Page 10 of Incoronate
Trace was already on his feet and crossing the room toward me, his voice tight with alarm. “Jemma, listen to me. You need to fight this. This isn’t you talking. This isn’t what you want to do.”
But he was wrong. It was me. It had always been me. This was what I was meant to do. What I’d been made for. Why couldn’t they see that?
…They’ll never understand…
…Make them move or eliminate them…
“I have to go now,” I said, taking another step toward the door.
Dominic moved to block my path. “I’m afraid I cannot allow that to happen, angel.”
Anger rose in me at the certitude in his voice. The Horsemen’s pull recoiled, then surged forward, anger flaring hot and sudden in my chest, washing through me with startling force.
Trace circled around, moving shoulder to shoulder with him. “You need to wake up! Come on, look at me. This isn’t what you want to do.”
…They’re in your way…
Yes. Theywerein my way.
My magic was already responding before I’d even given it permission, gathering thick and ready in the palm of my hands. “Move,” I ordered icily.
“That’s not happening.” Trace’s voice was firm, but I could hear the worry beneath it. “Jem, please. You have to fight it.”
…You are stronger than they are…
…They can’t stop you…
…Show them…
Iwasstronger. I could feel it now, the power thrumming through my veins, vast and untapped. It would be so easy to move them. To break them. To make them understand.
My hand lifted, magic gathering at my fingertips.
“Jemma, don’t—!”
I turned my palm toward him, my magic surging forward without hesitation. It wrapped around Trace first, then Dominic, locking their bodies in place before either of them could so much as flinch.
Trace’s eyes went wide, the shock on his face cracking into something panicked as he realized he couldn’t move. Dominic’s jaw was clamped down, fury frozen in his expression at what I had done. But that wasn’t the only thing there. There was fear too, and I already knew without having to ask that it wasn’t for himself.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and a part of me meant it, even if the words felt thin and strangely removed. “But I can’t let you get in my way.”
The look on Trace’s face nearly stopped me dead in my tracks.Nearly. The way his eyes searched mine like he was still looking for me in there,like he refused to believe I was really gone, hit me somewhere I hadn’t fully sealed off yet, making my hand waver for just a second.
“It won’t last long,” I heard myself say, my voice flat and impersonal in a way that didn’t feel like mine at all. It was too cold. Too detached. “You’ll be free soon.”
I didn’t wait for them to answer.
I turned away and stalked across the room, the door unlocking at my approach as if the house itself recognized the inevitability of my departure. The pull guided me down the corridor and the stairs and then into the foyer, my steps smooth and steadfast, as though I’d walked this path for this purpose a hundred times before.
I grabbed my jacket from the hook and shrugged into it without breaking stride, my hand sliding into the inner pocket as my fingers closed around the familiar hilt hidden there. The Sword of Angelus responded immediately, alive and vibrating against my palm, as though it had been waiting for exactly this moment.
Cool night air rushed over my skin as I stepped outside, the late-night fog curling eagerly around my ankles and closing in behind me like it had gathered there just for me. Like it had come to welcome me home.
I lifted my eyes.
A figure waited at the edge of the grounds, silhouetted against the fog and mounted on a black horse that seemed to drink in the darkness around it. I knew without question it was Famine, waiting on his black steed with the stillness and patience of an otherworldly being who’d always known I would come.
Beside him stood another horse, this one almost regal, its coat as white as fresh snow beneath the muted moonlight.
