Page 26 of Heir of Broken Souls

“Can the vision be trusted?” Lenox asks all of a sudden.

Knox rubs his jaw, his fingers scratching the slight stubble. “Why couldn’t it be trusted? Delilah’s visions have been accurate before.”

Lenox’s amber eyes cut to me, an emotion there and gone in them before I can decipher. “You said this was sent to her. What if it’s a play of the mind?”

Knox’s back stiffens. “A ploy from the king?”

Peter, I correct on the bridge.

“He’s never been able to send me a false vision before. I doubt it,” I say, slightly affronted that he thinks I wouldn’t be able to tell what’s real or fake.

Lenox’s Adam’s apple bobs on a thick swallow. “It’s just that…” He sighs, twice in one night showing something other than disinterest. “Ace couldn’t tell that the bond with Hazel wasn’t real.”

Her name spoken aloud, let alone in the same sentence as Ace’s name, douses a cold bucket of ice water over us all. Tension fills the now stifling room. The flames in the firepit behind me snuff out, the dark smoke billowing out.

“That was different,” I say fiercely.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Careful,” Harlow warns.

Lenox takes a deep breath before facing Harlow. A visible wall slams shut over him as Harlow rears back in shock that he’s finally—finally—addressing her. It’s been weeks.

“Peter will stop at nothing to get to her,” he says, pointing in my direction though keeping his eyes on her. “I don’t doubt he would do anything possible to lure her.”

At the mention of the threat against my head, Knox stands. Ice scuttles down my spine as the air changes once more, this time filling with Knox’s tension and power as it leaks from his palms.

Harlow’s voice wavers as she says, “She would know if it’s real or not, Knox as well.”

“Ace thought the bond was real, too.”

“He had never been mated before. It was a foreign feeling to him,” Knox says carefully.

But really, we don’t know what Ace was feeling, whether it felt strange or if the mind games and spells Hazel placed over him were so completely fastened, he never would have thought to guess otherwise.

We will never know the truth because Ace is dead.

The thought sucks a sharp breath from me, making all heads turn in my direction. Clearing the emotion lodged in my throat, I stand, rounding the fireplace to relight it. I need tomove, to do something with my hands before the grief I have been shoving aside finally captures me in its talons and never lets me go.

“It felt different,” I admit to the room at my back, “but not fake. It was real—too real. That’s what’s strange about it.” My voice lowers. “It feels…like it already happened.”

My magic writhes with excitement, the conversation and the mention of the vision sparking it into consciousness where it screams for a release. I let a small amount leak out, if only to release some of the pressure.

A spark of golden flames flies for the warm logs in the firepit, right as a shadowy hand suddenly appears, wraps around my wrist, and pulls me through the brick wall.

The last thing I hear before I’m submerged in death and darkness is Knox’s petrified scream.

Chapter9

Delilah

Terror clutches me in its grasp as I’m pulled through the wall of Knox’s study. No matter how hard I try to flail and kick, my limbs are heavy and slow.

The shadowed hand over my face tightens its grip as light floods my vision. Then time resumes its normal pace as I and my attacker stumble into Knox’s foyer.

In a blind panic, I thrash. Grunting, the hand across my mouth keeps my lips sealed. My voice struggles to be heard but more than that, my body struggles to be set free.

The golden power within me rises, coiling tight. Without a thought of my own, my magic takes control, summoning itself as a golden viper’s head. Its mouth distends, its fangs flaring.