Chapter 491
“I’m not sure what happened to you, when you contained her magic, but the Rift made me choose.”
I grab his face looking for signs of distress or magic in them. “What do you mean ‘choose’?” I say slowly, standing and pulling him with me. I want to fully look him over for any signs of injury.
“I can’t see the Rift anymore. I assume the massive crack full of magic stones and whatnot is still there, but to me this looks like an open, dead, clearing.”
“What?!” I look behind me at the beautiful crevasse filled with unnaturally clear stones winking in the sunlight. The Star shape in the center is unblemished and I feel peace radiating off it like a cool breeze off the ocean. All the magic is still here and intact. Eliza got none of it. “Why did you have to choose?”
“I’m not meant to have magic, you are. In order to help you balance what Eliza messed up, I had to understand it, but it was only temporary. The magic let me choose to have my wolf and my mate bond back or keep the access to the magic with you. I chose my connection with you over the connection with the Rift. You don’t need me as an interpreter anymore.” He strokes my unruly auburn locks out of my face. “And I needed this.” He strokes his knuckles slowly down the side of my face, my neck, my arm, leaving electric sparks exploding in their wake.
“We need to find Marietta and Brianna so we can figure out what to do with her.” I gesture towards the mound of tangled roots. “This feels too easy. I want her dead or under every magical lock and key possible.”
“You don’t think she’s dead under there? I thought she would have to die in order for the magic to break.”
I look at Juliette and back to the mound. “She would have had some kind of back up plan. Or, more likely, whoever was her puppet master would have had a back-up plan.”
“You don’t think she was in control?” Jason leads Juliette over to us. They both look, unharmed and healthy and clearly as need of contact as Ben and I. Juliette answers before I can.
“We know she needed blood to rip the magic of the Rift from you and there’s no way anyone would have left that to chance. We also don’t know how she knew that bit of magic. Chaos magic isn’t dark magic. That’s the one thing my dad taught me. We are just a conduit for more types of magic instead of one, like most witches. She had to learn from someone, which means there is another Chaos witch somewhere corrupting young witches. It would be helpful to know why. Also, I think your instincts are right. I don’t feel Eliza’s magic. That could be the Rift containing her, but like a wolf’s sense of smell, every witch’s magic has a distinct feel. We should feel something even if it’s faint.”
and Ember Mantel Productions
I look around, “Has anyone seen Brianna or Marietta? I haven’t seen them since we came in here.”
“The last I heard from one of the Coven members was that ‘they were in a safe place,’ whatever that means.” Ben shrugs.
“Not all witches get to experience the Rift. It’s not meant for everyone. Maybe they weren’t meant to have an encounter.”
“How does the Rift choose? I don’t fully understand this whole thing. And, apparently, I need to start training. My mother was a hybrid. She has magic in her blood.”
“We will get to that along with
everything else.” Ben wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me tight to him. “Can you check with the magic? We need to know if it is safe to leave and check on everyone. We have a pack and coven to rebuild and,
based on your feral thinking, a whole list of other things to see to.