I let out a mental exhale of relief.
A police siren shot out in the distance, a blaring sound in the quiet alley full of rain and death.
“Shit.” That was the huntress. “Shit, shit, shit. The police are coming, and we’ve just killed someone. Someone must have heard the shots. Oh, shit. What if someone saw us? Shit, shit, shit.”
Rebecca’s voice went razor sharp. “I thought you had the blessing of the crown to kill her.”
“We have no such thing. Why do you think we’re hiding out in a warehouse in the East End? We’re supposed to be guarding the witches in the castle, but we’re under strict orders not to kill anyone.”
“Well.” Rebecca let out a low chuckle. “Looks like you’re fucking screwed then.”
“We need to dump her body in the river,” the huntress said in a whisper. “It’s raining so hard that there won’t be any blood here. No evidence, no problem.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” The first sign of panic in Rebecca’s voice.
But I had been expecting this. I’d never been taught to swim, and the grungy water of the Thames terrified me. But the only way to truly convince the huntress of my brutal death was if the body didn’t mysteriously disappear from the alley. I needed to be dumped into the Thames.
I just had to hope that Rebecca wouldn’t interfere. So far, she’d played her part perfectly.
Cold, slick hands grabbed my arms and tugged me down the alley, but I barely moved an inch. The huntress grunted and pulled me another inch. She gasped. Let go. The blaring sirens grew even louder.
“Please help me.” Her voice was timid now. “She’s too heavy for me to move on my own.
“Why should I?” Rebecca snapped. “You’ve just murdered an innocent girl in order to destroy magic. My magic. Frankly, I wouldn’t be devastated if you spent the rest of your life rotting in prison.”
Come on, Rebecca. Just go along with it.
A pause. “I thought you wanted your powers to end. You said they were destroying your soul. Corrupting you.”
“Yeah, well. I’m not so corrupted that I can’t see murder is wrong.” A heavy sigh. “But I guess I need to finish this, don’t I?”
That last bit was for me, I was certain of it.
Together, they hauled me off the ground and carried me to the edge of the river. They lowered me back onto the rain-slicked pavement, the sirens so loud now that they had to be a mere half a block away. What I would give to see the look on the huntress’s face when the police arrived, when she tried to explain what had happened here this night.
But this had to be finished. They must think I was dead. As long as they did, they would cease their frantic searches for witches, they would stop seeking the silver-haired girl. It would give me time to train up my powers. It would give us time to build our own army.
Hands pushed my body, and air rushed into my face as my body hurtled toward the river. Water slammed into me. My lungs squeezed tight. The river surrounded me as my body sunk fast, as the rush of the water filled my nose. I clenched my jaw and held my breath, forcing my body not to react.
Because if the huntress was looking, she could not see a bucking, thrashing, living body. She had to see someone who had taken her very last breath.
Blackness surrounded me. And then I went down, down down…
Chapter 32
A half-mile down the river, I finally surfaced. My lungs burned and my chest ached, but I was alive. Alive and free, thanks to the Queen’s necklace. But even though I was fine, I was chilled to the bone. My muscles ached from where I’d kicked my legs, forcing my body to keep moving for as long as I could. I hadn’t swam so much as I’d thrashed.
Gasping for breath, I clung onto the side of the bank, fingers sunk into the dirt. I twisted my head around to see where I’d ended up. But I didn’t know London. And at this late of an hour, every building around me was dark. Where the hell are they?
“There you are.” Eli landed on the bank a moment later, Sebastian just behind him. He grasped my arms and hauled me out of the river, draping his wings around my trembling body. But it did nothing to keep me warm. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
“What about the others?” I asked through chattering teeth. “Marcus? Jasper? Silas?”
“Queen Selene got them out of the dungeons. They wanted to come with us to find you, but we thought it would be easier to remain undetected if there were only two of us. The police are swarming the banks.” He rubbed my wet skin, his hands grazing my shoulders, my elbows, and my wrists. “Ro, what the hell happened? Sebastian said that you—”
He cut himself off, clearly unable to voice the words aloud.
“I faked my death,” I whispered, blearily staring up into his forest green eyes. “Well, I didn’t so much as fake it as let the huntress think she’d killed me.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.” His voice was tight. “You could have gotten hurt. You could have really died.”
“Not with this necklace, I couldn’t.” I reached up to touch the moon pendant, but found nothing more than air. “Shit. Where is it?”
I smoothed down my shirt, sliding my hands over the stained red from the fake blood. But there was no necklace. Not around my neck, not on the ground, and nowhere I could see in the river from here.
This was…not good, to say the least. Not only did that pendant protect me from my sword, which I still very much did not have in my possession, but the Queen would probably kill me for losing it.
“Listen, we’ll worry about that later,” Eli said when my shivers ramped up another notch, so much that I could barely think, let alone speak. “We need to get you somewhere safe and warm. It’s time to take you home.”
Home.
The number of inhabitants in the City of Wings had multiplied. Kipling had grudgingly agreed to give Sebastian a room off of the Scriptorium, despite Silas’s repeated grumbling about the situation. The witches who had escaped from the hunters also joined us. Dreadford Castle still squatted eerily in the middle of London, and there was no way to move it unless we sent a request to the sun mages to help us. And, if we did that, the hunters would quickly realize that magic wasn’t gone from the world after all.
In fact, I was pretty certain we had a very small window of opportunity. Six months, maybe, before someone caught on to what had happened at the warehouse.
But that was six months in which I could hone my powers. Just as long as I could get my sword.
The huntress who had “killed” me had been arrested. And the human police had taken my sword as evidence. It was currently locked away in Scotland Yard somewhere. As soon as we had a plan, we’d make a move to get it back. Standing on the cliffs looking out across the sea, I knew we’d only put a pause on the inevitable battle for magic.
“Ro?” Jasper’s deep voice called out from behind me. “You mind if I join you?”
I turned toward him, my silver hair whipping in the breeze. “Of course not. I was just thinking about what comes next.”
“The impossible Scotland Yard break-in,” he muttered, crossing his arms and clenching his jaw. Our forces were split on the whole plan. Eli and Marcus were strangely excited about plotting the heist while Jasper and Silas were broody about it. Sebastian was…well, he’d vowed to sit this one out. Said there was nothing to be gained from it. But he’d been at every meeting so far, despite the fact I wished he’d leave us the hell alone. Even though he’d helped me in the end, I couldn’t forget what he’d done.
“Not that in particular.” I sucked in a breath, filling my lungs with the fresh salty air. “We have a big battle ahead of us. Luckily, this time, we’ll be one step ahead.”
A long pause. “Do you remember how you made me swear to never rush into a fight half-cocked?”
“Of course,” I said. “I believe the conversation happened right here on this very cliff.”
“Well, I’m going to need you to make the same promise to me.” He
turned toward me, took my hands in his, and pressed them to his chest. Underneath my fingertips, I could feel the ripple of his chiseled muscles and the shimmer of his impossible power. It lit a fire inside me, one I was desperately trying to douse. “Never again, Ro. What you did was dangerous. Careless. And it was for what? To stop them coming at us for a few months? Until some idiot accidentally reveals that magic still exists?”
“Yes. Because as much as it pains me to admit, Sebastian was right. There are hundreds of those hunters now. And there was no way I could take them all down by myself. Not yet anyway. We need to grow our own army, one that the hunters can never defeat. That takes time. Time we now have.”
“Hmph,” he merely said.
“It worked, didn’t it?” I asked, staring up into his golden eyes. “They’ve stopped hunting witches.”
“For now.” He dropped his forehead to mine, and my entire body tensed. The stone and mist scent of him filled my head, intoxicating me, tempting me, making me yearn for something more than what he wanted to give. “Just promise me. You’ll never do something like that again. Your life is too important.”
“Because I’m the only protector of magic left, right? Well, what use is a protector who hides away in a stone city?”
“No, not because you’re the last protector.” He almost growled with the intensity of his words. “Because I…Ro, I…” His eyes closed, and he licked his lips. “Just promise me, Ro. For the love of the goddess, please.”
“Okay,” I said, heart flickering at his words. What had he almost said just then? “I won’t do something like that again.”
He breathed a sigh of relief, his hands tightening around mine.
But my words were a lie. I was the last remaining protector of magic. A demigod. A warrior. The call of that power sang in my blood. And I would answer it.
Thanks so much for reading the first volume in Rowena’s adventure with her stone guardians. CARVED IN STONE, book 2, will be released on January 26th and is available for preorder on Amazon now. Just click here to grab your copy.
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About the Author
Jenna Wolfhart is a Buffy-wannabe who lives vicariously through the kick-ass heroines in urban fantasy. After completing a PhD in Librarianship, she became a full-time author and now spends her days typing the fantastical stories in her head. When she's not writing, she loves to stargaze, binge Netflix, and drink copious amounts of coffee.
Born and raised in America, Jenna now lives in England with her husband, her dog, and her four ratties.
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