Allegiance (Causal Enchantment #3)(95)

Four arrogant smiles answered me. I wanted to punch them all, but I knew they’d eviscerate me if I so much as moved.

“The rules are simple,” Terra began. “Listen closely, for we’ll only explain once. If we answer your request, we must do what you wish. How we choose to do so is up to us. That’s part of the fun.”

“Fun?” My voice turned shaky. Four universes, four games. Mage was right. This was all a game! I was their entertainment! “And of course you couldn’t ever simply give us what we want,” I added bitterly.

Bewilderment flashed across Terra’s face. “I suppose we could but … how monotonous this burden would become for us!”

“You killed Nathan because you were bored?” I shouted.

Her composure was enough to drive someone off a cliff. “No … you killed Nathan. Remember?”

Rage tore through me. I wanted to leap forward and attack her. I pictured doing it. The picture was immediately obliterated by a wave of crippling pain. My knees buckled and I crumbled to the pedestal, panting as it took its time to subside.

“Finished?” Incendia purred with a wicked smile. “I am the one who decided to eliminate Nathan. That was my twist to the spell. That’s how the game works. Each of us has our chosen ones and we can grant the spell but not without council and input from the others. That way, no one is favored.”

“So,” I said, still winded from my warning, “for every Causal Enchantment I come to you with, you will grant it but not without perverting it into something so skewed from what I asked for, it is more a punishment. To what end?”

“We’ve already explained that,” Incendia answered coolly.

I struggled to my feet. “Oh, yes. That’s right. For your entertainment.” I spat out each bitter word. “When will it end?”

“When only one chosen is left standing.”

“So one of you is supporting me while three of you are always trying to break me.”

“Basically,” Ventus answered flatly, shrugging. “Nothing personal.”

Yeah, right … “And so how many of these ‘chosen ones’ are left?”

“Two,” Unda answered. “You and Incendia’s.”

I’m in a competition and I don’t even know who my competitors are. A tiny part of me—the aggressive Sofie—swelled with pride over being in the final two. Whoever this person was, they were important. “So either I break or yours breaks,” I surmised. “And then what?”

Incendia shrugged noncommittally. “We start again. We choose another planet. We find our players, and we begin.”

How many of these “games” had they played? How many worlds destroyed? “And Earth? My world?”

“We never grant the same request in the exact same way twice. That’s a rule,” Terra began to explain in an authoritative voice. “But, no matter how we choose to play the game, all paths will lead to one fate. Your world will end, my dear Sofie. That I can assure you.”

A desperate numb feeling washed over me as I regarded Terra more closely. She was both my protector and my punisher. Without her gift of choice and her magic, I would not be a vampire. I would have died long ago, buried by Nathan. With her gift, I have suffered countless injuries, caused pain to others time and time again. And now they were telling me all of it was hopeless.

“Can’t I buy some more time?” I asked, my voice hollow.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Ventus answered, that caginess back, indicating my time for asking questions had come to an end.

“Now that we have given you some information, what is it you want from us?” Terra asked.

What? Seriously? “You know exactly what I want!”

“Yes, we do. But you must ask it and then we will decide how we will grant it. We cannot simply interfere with fate at our choosing. We have no autonomous power over the worlds. Our only mode of influence is through spellcasters and their requests.”

I hesitated, this piece of information highly interesting. How on earth should I request them to reverse all that they had done? Any request I made would be poisoned seven ways from Sunday. The mess could grow more serious than it was today. A thought struck me.

“And if I don’t? If I just stop casting spells? This game might never end, right?”

Four expressions turned stony and I realized I had found a loophole. I smiled. If I didn’t cast spells, they didn’t have a game. If they didn’t have a game … Had I found a bargaining chip?

A blur, a shift. Suddenly our surroundings changed. I now stood within Nathan’s gardens, crisp summer night air drifting across my bare shoulders. Out from behind the oak tree stepped a tall, lean, man. My insides melted. Nathan. Nathan as I remembered him. Nathan with chocolate brown irises. Nathan who recognized me, loved me …

I pawed the air in front of me, my fingertips searching for his flesh. “Wouldn’t you like Nathan back?” Ventus cooed softly from an unseen location.

Oh, to have Nathan back … To bury my head in that shoulder, to slip my hands around his neck, along his chest … to feel his soft lips graze mine again. For a long moment, I did nothing but stare at that beautiful face. It would be so easy to say the words.

No, wait! No, it wouldn’t! They dangled Nathan in front of me but I knew that what I would get would not be Nathan. Look what they had already done! No … I gritted my teeth, fighting against their wicked temptation. Like serpents, the Fates were using my weakness against me to keep their game moving.