Rose and Shadows (WRAEVEN ACADEMY #3)

Chapter 1

~Lazriel~

It was deafening.

The roars, the screaming.

Panic and terror ripped through me like a living entity.

I could feel it in my bones, prickling at my skin, and blazing in my fucking veins.

Burns had scalded my body from where that psychopath had hit me with his magic.

I was fucking bleeding with it from so many places.

The impact of being thrown while infected with black magic had messed with my durability—which had been supreme lately with me bringing out my vampire side more and calling on my Ancient blood—and I was running with broken bones.

All that pain was nothing compared to the sight of Velra trapped as Morien unleashed.

A wave of his tainted magic swept toward her.

Too fast.

Too powerful.

It was gonna kill her.

I had to stop it… I had to… I couldn’t fucking make it.

I could see it. I knew it.

I was compromised.

The distance… I couldn’t cover it in time.

Ketheron was incapacitated, on his knees now, screaming, his hands clutching his head in agony as Morien’s allies tore into his mind.

Cassius, Kai, and Ryker were being held in a necromantic hold off the ground that shouldn’t even be possible, but Morien had violated necromantic law with Celestial magic.

Fucking shit.

Beyond, I saw Nyx frantic, seeing the situation, being pulled away by Vorzyr where the two of them had been gathering the hundreds of hybrids of this CRS facility, teleporting them out in droves.

Vorzyr had a wall of his dragon flame thrown up a few feet from the entrance and a ward as well, a desperate move to try to shield those who still remained when Morien’s wave hit.

A wave that would turn everyone it touched to ash.

A wave about to hit the woman I loved.

“Velra!” I bellowed out across the distance.

Through all the chaos, I didn’t register it until it was too late, and a rush of violent wind inundated me, before a voice sounded through it.

“Stand down. You cannot survive him.”

“Dad,” I rasped.

It was all I managed to get out before I actually saw his form, and a split-second later, he bodychecked me. With me running at full speed and him as well, it ripped me right off my feet and it sent me flying fifty feet away into a tree.

I cried out at the bone-shattering impact, and I ricocheted off it, landing on my hands in the grass and dirt.

Straining as fast as I could to look up and out at the nightmare scene I’d been headed to, a mixture of shock and terror had me shuddering as I watched my dad dart in front of Velra—a second before the moment of impact.

I spluttered out a scream as Morien’s wave—that demented version of Risen Reckoning—slammed into my dad at full force.

No. No. No!

My dad was wearing one of those face plate masks, all polished metal, and he had a low hanging hood on, so I could only see his eyes, flaming red, while he stared down Morien with his boots rooted to the ground as he stood in front of Velra like a ballistic shield in Ancient vampire form.

Morien jolted as his nuke-level blast was forced to concentrate only on my dad, instead of tearing through Velra and then the entire facility a hundred feet behind her.

“Remnant,” Morien choked.

“Power has corrupted you dearly,” my dad spoke without emotion, just a cold, hard fact.

Morien clearly didn’t like the impersonal nature of it, and he sneered.

“And arrogance appears to have twisted you. How incredibly foolish. You’ve just made a suicidal move.

Thinking you can absorb Risen Reckoning?

” He shook his head. “You feel it, yes? It’s melting your insides every moment you continue to stand in its path.

In my path. Your healing factor will be overwhelmed soon enough and you’ll be nothing but ash just like the others I saw to earlier. ”

“Massacres for massacres’ sake now, is that it, Scion?”

Even though my dad’s voice came out steady—hell knew how—I caught sight of his hands shaking and… and his fingers starting to desiccate. The rest of him was covered, so it could be far more than even that beneath all the leather and robes.

“Ah, old friend, you know all too well that I always have a greater plan.”

He pushed harder then, his magic flaring.

A violent gray glow erupted all around my dad, then bled into him, cracks forming in his clothing, moving deeper to his flesh.

The only sound of the agony that it had to be causing him was a mere grunt.

Badass motherfucker indeed.

His eyes flickered, that flaming red petering in and out.

I staggered to my feet.

I was healing rapidly, but I was still off-kilter.

It would have to be enough.

But then a whisper on the wind reached me.

My dad’s voice like before, a sound so low that it wouldn’t be perceptible to Morien. Or most others for that matter.

“Do not. He is coming.”

“Hold him!” Morien yelled behind him.

Then I watched as a couple of the Dark Fae used Morien’s magic to invoke Undead Domination, which would enable them to puppet my dad and take complete control.

Fuck, no.

The streaming hit, but ricocheted right off him and shot back the way it had come, driving into the wielders and sending them crying out and sailing into the depths of the forest.

Morien’s eyes widened. “How in Hades did you—”

A violent thunderclap cut him off.

Another and another.

The sky split open.

Flash lightning lit up the darkness.

Crimson lightning.

Fucking shit.

Was it really—

A massive stream of red power shot down from the sky in a sudden rush, hitting the ground right between my dad and Morien.

In several flashes of ferocious lightning, it snuffed out.

And there in its wake was none other than Sylas in a primed crouch.

His flaming eyes burned into Morien’s.

His lips lifted.

And then he smashed his right fist down, his power radiating out like a shockwave that smashed into Morien.

The bastard screamed as his power cut out in one shot and he was blown back into the forest.

Velra stumbled forward a little as the Undead Domination hold was broken on her.

Sylas briefly glanced behind him, needing to check she was all right, even in the midst of battle. I smiled to myself.

Then his gaze went to the Dark Fae and I saw him register the situation—that they were holding Kai, Cassius, and Ryker with necromancy infused with Celestial power.

He grimaced at Ketheron growling and uttering pained cries on his knees, clutching his head as some of the Dark Fae continued to torment him to keep him down.

He clenched his fists and I saw him note Ryker’s presence, a heavy look passing over his face.

With all his unlawful activities, the vigilantism, it being known that he’d performed that outlawed spell, Auctoritas Mortis, and now it being clear he was no longer bound and therefore a threat again…

it didn’t bode well for him. Here he was not just out in the open with his power, but engaging in battle and unleashing heavy magics.

And I had a sinking feeling that he’d figured out a way to end this current battle and it involved crossing more lines.

Right in front of the Head of the Guardian Movement.

“You allow them to constrain your power,” Morien spoke as he teleported back into the fray a few feet from Sylas, his palms upturned and live with his creepy gray and black power.

“My power just had you on your ass, father dearest.” He rubbed the fingers of his right hand together, making a show of sparks of potent lightning erupting, something he was somehow able to do just from that slight gesture and also control to an insane degree.

Morien delivered one of his sneers. “How are you wielding your magic?” He frowned as he looked Sylas over standing there in all his Almighty Necromancer glory, his crimson power radiating off him furiously, his long hooded leather coat flapping behind him from the force of it all, his brown closely-cropped hair with the red spikes shooting straight up, so rigid, and radiating power too.

Sylas eyed the psychopath steadily, not giving anything away in his expression.

I mean, his father had been dead, he hadn’t seen him in years, now he’d just come at the ones Sylas loved, and yet he was showing next to no emotion at all.

Oh, fuck. With his magic back, he had to be employing that extreme level compartmentalization of his. A good thing in a dicey battle face-off situation like this, but really not beyond that. Not with us. And not for him.

“You know, most parents who haven’t seen their flesh and blood for years would at least commence with a ‘hello.’ Maybe even a ‘how are you?’”

Even as he delivered that, he did it stoically.

But Morien wasn’t stoic about it.

He couldn’t take his eyes off Sylas.

In fact, he was so focused on him, that he didn’t notice that Vorzyr and Nyx were just finishing up with the last two sets of groupings of hybrids that they’d gathered to teleport.

I saw my dad had shifted to beside Velra now, instead of in front of her, and she was working to heal him with her purple Dark Fae magic, sweeping it over the length of him, back and forth.

While she was doing that, though, my dad had a hand behind his back, and from the angle I could just about make out him sending hand signals.

Some sort of military gestures that Vorzyr Titanus was picking up on, taking note of, and reading well.

He’d grown up in the Dracoryn Realm, which at the time under his family’s House Titanus rule, had been super militaristic, so it made sense he’d be able to interpret those sorts of gestures.

It had Vorzyr whispering to Nyx and shifting how they were evacuating everyone—moving them with bursts of speed from Vorzyr and some hybrids that had vampire abilities off to the side, before taking the time to do big-time teleportation that was taking a while to conjure when transporting so many, especially having to do it over and over.

My dad was having them clear the way.

He knew something was coming.

Something clearly that Sylas was going to do, but that he couldn’t do without causing collateral damage, until the hybrids were clear behind him.