Chapter 9 Velra #2
The tendrils sped up, nearing me all too quickly.
Even as I moved to stop the spell, nothing happened, no spark of my power, of any of my abilities.
I couldn’t even tell at this juncture whether it was something currently deficient within me, or if it was the black magic taking greater control. The latter shouldn’t be possible—not to that extent and not under these specific circumstances.
Trying to remain levelheaded and quell my rapidly rising panic became meaningless.
The tendrils were a hair’s breadth away from making contact, from seeping into my blood and overriding my control.
And then crimson magic erupted, ripping right through the circle.
My frost was sucked up, like it had never been, like some sort of magical vacuum.
Victor’s blood turned to ashes.
And the black tendrils stilled, then shrieked, before dematerializing right before my eyes.
My shadows retreated.
My wounds healed instantly.
And then I was looking up into the face of Sylas.
His crimson magic was flaming wildly on both palms, his eyes blazing with it, his hooded leather coat billowing behind him from the force of all that power.
“That line you were concerned about crossing when tapping into your darker predilections?” He snuffed out his power and lowered his palms. “You just crossed it.” Frost emanated from his mouth—he’d absorbed my frost directly into himself, just like he’d done several times before for me when I hadn’t been in great control of my abilities, when emotion had influenced them.
But that wasn’t the case now.
I was in control. In fact, I’d mastered fusing both aspects of my hybridized nature so well. What had just happened didn’t make sense. And it didn’t negate that.
“You don’t understand,” I rasped, trying to recover myself after how close that had come to going south. “That wasn’t… something was impacting… I mean—”
“You invoked black magic,” he rumbled.
It wasn’t about the control issue he’d walked in on at all. He wasn’t questioning that, he was giving me the respect I deserved in recognizing how well I’d been doing with it. It was about the dangerous lengths I’d been willing to go to.
“I had to.”
“Acting out of desperation isn’t going to help the situation.”
“It will bring him back!” I snapped, pushing back to my feet.
“You don’t know that for certain. With any spell, or even any strategy, complications abound, things you can’t foresee.”
“It was a calculated risk—isn’t that how you justify the reckless things you do?”
“Those reckless things have never and will never include the use of black magic.”
“It was gonna be a one-time thing.”
He shook his head sadly. “It’s never just once.”
I shoved a hand through my hair. “Sylas, I’m not… it’s not the same as—”
“You’re not him, not my father? Not Morien?” He kicked at the ashes in the circle. “It always starts with that “just-a-one-time-thing” mentality. If you have to justify it, especially at that stage, it’s already done, Velra.”
I went to speak, but then he was there cupping my face.
“Little Wraith, I know this was for Lazriel, that you risked this for somebody else, not yourself. And, yeah, my father would have never done that. His usage was always in service of himself. So, no, you’re not him.
But you could still become corrupted. If not corrupted, hurt.
Mentally and physically. That’s the toll that black magic usage can take.
It just… it never ends well. All it does is destroy.
Can you imagine Lazriel finding that he’s lost you when he returns to us?
Cassius would absolutely lose his mind as well. ”
“And you?” I asked, tentatively.
“Me? I’d be absolutely fucking devastated.
After how far you’ve come, how hard you’ve fought, you keeping that beautiful compassion of yours in spite of being hunted, shamed, and rejected…
it’s miraculous. So to then throw all of that away, especially when you now have a new family in Cassius, Lazriel, and me…
it would be a true tragedy. I wouldn’t do well with it. At all.”
I clasped his hands on my face, stroking his fingers. “Thank you.”
He arched an eyebrow. “For getting in the way of your mission that you were so hellbent on?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sylas.”
“Well?” he challenged.
“Look, you were right. It was… the danger was extreme. And I guess, I didn’t want to allow that to resonate. So I shoved it down, even Lazriel’s own warning to me about going down that road.”
“Concerning taking Sorin’s life.”
“How do you—ah, Cassius told you?”
“He did, yes. He wanted me to be aware and he didn’t want you to have to be the one to inform me, or even speak about it.
And while I agree with his approach of allowing you time to process that, there needs to be a limit.
To be clear, I won’t let you fall into the same trap I did with compartmentalizing things like that.
For you especially with what you’ve endured over the years, it could have you falling back into the way you used to operate before—closed off and existing only in survival mode.
You’ve come too far to allow that to happen.
” He smiled. “You are better than that, Velra. So much better than all of this fucking madness.”
“I won’t do it again… won’t venture down that road. I promise. I promise the three of you that.” I sucked in a breath and blinked harshly as emotion threatened to take me. “Just… Lazriel… he…”
“I know,” he breathed. “I know.”
He dropped his hands and wrapped his arms around me.
I sank into him for several moments, and I felt him do the same, needing the comfort just as much as I did.
I tilted my head up after a while. “How are you here right now?”
“I need to perform a spell for Remnant, one that can’t be done in the Shadow Tunnels, so we emerged above ground earlier.”
“We? Remnant is with you?”
“At my place. With the hefty ward that Cassius erected after the Victor-Sorin-Puritas attack, he’ll remain off the radar there. Rhyza Thaine is also on her way.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, according to Remnant, she has a lot to say about Lazriel being taken on Remnant’s watch when agents of The Shadowed were running protection detail on him.”
“There’s no way those agents could have followed Lazriel to where he was kidnapped from, though. He was transported there through Cassius’ teleportation. Very few beings in the entire supernatural world can track through that.”
“I’m sure she knows that—in her head. But her heart…
her son being in danger… it’s another matter.
As you, me, and Cassius well know.” He sucked in a breath.
“So, while the spell is cooking, I left him time alone with her, and I accessed Wraeven Academy through the magical passage I’d first put in place months ago.
Given that it was already in place when they enhanced the wards and protection around campus, I was still able to use it and bypass it. ”
“Always a step ahead, aren’t you?”
“Please. Steps. Plural.”
I actually chuckled, which was really fucking unprecedented considering the circumstances.
His hold tightened around me. “This spell I mentioned is a means to sever Nexus Letale, the tether between Remnant and Victor. So when we find him, we can end this once and for all without Lazriel losing his dad in the process.”
“That’s incredible.” I rested my head on his chest, the bleak side of it all settling over me—that very deep terror infecting me. “Until we find him, all the time ticking on by while Lazriel is in his presence—”
“He’ll be able to handle it, Velra.”
I lifted my head again. “I want to believe that too, but how can we be certain? And Lazriel has come so fucking far. Just thinking about Victor undermining that, harming him in unrecoverable ways… fuck, Sylas.”
“I was with Lazriel during Victor’s last brutal attack. He stood tall against him. Not only did he withstand his taunts and attempted psychological manipulations, he rose beyond them. And he even used it to his advantage and outmaneuvered Victor.”
I beamed up at him as I tried so hard to absorb his words and let them resonate. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“As am I.”
“Can you do it again?”
“What’s that?”
“Play with my frost like its your own?”
“Ah.” He grinned, then blew lightly across the side of my neck, and I felt my frost traveling along my skin in such a familiar soothing way, little crackles sounding. For me, it wasn’t cold, it was more like a rush of sensation.
He grasped my shoulder, then leaned down and blew across the tops of my breasts too, some getting on my leather corset.
I ran my fingers over it. It felt the same, the frost’s consistency exact and definitely mine, but his power pulsed from it as well.
He startled me as he leaned in and dragged his tongue over the frost he’d swept across my chest.
“Hell,” I rasped, grasping his biceps through his leather coat and digging my nails in as he continued laving me with his hot tongue.
A choked sound escaped me as he dipped inside the cups of my corset and flicked at my nipples.
He looked up at me, that mischievous glint in his eye.
A rolling tremble of need took me.
And then I was fisting my hand in his shirt and jerking him to me.
As it had him lifting his head, I seized his stubbly jaw and crushed his mouth to mine.
Sylas was a commanding and absolutely magnetic sexual force, so when he opened for me and held off, responding instead of leading as I tasted him, claiming his mouth, digging my nails into his pecs and even tugging needily at his shirt, it had me off-kilter.
I eased back, after a lingering lick to his bottom lip, and stared at him with bemusement.
He smiled, his sexy hooded eyes heated. “Lead the way, Dark Beauty.”
Was he actually serious?
He showed me in the next moment as he eased back from me, then snapped his fingers, brief sparks of his magic erupting in the air, a moment before he was gone.
I spun around and started as I found him lying on his back on my bed—stark naked.