Chapter 4
Alexander
I stood at the center of The Happy Rooster. A lock of white slipped into my line of sight, and it took a beat to recognize it as my own. I’d traded sleep for magic for days, and my body was keeping score. I brushed it back and refocused before consequences could take shape.
I hadn’t planned on using the pub for my war room, but then, like everything in our castle, space was limited, and it wasn’t just Ezra’s five with me.
Everly, with Hero always at her side, shifted uncomfortably, as if unsure why they were here.
Chancellor Morgen, Professor Holiday, and Winston hovered at the back, while Cayden sat in the middle of all of us, dumping information into a growing pile of scrawl in front of him.
My lover subtly shifted, half in the room and half behind the bar, just a few steps from Horax’s office, where Quinn’s unconscious body rested.
Over the last two days, I’d tried everything to free her from the collar around her neck.
I’d never felt like such a failure before.
Another mentalist had made the collar, and the two men keyed to it were both dead with their final commands locked into place.
Whatever Quinn’s Majekah had done to the metal, changed it.
Where it should have shattered into its components, instead, the ring smoothed out, turning the clasp into one perfect silver loop.
Even Rowan’s pure elemental heat couldn’t melt it off.
Quinn was trapped.
I couldn’t help her.
‘Breathe.’ My lover’s advice filled me, though he hadn’t spoken in my head. No matter what I struggled with, that was always the first thing he said. I took his advice, and my resolve strengthened.
Quinn, the woman who had taken up permanent residence in my heart, needed my undivided attention. But I couldn’t give it to her while three men still sat in my Alun.
Ashkar.
Emil.
Erick Adler Michelson.
The first two names were inconsequential. Emil was one of Cayden’s brothers. He’d been part of the trio that attempted to take Quinn on The Mile. From what I could see in his thoughts, he’d rallied the young men in his family who wanted more behind the Prophet’s back.
Ashkar was the leader of a mercenary group from down south.
I found only pure greed between his ears.
Both his and Emil’s men were now a pile of corpses sitting outside my gates.
Two of Ashkar’s soldiers, one of Emil’s brothers, and the trainee who ran past me survived my fear.
None of them would look at my castle again without pissing themselves.
Erick, however, was a problem I knew too well. Quinn’s roommate was the eleventh son of the Adler Michelsons. A powerful family down in London, now poised to take my castle and secure a second foothold here. But only if Erick succeeded in his plans.
Once again, my five began talking in circles, trying to find a way to fix this. Somehow, Erick had tapped into the power of the Alun, creating a shield of pure force around the entire Great Hall. We’d yet to find a way to breach it with magic or bodies.
However, my skills as a mentalist didn’t follow the same rules.
I let my officers’ conversations turn into white noise.
The Alun was a powerful tool for the amplification and dispersal of magic. One I’d come to rely on. Now, Emil attempted to use it to make a portal, which I could only assume connected to Erick’s allies in London.
Closing my eyes, I once again found the trio’s minds. I connected with Emil first this time, and his thoughts felt like slime under my fingers. My body swayed, and Rowan reached out, gripping my elbow to keep me standing.
My heart pounded. The muscle-bound elementalist hadn’t left my side for over forty-eight hours now.
‘I might not do it right, but I won’t leave you,’ Rowan had said those exact words to me, and he’d been true to them in every way. An implicit trust I hadn’t known I could feel for anyone but Ezra gave me strength.
Cayden’s younger brother hummed to himself.
The portal to London was just a few layers from completion.
The trio had no way to communicate with their forces outside the shield and wrongly assumed they held my people in check.
However, Emil knew of his Prophet’s death because the tattoo on his wrist went silent.
As the driving force behind the portal’s design, Emil’s progress ground to a momentary halt.
Loss and confusion sat heavily on his mind.
For a brief moment, I hovered. A single flex of my power and all three men would forget how to breathe.
But that wouldn’t bring down the shield.
The memory of Rowan trembling as I unleashed mass fear on our attackers filled my mind.
I needed my allies. For now, I had to follow my code, but that would be changing.
I pulled out of Emil’s mind, leaving him breathing and free to make his choices while I made mine.
My baby-blue power boiled the cauldrons, filling the usually moody pub with bright light and exposing every dirty nook and cranny. Shadows covered the stone floor in a patchwork.
A wine bottle popped open, destroying our pregnant silence. I turned, unable to fathom who wanted to drink in the middle of all of this. Cayden’s shadowed face twisted before he took a swig directly out of the bottle.
I gave it to him. In fact, I took back my mental judgment.
Rowan released my arm, and I sagged with exhaustion, the toll of consuming my own magic no longer deniable.
“That’s all I know.” Cayden gestured to the pile of forest-green scrawls covering one of the tables.
“I was fully in the Prophet's light.” He sucked down another mouthful of wine. “I knew there was unrest. Several of my brothers are not quite right in the head. We called them blessed.” He grimaced. “Emil wasn’t blessed, but he was never strong of mind. The Prophet would never…” Cayden trailed off.
“He’s dead now, so I guess it doesn’t matter what he would or wouldn’t have done. ”
“Who controls your family now?” I asked.
Cayden looked at his bare wrist before running his hand up his arm. Quinn had used her Majekah on him. The fine white tattoos covering his body were gone. With his Prophet dead and the truths about his family out, the missing runes must leave him feeling exposed.
“I don’t know.” Cayden took another drink. “He and his inner circle are dead. I came here before Emil split the family.” He took another drink. “Can I go back to Quinn now?”
I shook my head. “I need you here.”
Cayden scowled but didn’t move.
I couldn’t physically stop him if he chose to ignore me and slip to Quinn’s side. In fact, with Everly and Hero here, I would meet resistance if I even tried.
Cayden didn’t realize that only my words held him in place.
The turmoil inside him churned. After arriving, I gave him a task.
When he completed it, those same dead eyes turned to me again, desperate for something else to occupy his thoughts.
Although his alliance was my ultimate goal, this was not how I wanted it to happen.
Since arriving at my castle, Cayden had fought my leadership at every turn, even roping Rowan into plotting against me. This docile version of the rune mage felt wrong. If I could go back in time and kill his Prophet myself, I would.
Cayden slid to his stacks of scrawls and started organizing them.
Unlike the rest of the world, every Lawson learned Majekah the same way.
If their Majekah developed outside of ‘normal,’ the ‘correct’ rune magic was literally beaten into them until they changed or died.
Once their training capped out, they were placed in the family and taught only what they needed to complete their assigned role.
Each person was a puzzle piece, except they never got to see the whole picture.
Only a select few did, and those people were blindly loyal to the Prophet.
As if reading my mind, Cayden took another swig of wine and trained his gaze on the ground.
“My father—” Jamie Abernathy began into the awkward silence that had descended on the room.
I put out a hand. “Erick will only get reinforcements if he successfully takes my castle. And even then”—I locked my gaze with his—“I don’t need an army.”
Abernathy paled. I’d filled his mind with information multiple times. He understood what I was. But until recently, he’d never seen me use my mental powers for more than transferring information.
Professor Holiday chuckled. The ancient self-named professor’s dry laugh sounded like nails on a chalkboard.
The sticky, sweet smell of his experiments still clung to his layers of white robes.
Although he always looked half dead, today, his skin hung off his skeletal body.
Less than thirty-eight hours ago, I’d physically pulled him out of his lab, just on the edge of Erick’s shield.
I don’t think he’d even realized we were under attack.
Professor Holiday met my gaze. I knew what was in his lab because I’d broken in with Quinn.
Professor Holiday didn’t realize I’d been at Quinn’s side, but he had to suspect I knew everything she did.
The ancient man survived by leeching magic out of the very air.
What were the chances his side project also consumed magic and could eat a shield of pure force?
The massive body built of metal and muscle metaphorically filled the space between us. Professor Holiday’s dark gaze burned into mine. With every passing second, his dry, cracked lips curled up into a parody of a smile, as if he were the mentalist reading my thoughts.
Ezra would tell me to keep a tight leash on all my monsters and warn me not to encourage a possibly evil being desperately searching for immortality.
But my lover’s focus was elsewhere, and I needed that shield down.
I gave Professor Holiday the barest of nods. He rapped his staff on the ground twice and hobbled out of The Rooster. Every person tracked his progress until he vanished into the dull drizzle of the late afternoon.