Allegiance (Causal Enchantment #3)(12)
I shrugged. “Julian’s different somehow.” His emotions were also an illegible mess. Not nearly as jumbled as Eve’s, but still impossible to read. Beyond his love-struck angst for Amelie. Truthfully, I hadn’t given him much thought, too absorbed by what was happening to my girl. “She’s hiding something big, Mage,” I blurted out. “Do you feel it?”
Mage nodded in assent.
“And Eve never keeps secrets. She couldn’t if her life depended on it.” But if someone else’s life depended on it … Who could she be protecting? What could she possibly know that she felt she needed to hide? Oh, that girl! Now was not the time to become reticent!
“Between the two of us, I’m sure we can get it out of her,” Mage offered with a soft chuckle. Mage’s unwavering confidence instantly soothed my frazzled nerves. What an interesting turn of events. From evil, untrustworthy Ratheus vampiress leader to my confidante, in such a short time. I needed it now more than ever.
My eyes drifted longingly to the old oak tree with the tombstone beneath it. Nathan’s burial site. “I’m going to step outside.”
Mage nodded. Without explaining a thing to her, she somehow always knew. “I’ll be in the library, convincing Viggo to end his twelve-hundred-year quarrel for the good of mankind …,” she answered as she turned to glide away, a smile touching her lips.
3. Connection—Evangeline
I woke to a peculiar pins-and-needles tingling in my head. The rest of my body was equally uncomfortable, a damp cold seeping into my bones. Curling my shoulders into my body, I pawed around in the pitch darkness, searching for a plush duvet. I didn’t have one, I realized, at the same time I noticed the cold, hard concrete beneath my cheek. I was lying on the floor. A dull throb on my forehead aching. I reached up and winced, feeling a mess of thread.
I couldn’t see a thing. Nothing but a tiny horizontal crack of light opposite me, like the light underneath a door. In fact, that’s exactly what it was. A door. I heard a blur of female voices mumbling behind it. They were whispering. Propping onto my elbows, I strained to listen.
“… necessary?” a soft-spoken woman asked.
“Yes!” A hard voice snapped back.
“But she’s human …,” the soft-spoken one said. I pulled myself further up and craned my neck, hoping to hear more, to understand what was happening. “… harmless,” the nice lady said. Who were they talking about?
“Harmless!” the other woman suddenly shouted, loud enough that I no longer needed to crane my neck to hear. “She’s involved with those murderous leeches! With that redheaded bitch! They had her cast in that statue and now our magic can’t touch her! She’s so far from harmless, I’m not sure we should keep her alive!” A loud screeching sound echoed as the door swung open, flooding the darkness with light. I squinted and blocked out the harshness with my hand. Through my fingers, I could just make out the silhouette of a wild-haired woman looming in the doorway.
“But we need to keep her for now. Between her and all of that Merth we found, we finally have the upper hand. She knows something that we can use against them, I’m sure of it.” As my eyes adjusted, I saw the wicked smile cross the woman’s lips. She brought her hand forward, a leather strap dangling dangerously from it. “Don’t you, Veronique?”
The woman’s acidic hiss lingered in my ears as my eyes popped open. I bolted up in my bed.
Bad dream? Max asked, unruffled. He was used to me bolting out of a deep sleep.
I swallowed my confusion. “I don’t know. Was I … here?”
Yes, yes …
I rubbed my faceharder than necessary. Was that just a dream? It had to be. I didn’t go anywhere. It was me worrying about Veronique. But still … my gut told me there was something more to it. Deep down, I knew something more than weary nerves and an overactive imagination existed here. If I had learned one thing over the last few months, it was to assume the worst and then expect the truth to be ten times bleaker. If that were the case, it meant Veronique was in danger. It meant the witches knew who she was and of her ties to Sofie. “Our magic can’t touch her.” That’s what the woman with the whip said.
Its meaning hit me like a freight train, terror seizing me in the deepest level. What if, when I agreed to climb atop that platform for the Tribe to “free me,” the same magic that poisoned me had also poisoned Veronique? It had touched her, after all. Oh God! Shocked, I cupped my hand over my mouth and nose. That meant she couldn’t be transformed, even when we rescued her. After all this, after all they’d done to preserve her and solve this problem … A ball of vomit formed in my throat, threatening to launch. No, Evangeline. Don’t panic, I silently commanded. Breathe in, breathe out. This could still be a dream; this could still just be your subconscious, torturing you.
Well? Max asked. I could hear a hint of worry in his tone.
I paused. “Just a bad dream,” I whispered, hearing the emptiness of my words as they left my lips. It has to be a dream … please, just be a dream … I repeated in my head as I fumbled absently for my pendant, for something to grasp. Then I remembered I didn’t have it anymore. I didn’t have it because I agreed to let the Tribe touch me with their magic, resulting in this entire mess.
The clock read three in the morning. There was no chance of me falling asleep in the near future. “Did Caden come by at all?” I asked, peering outside at the night sky, longing to distract myself with him at that moment. And every moment after …