magic working on us.”
Quinn took a step backward, toward the door.
I stood, going toward my silent knight, but my arguing husbands blocked my path as they stepped toward one another, in a heated, testosterone-filled face off.
Declan lifted a hand and raised a finger. “First, while that’s creative, we only have two wishes left. We can’t use them willy-nilly on every thing that comes up.” He raised another finger. “Secondly, Quinn hasn’t even recovered from the first nightmare, which you claimed was temporary.” He leaned forward and got into Blue’s face. “Third, if wish magic was enough to control amulets, don’t you think your nightmare of a father would be using them all over the place?”
Blue accidentally shot us all a thought of him grabbing Declan by the throat and strangling him.
“Try it, I might like it,” My blond knight just grinned.
Blue’s next thought was punching Dec’s balls and Declan’s hands moved to protect himself.
This was getting out of hand. “Stop,” I put my hand up between them and walked forward, forcing them both to take a step backward. “Or I’ll blast you both with peace.”
They glared at one another.
“Let’s think this through,” I said. “It’s fine to talk it through. Fine to have different opinions, but let’s not get so off-track that we lose sight of our purpose. We came here to find Isla’s location.”
“Yes, and we found the perfect weapon to get rid of her!” Blue exclaimed.
Declan turned to me, instead of continuing his face off with Blue. "I think our best bet is to close this place up. We can put the table over the trapdoor, throw broken chair pieces down there so that no one else gets in. Then we can use the gargoyles to take out the house.” He gestured at the secret room. “I think we walk away. We’re already dealing with magic that’s out of control at every step. Eventually, after it’s all said and done, we should come back and try to bury or destroy all those amulets. Because no one should have that level of destructive power."
Blue grabbed my hand and turned me to face him. “I think you might be missing an opportunity here."
I glanced back and forth between them. My knights were my advisors, but I had to make the final call. What Blue was saying was true. We needed every bit of help we could get. But Declan was right; we already had a fleet of uncontrollable stone animals and I had five knights with powers they didn’t know how to use.
Blue clenched his fists in frustration. "You don't understand what you're up against. My father is a full djinn. He has endless wishes. He can't grant his own wishes. But he can tell anyone else exactly what to say to him so that he can grant that wish. And he doesn’t have the side effects of a half-djinn. He suffers no nightmares.” His thoughts flew rapid-fire through different memories, but they were so quick that I couldn’t decipher them.
“How does he get others to wish for what he wants?” Declan asked.
Blue shook his head. “He doesn’t typically even use his own wishes. My father thinks it’s beneath him. He makes others use theirs and suffer the nightmare. He writes out what he wants them to say. Once, he tried to force my mother to wish that an entire town lose their legs from the knee down.”
“Why?” I asked.
