Page 99 of Heart of the Cursed
“I think the better question is, who arethey?” Taredd said.
Arun didn’t know, but he had a feeling they were about to find out.
“I hope I’m wrong,” Arun said. “But I think they’re waiting for Selene to start the spell. Something tells me that all hell is going to break loose the moment she begins.”
“We’ll be ready if that happens,” Dain said adamantly.
“But will everyone else?” he asked.
They were silent as his words sank in. They knew each other were more than capable of fighting any battle. They worked well as a team and knew each other’s fighting style. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the females.
Taredd and Dain had taught Natalia and Amberly a few fighting moves, but nowhere near enough to defend themselvesandthose around them. They still had a lot to learn. Amberly more so than Natalia, since she also needed to learn how to fight in animal form. Not just one, but a variety of different animals. And she needed to be able to call on a shift whenever she wanted it to happen, not just by a happy accident.
“We’ll do what we can to protect them all,” Taredd said. “But other than that, we can only hope that they can hold their own when the time comes.”
Arun looked back at Selene. “Whatever happens, we need to protect Selene at all costs, otherwise it’s all for nothing.”
“Agreed,” Taredd and Dain said in unison.
“Get the females into position and ready,” he said. “I don’t think we have long to wait.”
Taredd and Dain nodded before heading over to where Natalia and Amberly were gathered with the group of females. Arun watched them for a moment, and then turned his attention back to Selene.
There were still so many unanswered questions about her, and the spell. They still hadn’t got to the bottom of who and what her father was. Then there was the question on whether her mother was fully Human as she had claimed to be, or whether she was something else. Arun was leaning more towards the latter.
He had hoped to give her some answers before she performed the spell, but he hadn’t been able to find anything out. Between fighting his brother, rescuing her from Ogres, and everything else that had happened, he hadn’t been able to look into her past and family history.
Selene looked over in that moment and smiled at him. He smiled back.
Taking a deep breath, he scanned the woods one more time before returning to her side.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“I should be ready any minute now,” she said.
Selene was using a large, rectangular slab of rock that was in the centre of the stone circle. Its curved edges and rounded corners was evidence that it had been there for a long time. It was obvious that the standing stones and the centre stone had been there for centuries, if not longer.
Arun had seen a few of these structures over the years, but he’d never thought much of them. Now that he stood within the circle, he understood they were more than just slabs of rock. There was magic within the circle. He could feel it all around him, flowing from the rocks into the ground. Even the air inside the circle was heavy with magic. It was a heady sensation.
He wondered if anyone else could feel it. If they did, they kept it to themselves because none of them said a word about it. They didn’t even show any outward signs that they could feel it.
Selene seemed oblivious to anything going on around her. She had the book lying open in the middle of the stone slab in front of her, and she had drawn a circle in chalk around it. He watched as she placed candles and different coloured gemstones around the outside of the circle before adding different runes around the outside of them.
Arun recognized all the runes from the book, but he still didn’t understand what they meant. He only knew they were called runes because Selene had told him.
“That’s it,” she said triumphantly. “Everything is ready to go.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll let the others know.”
Just as he was about to walk away, she stopped him by putting a hand on his arms.
“Arun,” she said, sadness filling her voice.
He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. “I know.”
“It’s not fair.” Her voice shook as she spoke, and he could tell she was fighting back the tears. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you, either, but we have to do what’s best for everyone.”
