Thirty Minutes to Heartbreak Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Nadia Scrieva

  “So are you going to stop talking and staring and start fighting?” Vincent prompted with an animalistic snarl. He clenched his hands into fists at his sides.

  “Yes,” she said happily. “I’m actually honored to fight you, Vincent.”

  “Hmph,” said Vincent as he dusted off his armor. The girl was far too respectful and polite—he was trying to be angry with her, but she seemed like a noble fighter. He had contemplated accidentally killing her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so if she behaved so honorably. She reminds me of Kaden Burnson.

  Para’s eyes narrowed as she focused on Vincent's wavelengths of thought. She heard him compare her to her grandfather, and her smile grew. She knew that she would hear every single thought of his, and anticipate his every attack. The gifts passed down from his own bloodline would help her to defeat him.

  “Ascend to your maximum,” demanded Vincent. “Do it now.”

  “My maximum?” she asked huskily as a thrill went through her. She could not resist the opportunity. The future was her alibi. She had the fusion-holding jewelry on. She was invincible. She reached up and ran her hands through her hair, dislodging any stray pins that remained from her former hairstyle. A few more strands of hair tumbled down her back and cascaded down to her knees.

  “Stop stalling. I’ll give you ten minutes to gather enough energy to fight me,” said Vincent, crossing his arms impatiently. “I won’t wait any longer.”

  “How generous,” responded Para, “but I only need three seconds.”

  She held up her hand and walked forward to him slowly, counting on her fingers.

  “One.”

  She raised her index finger and assumed Ruby Form as she took a step forward, causing gasps from around the room.

  “Two.”

  She took another step forward, raising a second finger, and assuming Silver Form. Exclamations of disbelief were heard. She thought she might die from the rush it gave her, the natural high.

  “Three!”

  She held up a third finger before clenching her fist and exhaling evenly as her hair grew out and pooled around itself on the ground. Parts of her dress ripped open as her muscles bulged, but it held together just enough to stay on. Her prana levels exploded as she laughed ecstatically.

  She had finally gotten to show her family her Golden Form achievement. And their expressions were priceless. Three seconds before the transformation occurred they had not known whether or not she was a deva at all. It was rich! In Gordin’s arms, the little baby Oren woke up from where he had been peacefully sleeping through the fight. Oren began to scream and bawl. Gordin rocked his son gently, knowing that Oren had sensed the unfamiliar girl’s power.

  “Shit,” said Raymond.

  Para blinked in surprise to hear her father swear, and wagged one of her fingers. “Tsk, tsk. Raymond, I thought you never swore.”

  “You’re a deva!” exclaimed Asher in awe. “But I thought you said your family was from England!”

  “Good Sakra,” Thornton was saying softly. “Good Sakra.”

  “Her new pair of shoes just disintegrated,” Amelia pointed out.

  Vincent, however, had been rendered speechless. He was flabbergasted. He had expected power, but this girl—this young girl had achieved the transformation it had taken him a lifetime to achieve, and she had transformed in seconds! Without seeming to be affected by the energy output! He had never seen a female use Golden Form before, and he was thunderstruck.

  “Impossible,” he said simply.

  “And yet here I am,” she answered, walking forward and standing before him brazenly. The power rushed through her veins, and she wanted to scream. She needed to unleash it. “Fight me, Vincent! Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Vincent studied the dark blazes in her eyes. He had not expected this. He didn’t know why anything should surprise him any longer. Having spent several minutes sensing the depths of her energy, he lowered his head. He ran a hand through his pure white hair. “Girl, from how far in the future are you?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Are you my descendant? Are you a descendant of the Fire Deva?”

  “I can’t tell you that!” she said with a frown.

  “You must be one of ours,” Vincent said, shaking his head. “The other, lesser devas do not train their children from birth as intensely as we do.”

  “Why are we talking so much?” Para asked. “I assumed Golden Form because you requested it. You wanted a fight, and I have a whole lot of energy I would like to use for the divine purpose of kicking your ass. Work with me, here!”

  Vincent studied her carefully. “If you’re this powerful you must be the daughter of Thorn and Pax.”

  Para felt her face instantly flush with heat at the thought of having a child with Thornton. She twitched and stuttered. “What? I—I...”

  Everyone in the room misunderstood her stutter, and took it for fact.

  “Shit,” said Raymond again.

  “Sakra,” said Amelia quietly.

  “Yes!” shouted Rose, dancing around cheerfully. “Who wants some champagne?”

  “No!” Thornton shouted. “No way! That’s disgusting, I’ve been dating her! I couldn’t possibly be her father! Tell them, Medea!”

  Para was still flushed at the accusation. “Nice try, Vincent. I’m not revealing any more information about myself.” She flicked her hair behind her impatiently, hitting the ground like a massive stone whip, and causing a dent in the ballroom floor. “Are we going to fight or not?” Her anger was mounting. Her energy was causing her whole body to shake. I need this fight, Para thought. I need something I can control.

  “No,” said Vincent, relaxing and returning to his regular state abruptly. “I have seen what I needed to see.”

  “What? Do not do this to me!” Para shouted desperately. Energy cackled around her in tiny lightning bolts. “You asked me to gather my energy and fight with you! I can’t stop now. I have to fight. I need to fight. Please!”

  Vincent stared at her then, for the first time actually seeing the condition that she was in. He saw the bruises on her skin—although her skin was now stretched over her engorged muscles. He saw the horrible handprint-shaped bruise on her neck. He realized that none of his attacks had done much damage to her, other than giving her a bloody nose. Most of her injuries had occurred before this battle. In the hours that she had been gone from the planet, she had been through some kind of horrible mutilation. The others had tried to tell him this, but he had been so absorbed in his own curiosity that he had been unable to listen. The girl had encountered the most powerful man in the whole universe, someone far stronger than Vincent, and he had evidently been extremely abusive to her. She had just returned from hell. He remembered what that was like.

  And now she wanted to take it out on him. If she fought with him now, she would not be fighting for sport—it would be for vengeance on the one who had wronged her. She would be imagining someone other than Vincent at the end of her attacks. It would be the energy of pure emotion driving her, not her physical skill. She would be unable to fully exercise her physical skill. Although she was being respectful, he could see the fire of hurt in her eyes. Controlled hurt and channeled rage.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I cannot engage in battle with you while you are in this condition.”

  “Why the hell not, Vincent? Do not deny me this! You started it! What kind of unfair and unusual torture are you trying to put me through?”

  “If we were to fight now, you would win. Consider my withdrawal as surrender.”

  “Surrender?” she whispered.

  “Something very malignant has just occurred, and you are in a heightened state of emotional disturbance,” Vincent explained. He wanted to say psychosis, or lunacy, but he did not think he should venture that far. “You are in the prime condition for battle. You would destroy me, unless you made any kind of foolish mistake. I might have to wait hours, or even days for you to slip up—and judging by
your level of focus, I don’t think you would.”

  “Please,” she said brokenly. “No, I’m fine—very calm, really.” She urged herself to just fly at him and begin the fight, but she felt somehow rooted to her position. The experience with Zvarin had sucked the aggression out of her. She had power within her, but she was too afraid to use it. She knew that she could use it in self-defense now that she had decided to do so, but she needed to be attacked in order to bring out her ferocity. She did not know why she could not initiate the combat.

  “It is no longer important for us to fight,” Vincent admitted. “You’re more powerful than I imagined. We would be deadlocked in combat for far too long, and that is not essential right now. You have given me the information that I needed about your capacities. I know how difficult it would be to hurt you. I have a vague idea of how strong the person who hurt you like this must have been. Now, it is important that you tell me everything you can about the man who fought you tonight. Tell me about him, and tell me about what he does in the future.”

  Para shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered, struggling to hold on to her composure. “I can’t think about that right now. I prepared myself for the fight you requested. I think I deserve for you to finish what you started. This isn’t fair to me, Vincent. Please attack me.”

  “No.”

  Panic began to grow inside her chest. She didn’t know what she would do with herself if this fight was taken away from her. She would fall apart. “We could make it interesting. I could only use my hair,” Para suggested. She used her snakelike coil of hair to whip out at the floor just in front of Vincent, causing a large crack to form in the ground between his legs. She saw that Vincent was surprised by her control of her long, golden hair, and she smiled. “I have many more cool tricks to show you. Aren’t you tempted to continue the fight?”

  “No. Relax yourself, girl,” he commanded.

  Para suddenly realized that Vincent was ordering her around in much the same manner that Zvarin had. The kind undertone of his voice completely slipped past her. She had obeyed his instruction to gather her energies to the surface because he had goaded her into it with a beating and taunting. Now she had been issued another order. She was his puppet.

  It didn’t matter how powerful she was. She was helpless. Vincent had pretty much stated that she was almost just as strong as he was, and yet she did not feel satisfied to have his respect or recognition—the things she had sought from this man for both of her entire lives. What did it matter how powerful she was? She was still his subject to order around, just as Zvarin had done. Force field or no force field, she did not belong to herself. She was a minion. A pathetic little girl; the pawn of these men of royalty. She had achieved Golden Form, pushing herself to the limit over and over to manage it, but still, it meant nothing.

  Para had not realized that she had relaxed with these thoughts, and fallen to her knees. As the divine ancestral energy of Golden Form slipped away, the otherworldly glow of her soul disappeared, and along with it, several significant morsels of her sanity. “Yes, King Vincent. I have dutifully obeyed you,” she said scathingly from her position on the ground. Her body began to shake again. When the power had drained from her, it had taken everything in her along with it. Including her purpose. Including the glue which had been holding the fragile pieces of her heart together.

  Para learned that even as a single, unified being, it was still possible to feel fragmented and torn apart. Even as a super-powered alliance, she could still feel defeated and helpless. She looked up at her father through tearful eyes. “What else would you like me to do? Scrub your shoes? Would you like me to dance for you? Sing a song? I must warn you, I have troubles with pitch and staying on key.”

  Vincent sighed, seeing the state that she was in. He could see her losing her grip on reality because of whatever trauma she had experienced. He had known trauma, and he knew exactly what kind of dark place she was in. As he stared at her small hunched form, he felt pity rise in him. The girl had treated him with respect, and he had hurt her. He knew by instinct that whatever his relationship in the future was to this girl, they had some connection. She was something to him. He decided that she deserved something of an apology.

  “Girl, forgive me for hounding you. I just needed to know,” Vincent said, almost gently. Gently for him.

  “Wonderful. Now you know. Do I get a fucking cookie?” Para’s voice box was so crushed from Zvarin’s strangling that she was beginning to lose her voice altogether. Parts of her sentences were completely inaudible, and her curse word was even naturally censored by her damaged larynx.

  “Little ears can hear you,” Layla reminded her from across the room quietly. Seeing that the statement went directly over her head, Layla frowned. She turned to Thornton with an angry glare. “Are you going to get over there and console your girlfriend?”

  “My girlfr—” Thornton sucked in a breath, his chest expanding. The whole situation had just been one shock after another. He couldn’t believe that the woman he had been intimate with—the kind sweet woman he had grown to care for—was a deva with more power than he himself had. He’d had sex with a woman and he hadn’t even known that she was a deva. Not just any deva, but one that could achieve level Golden Form. Even he could not manage such a feat.

  “Thorn,” Rose said softly, snapping him out of his daze. He nodded, and following Layla and his mother’s urging, moved over to the shaking girl with the gruesome bruises.

  He crouched down beside her, and placed his hand on her back gently. He tried to think of something to say. “Gee, Medea. I think I probably should have taken out insurance on that dress or something. I guess there are just some days that you oughtta wear armor instead of a crystal-encrusted ball gown, but who can tell these things in advance, right?”

  Para turned to stare blankly at Thornton, hardly registering who he was. She blinked at him for several moments before looking down at herself. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “No, no, no. The crystals are all gone. My beautiful dress is ruined.”

  “It’s not a big deal. Don’t worry—we’ll just get you a new one,” Thornton assured her.

  Para had begun to claw at her dress desperately, her nails raking at the shards of fabric stretched across her stomach. She began to mumble in a low voice that no one could hear. Even Thornton could barely pick up pieces of her soft speech, with her failing voice box.

  “No—there are holes everywhere. Bullet holes… fire holes… all destroyed. The dress... everything in it. All that I can do... isn’t anything. Thorn... why did you... why did you ever... I need to sleep. Thorn... just... bury me, please... in this dress. Bury me... so I can sleep.”

  “Medea?” he asked, in confusion and concern.

  Para placed her head in her hands.

  She remembered that the gown was supposed to have been her wedding dress to Asher. It was another stab in the heart of the feeble remains of their relationship. She had lost Asher forever. She had lost Thornton forever. She felt even further away from her family now that she was in the same room as them. The universe had wedged itself directly between her and her loved ones. That same universe was expanding at a rate of millions of miles per second, and she could feel it. She could feel the dark expanses building.

  She felt so far away from herself. The truth was that the vast vacuum had cleaved her in half somehow. Even though she was made up of two merged girls who cared for each other deeply, she felt like she couldn’t grasp the ghosts of who she used to be. She was disappearing.

  Thornton stared at her, knowing that she was in pain. He didn’t quite understand why, or what had happened to her, but he could see that her body was extremely injured. He wanted to comfort her, but he felt hesitant doing so in front of all of his family and friends. He felt hesitant doing so at all, not knowing who she was, or why she had lied to him. He decided to take a chance on his heart and his intuition. Slipping his arms around her, he pulled her head against his chest and held her. He reste
d his chin on her head and just held her close for a moment.

  Para didn’t quite notice at first, but eventually his scent worked its way into her senses. She was inhaling the scent of the man she loved, and she could feel his arms around her, infusing her with his strength. She heard the beat of his heart through his chest. A normal human heartbeat, she thought to herself, filling with elation. I’m home. I’m really at home. I’m in his arms. This is my favorite place in the universe. She turned into his chest and buried her face into his warmth. This is where I belong. This is the safest place for me.

  Her eyes snapped open, and she pulled away from Thornton abruptly. No. It’s not safe at all. He cheated on me. I loved him and he cheated on me. How could I forget that? I’m not safe anywhere. Men are there for hurting and pain. Fathers, brothers, uncles, lovers, and kings—they’re all there just to hurt me. It’s okay. I can deal with it. I can just run away from here. I can go to sleep.

  Just then, a thought belonging to Thornton seeped into her mind through her telepathy: Who is she? She looks at me with such passion. It’s unsettling, because I feel like I should know her. How can I trust her or love her if I don’t know who she is?

  Who am I? she thought to herself. Good question. I hardly know yet. I guess we’ll find out.

  “Thanks,” she said, suddenly using a professional tone as she pulled herself off the ground. “I was just a bit sore, that’s all. Your dad beat me up pretty good.”

  Thornton looked at her doubtfully as she tried to sound chipper and cool after obviously having gone through a very emotional experience.

  Vincent grunted. “Sure, girl. Who do you think you are fooling?”

  “You may have broken a few of my ribs,” Para said with forced jauntiness, “along with my nose. Like seriously, ouch.”

  “I can only hope that you are my descendant,” Vincent grumbled, “and I hope that the kids will stop their petty squabbles and get around to creating you. I’m not getting any younger.” Vincent moved closer to Para, staring into her eyes curiously. “Tell me, are you Amara’s child? Come to think of it, you do remind me of my daughter. Are you my daughter’s daughter?”