Chapter 2
The soft knock on our bedroom door three hours later shattered the peaceful research bubble Aidon and I had created. We'd been poring over ancient texts, cross-referencing binding spells with counter-magic. Suddenly, Clio's voice cut through our concentration like a blade through silk.
"I need to examine Phoebe immediately," she announced at the same time she pushed through the doorway.
She had her medical bag clutched in white-knuckled hands.
Her usually composed demeanor had cracked.
The strain of maintaining everyone's health while fighting magical corruption she'd never encountered before was beginning to show.
My stomach dropped, the sensation sharp enough to make the triplets shift restlessly. "The babies?"
"They're fine," she assured me quickly, but her expression remained troubled as she set her bag down with trembling fingers. "It's their connections. They're... more active than they were this morning. And the magical resonance has changed."
Aidon's power flared and flooded the room, responding to his spike of protective fury. The dark energy reached toward me with desperate tenderness before recoiling as if afraid to touch me in my current state.
"What does that mean?" he asked, his voice tight with barely controlled rage.
"It means Lyra's tethers are evolving," Clio said grimly, already moving toward me with purpose. "They're not just passive drains anymore. They're actively seeking something."
I set aside the grimoire I'd been studying, the leather-bound tome heavier than it looked—all that magic and knowledge weighed more than simple paper and binding. "Help me sit up properly."
His hands were gentle but firm as he adjusted my position, and I tried not to wince at the movement. Everything hurt these days. Clio's hands began to glow with diagnostic magic as she pressed them against my belly. Her touch was more invasive than usual.
I felt the depth of her magical probe reaching past skin and muscle. It followed the mystical connection between me and my unborn children. The sensation was like liquid mercury threading through my bloodstream, carrying with it the metallic taste of foreign magic.
Her eyes unfocused as she traced the paths of Lyra's corruption.
My chest tightened when her face lost all of its color.
"Bloody hell," she murmured in a voice barely above a whisper.
"The first tether is wrapped around your daughter's developing water magic like a python around its prey.
The second has latched onto your son's earth-based power, its tendrils burrowing deep into his core. And the third..."
She paused, her frown deepening as her magical sight followed the most insidious connection. "The third is coiled around your son's shadow abilities like a parasite feeding on divine power."
Aidon went perfectly still. "She knew. Somehow, Lyra knew what powers they would inherit before we did." His anger matched mine.
The implications made me sick to my stomach. She was stealing their powers even before our children had begun to develop their abilities. "That's impossible," I protested, unwilling to believe that she had somehow known. "We didn't even know until recently what their individual gifts would be."
"Not impossible," Clio muttered, her magic crackling around her fingers like angry fireflies as she ran another scan.
"That psychotic harpy's been stalking you for weeks.
She probably spotted the signs before we did.
" Her jaw clenched. "These connections are surgeon-precise.
She's cherry-picking their individual gifts like she's shopping for designer shoes. "
The truth of her comment made me want to hurl all over Aidon's fancy Italian loafers. "She wants to steal their abilities. Not just raw power.” I looked up at Aidon and swallowed hard. “She’s taking their actual magical DNA. She wants to become them."
"Well, that's significantly more fucked than we originally thought," Aidon said in the deadly quiet voice that meant someone was about to get their ass handed to them by a God of the Underworld.
Then the room temperature nose-dived twenty degrees as his divine mojo reacted to the threat against his kids.
A sharp knock saved us from diving deeper into that particular nightmare. It was followed by Jean-Marc's voice carrying equal parts excitement and panic. "Mom, dad. Nina and I found something. It's either really good news or we're all spectacularly screwed."
"Come in before I lose what's left of my sanity," I called back.
Jean-Marc burst through the door carrying what looked like a magical snow globe on steroids. It glowed and pulsed like a rave for witches. Nina trailed behind him, looking like she'd stuck her finger in a light socket. Her hair stood up everywhere, and her eyes were bright with exhaustion.
"We've been tracking the connection signatures for six hours straight," Jean-Marc said, setting the contraption on our dresser. "They're not steady. Check this out."
The lights inside shifted and brightened. A moment later, three nasty purple threads pulsed in perfect sync. Watching it was like staring at a diseased heartbeat. It was hypnotic and nauseating at the same time.
"What's controlling the pattern?" Aidon asked, studying the display like a predator sizing up prey.
"Dawn and dusk," Nina announced proudly. "The connections get stronger during twilight when the magical barriers are thinner. During regular day and night, they're weaker but still there. It’s like background music you can't quite turn off."
I stared at the magical light show as I pieced things together. "That's when Lyra's power peaks. She's been siphoning energy during prime-time magical hours, so I don’t feel it as much. That bitch."
"Exactly," Jean-Marc confirmed. "But Nina caught something we all missed."
My daughter stepped forward, looking way too serious for a seventeen-year-old who should be worried about algebra homework instead of magical warfare.
"They don't strengthen at the same rate. Nyssa’s shadow magic responds differently to dawn. It gets brighter just before sunrise. And Thaniel’s water magic goes nuts during storms. I noticed yesterday when it was raining. "
Clio leaned in, her healer instincts perking up. "Environmental factors are screwing with the bonds' efficiency. That gives us tactical advantages we can use if we're smart about timing."
"How?" I asked, leaning forward despite the way it made the triplets press on my bladder.
"If we time our defensive moves during the connections' weak periods, we might be able to cut them," Jean-Marc suggested. "Or at least stop Lyra from using them to force labor when she's at full power."
A sudden jolt ripped through my belly like someone had tasered me from the inside.
Thank the gods it wasn't a contraction. I had enough problems without my kids deciding to make an early appearance.
Instead, it felt like someone had mainlined pure malice straight into my veins, flooding me with emotions that definitely weren't mine.
Fury burned like swallowing bleach. Frustration so sharp it could slice diamonds followed.
And underneath it all was a twisted sense of purpose.
"Phoebe?" Aidon's voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.
The foreign emotions crashed over me like a tidal wave of crazy, drowning out my own thoughts. Suddenly, I wasn't in our bedroom anymore. The familiar warmth vanished. It was replaced by cold stone and darkness. Reaching out, my fingers hit a familiar forearm. I was still in bed with Aidon.
Suddenly, I wasn't looking through my own eyes anymore.
I was hijacking someone else's vision. I was standing in a circular chamber carved from black rock that looked like it had been decorated by someone with serious anger management issues.
Strange symbols covered the walls, glowing the same nasty purple as the connections.
They pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat like the world's most disturbing drum solo.
My hands—except they weren't my hands—moved in complex patterns above a stone altar. They were weaving magic. The chamber was smaller than the dimensional hellhole we'd escaped from, and more menacing. You might say it was cozy in all the worst possible ways.
“The little birds think they can hide in their cozy nest,” I heard myself say, except it was Lyra's voice coming out of what felt like my mouth.
She sounded like a preschool teacher about to put someone in permanent timeout.
“But they forget. I can see through their eyes now. Feel through their magic. Every breath, every heartbeat, every flutter of my precious children.”
The way she said 'my children' made every protective instinct I possessed rear up and prepare for war.
The vision exploded apart like a dropped mirror as Aidon shook my shoulders.
His divine power sliced through the connection cleaner than a hot knife through butter.
I gasped, rocketing back into my own body with all the elegance of a cannonball hitting concrete.
"What happened?" Aidon demanded, his hands framing my face as he searched for signs of magical damage.
"I saw through her," I whispered, my hands automatically covering my belly like I could build a fortress around the triplets with sheer willpower.
"I have no idea how, but I was suddenly feeling what she did and seeing through her eyes.
She's in some stone ritual chamber. She knows we're planning defenses. She's watching us somehow."
The room exploded into urgent chatter, everyone talking over each other like an angry mob at a town hall meeting.
Clio immediately started another scan while the others discussed things.
All I could focus on was the lingering taste of Lyra's emotions in my head.
Her madness felt like poison seeping through my thoughts.