Page 17 of Chosen, Eternally
“Oh,shut up, Janie. You and I both know Isobel was a waste of a Protector. We complained enough about it all the time when she was first selected.”
“Still, it isn’t right to speak ill of the dead.”
“Really?” Cybil raises an accusatory brow. “Then why is it that I’ve had to deal with the constant whispers of this entire group since the death of my sister? Why is it that my family isn’t allowed to move on from it?”
“I—” Jane stutters, but drops her eyes to her neatly folded hands in her lap.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “What does any of this have to do with?—”
“Ugh!” Cybil bangs her fists on the table and gets to her feet. “Are you an idiot? I thought I raised you better than that.Iwas the one who organized James’s abduction with the vampires.”
“What?” I screech. “But James’s autopsy shows it was Ian who?—”
“Well, I obviously wasn’t going to write my name, was I? So I used his. Used a bit of olde magic to get Ian to give me all his passwords and such.”
The entire Council is outraged, screaming at Cybil and me and everyone around us.
“You—What?” Ian gasps.
Meanwhile, I’m on the verge of losing control. And more importantly, I don’t care. My skin is a destructive wildfire, so much so that the chair beneath me begins to smoke, its fabric slowly burning.
“Baby, you need to stop,” James speaks beside me. “You’re going to spontaneously combust or something.”
“Ican’t,” I murmur, seeing literal red. Because I am about toendher.
“Take a breath, Cate. Take a breath and try to focus.”
But I steadily ignore him. Instead, I choose to get to my feet.
Cybil glares at me. “Don’t you dare, you little twit.”
Her words are like a slap across the face. The kind of punch in the gut that knocks the air out of you and leaves you immobilized.
The anger and resentment I feel emanating from my aunt surprises me. In my 29 years of life, I have never felt anything but support from her, and now this?
The fire spreading across my body doesn’t fade, so much as evolve into ice. Every inch of me goes cold.
“Cate,” James whispers again, even though no one can hear him—especially not through all the arguing and yelling. The rest of the Council members are not happy with Cybil, and they’re making it very known. “Cate you need to release me from the restraints. She hasthat lookin her eyes. The kind bad people get before they’re about to do bad things.”
My first instinct is to tell him he’s overreacting. After all, why would my aunt want to harm me? But then I remembershe fucking tried to ruin my lifeand figure he may have a point.
Except… what if this is the moment he loses his soul? What if it disappears when he’s freed from all that makes him good and it’s my fault I let an invisible vampire into our headquarters to murder all the members of our council?
James senses my hesitation. “Baby, I promise. If I turn into some evil monster, kill me, okay? But I have a feeling something bad is going to happen.”
I nod and snap my fingers, releasing him from any restraints or links. For obvious reasons, I keep him invisible.
“THAT’S IT!” Cybil screams over the arguing, bringing me back to the moment. “I’ve had it with all of you.” With a swipe of her hands and an incantation I’ve never heard of before, in a language I don’t recognize, she ties every member of the Council,including myself, to their chair with ropes that appear out of thin air. With a second motion, she slaps a Silencing spell on everyone else but me.
“What the hell are you doing?” My world has been turned upside down, and I’m completely lost. These past twenty-four hours have been an absolute roller coaster I definitely want to get off.
“Fuck,” James says. “I’m going to take her down. When the moment is right, I’ll take her down.”
“I need to hear what you did, Cybil,” I say, for his benefit and hers. I need him to know to stand down. At least until I hear everything she has to say.
James shoots me a quiet nod and goes to stand by Cybil, ready to take her on when she least expects it.
“I amtiredof this family’s reputation being tarnished by the selfish behaviors of its members! First your mother, and now you. It wasn’t enough to have your mother reject the post of Protector simply because your pathetic father couldn’t accept she was a witch. No, you had to follow in her footsteps and do the absolute same thing!”
