“Then maybe you shouldn’t have cut me so deep,” she hissed at him.
“Just moments ago, you said I should have gone harder on you.” Alec slipped his hand up her thigh a little higher, above the wound and below the hem of her short nightdress. “If you try to make me feel guilty for training you properly, I will not wait until tomorrow to do just that.”
“I’m not the only one here who doesn’t know what they want,” she said, challenging him. “You’re so conflicted you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.”
“Watch your mouth,” he warned. “Unless you prefer I give you something else to do with it.”
Her cheeks flared red again. Adira’s stared at him, eyes wide, but he held his gaze steady. He hadn’t said what she had in mind—he’d meant he’d give her the need to use her spells—but her blush told him her thoughts had drifted to another place. Now his thoughts were wandering, too.
His hand slid a little farther up until his fingers grazed over the fabric of her underwear. Heat radiated from between her legs, and the moisture through the cloth told him she’d been waiting for this touch long before he’d considered giving it to her.
“Adira…” He shook his head. He wanted to add, We can’t do this, but the words wouldn’t come.
He couldn’t sleep with her. That would be wrong. But they’d already kissed and shared more than a few intimate touches. His finger slipped beneath her underwear and slid between her folds. Fuck, she would probably do anything he asked. And he was going to turn her in. He was starting to wonder if that really made him noble…or if it made him a monster.
She squirmed beneath his touch, and he dipped his finger inside of her. Where did he draw the line? How far could this go before it became unforgiveable? He pressed inside deeper, his heart pounding, his cock throbbing with jealousy.
It probably wouldn’t fit anyway, he told himself. Not without hurting her. And he didn’t want to hurt her. Maybe if he went slowly enough…
He shook the thought away. No.
But Adira was moaning now, and Alec’s desire was becoming painful. If he didn’t stop soon, he wouldn’t be able to. Only she would be able to stop him then, and he knew she wouldn’t. In the arena, she needed to be strong, but here…it was on him.
Clenching his jaw, he removed his hand and turned away. “You should eat,” he said as evenly as he could. “Get your strength back up. Today was hard. Tomorrow will be harder.”
The next morning, Alec woke with a start. He sprung up, nearly falling off the narrow bed, and glanced around the room. Shit.
How could this have happened? How could he have fallen asleep here?
The regent would be wondering where he was—where he’d been all last night.
His attention flashed back to the bed. Adira slept, her chest rising and falling in quiet breaths.
He’d tried to leave. He’d gone as far as the end of the drive before turning around and heading inside, back upstairs to her room. Maybe they couldn’t have what they want, but it was wrong to just walk away like that.
When he got back to her room, she was sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Sorry,” she said.
He shook his head. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. It is what it is.”
He’d laid her back down and climbed on the bed beside her, barely balancing on the sliver of mattress remaining. His plan was to stay only a little while. Just until she’d fallen asleep. He’d closed his eyes, thinking a few moments would recharge him for the hike back to the castle.
And now look what had happened.
Instinctively, he glanced toward a window to gage the time of day by the placement of the sun in the sky, but was soon reminded the cause of the room’s lack of light. Those damn boarded-up windows. He understood them well enough, but right now, they left him in the dark in more ways than one.
He switched on a bedside lamp and peered over at Adira once more, his gaze sliding down the length of her body. She’d fallen asleep on top of the sheets, and her nightgown had ridden up her hips while she slept, revealing the curve of her bottom and leaving nothing more than a shadow to hide the space between her legs.
His body responded immediately, and he forced himself to turn away. Damn her, she was even sexy when she was sleeping. It only made things harder knowing that, if he really wanted to, he could climb between her legs, kiss her awake, and she would open herself to him.
But despite the way his throbbing cock begged him to do just that, he knew he could not. She was destined to be queen. Where he once thought it only a possibility, he was now certain. The way she had fought him yesterday left no doubt. Besides, even if it wouldn’t be utterly unforgivable and immoral for him to sleep with her in that way, he needed to leave. Hours ago.
The regent might be looking for him. And he couldn’t have him looking for him while he was with a witch in hiding. If he were found here, the regent wouldn’t stop at killing Alec. He’d kill Miss Balek, too. Probably even take the female children and hold them until they were old enough to be tried as potential brides.
No, the regent wouldn’t go that far.
Would he?
Alec’s chest constricted. He wasn’t thinking straight. He never did when she was around. He’d let her shake his loyalty to Dvorak, his loyalty to protecting the sector. In the end, he could not let his emotions sway him from what needed to be done. She had eight days left. He would help her train, and then she would meet her fate.
He touched his fingers to the runic symbol he’d put on her wrist back in the alley and removed it. She wasn’t going anywhere. The least he could give her was his respect and trust instead of treating her like an animal to be tracked by some marking.
Maintaining his willpower to not look at her—not even once more—Alec left her room and shut the door behind him.
How would he survive her living under the same roof as him? If she defeated the ravager, she would be Dvorak’s bride. She would sleep down the hall from him every night.
If Adira became queen, Alec’s life would become torture.
Chapter 13
When Adira awoke, she was not surprised to find Alec gone. In fact, her only feelings of surprise were in the fact he had come back at all the night before.
Her feelings about that had been mixed. Could a person be thrilled to see someone and yet so mortified by their presence that they wished never to see that person again?
Apparently, yes.
But one thing was for sure—the attraction did not go one way. Alec just had far greater self-control than she did, and she hated him for it. Of course, there were things more important she could hate him for, but none of those mattered right now. Today, she needed to focus on her magic.
She skipped breakfast to spend the first few hours of her morning studying the spinning top. Someone, at some time, had put an enchantment on the enchanted object to block the enchantment. It had been done. Which meant it was possible, even if no one here knew how to do it.
Essentially, it must have been some kind of blocking or masking spell, because it wasn’t that the original enchantment had been removed. That was still there. When the negative charge was lifted, the positive charge shone through. Adira could see the value in that. But how much more valuable would it be if Adira could block herself?
Adira held the top in one hand while paging through the book Alec had given her in the other. The Othala witches had unimaginable power, and yet, the ravagers had still taken over the world. The Othala witches could cast enchantments that were self-sustaining…yet, they couldn’t heal things. The original sixteen had been some of the most powerful beings in all of history. And yet, it hadn’t been enough.
So where did that leave Adira?
Yes, she was the most powerful witch in Miss Balek’s home, but would that be good enough?
She closed her eyes as she studied the energy on the top once more.
Blok, maska, skrývat. Block, mask, conceal.
Would th
at work? Did she need to use her magic differently to do it? The energy was a pull instead of a push, so perhaps she needed to pull the magic in instead of out. How someone did such a thing, though, she had no idea.
Adira sighed and flopped back on the bed. This was a waste of time. The only way to test if it even worked was with the witch-tester device, and Alec wasn’t going to help her with that. Despite how he might feel, at the end of all of this, he was turning her in. And with each passing day, she started to feel like maybe he was right in doing so.
If it wasn’t her, it would be someone else until eventually it was her. Or until the Dvorak’s magic finally went kaput and the ravagers came to kill them all.
Adira sat back up, leaving the book on the bed, and spun the top once more before heading downstairs to the training room.
When she stepped inside, the room was as bustling as it was the first day. Had she dreamt of yesterday? No, of course not. She had the wounds to prove it. Today, she would just be training with a larger crowd.
Instead of the usual groups of two, everyone was sitting around one of the chalk circles. She took a seat on the floor beside Erik and Anastazie.
“What are we doing?” she whispered to Erik.
The witch boy nodded to some of the kids across the room, who sifted through a basket. “Miss Balek gathered more runes last night.”
“She what?” Adira asked, her eyebrows stitching together. “From where?”
“The outskirts. She goes every few weeks and collects the broken pieces from different areas of the sector.”
“What about the ravagers?”
Erik shrugged. “The regent stretches the magic between the good rune posts, so it’s safe. She just doesn’t get the pieces that end up on the outside.”
Adira worried at her lip, looking over at the cheerful Miss Balek. She still thought it was a bad idea. What if another rune broke, or the magic failed from being stretched too far? She shouldn’t be going to the outskirts alone.
Anastazie passed the basket to Adira. “Your turn.”
“To do what?”
“To see if they make sense to you, duh.”
Oh, so that was what they were doing. “Okay, so it’s like a puzzle,” she said, but when she looked down into the basket, she saw that all the stones were broken perfectly in half. “That’s weird.”
Erik leaned into her, peering over her shoulder. “What is?”
She held a half-stone in each hand. “Don’t you think if they crumbled or broke naturally, they wouldn’t be so perfectly split in half?”
The witch boy rubbed his hand against the scruff on his chin, reminding Adira that he wasn’t exactly a boy. “I never thought about it like that.”
Adira tossed the pieces back into the basket, but as Erik reached to take it away, she snatched his wrist to stop him. “Wait a minute.”
He lowered the collection back down, and she lifted out one of the pieces.
“I know this one.”
“What do you mean—?”
“Miss Balek,” Adira called. “Can you come here a minute?”
The old woman circled to where she was sitting, and Adira stood to greet her. “Are these all the pieces you have, or just the ones from last night?”
“Last night,” she said. “Why?”
“When you find the pieces, are they together?”
Miss Balek nodded. “I see where you’re going with this. Let me get you the other baskets.”
Adira took the collection she had over to a long table on the side of the room and spread out the broken runes.
Erik came up behind her. “What’s going on?”
Adira started spreading the pieces out and facing the markings up. “It’s too perfect. And then it doesn’t work. See?” she asked, lining the runes up. “All of them could fit together, but none of them line up.”
“So?”
“So…the rune posts are each at least a yard apart. Miss Balek would know when collecting them which ones go together. And yet, no one has ever been able to line any up in any of these baskets.”
Miss Balek arrived at the table with a few baskets stacked into one another. “This is everything we have,” she said, setting them down. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Adira laid out the additional rune pieces the same as the other ones and assessed them. “Erik, has anyone been able to line any of these up before?”
“Maybe once or twice, but no one has been able to repair them.”
Adira pursed her lips. “The regent can’t repair them, either. Is that why we’re doing this?”
“I guess… Why? Do you think you can repair them?”
One of the rune pieces stood out to her. There was something familiar about the pattern. She’d seen it before…somewhere.
On Alec.
That was the mark placed on all the witch hunters.
She picked up the piece and showed it to Anastazie. “Think you can find another one that looks like this?”
The little girl nodded.
“Lots of lines, more than most of the other pieces have, okay?”
While the girl sifted through, Adira turned a few other runes over in her hand. This was intentional. Someone didn’t want these runes to be repaired.
Anastazie bounded back over to Adira. “I found it! I found it!”
She took the stone from the girl’s hand, looked it over, and then smiled. “Excellent work. Let’s see what we can do with this.”
Turning back to the table, Adira picked up the first familiar piece again and held the two stones together. The markings lined up. That was a start, and enough of a breakthrough for everyone huddled around to gasp.
Erik placed his hand on her forearm. “You can do this, Adira.”
She focused all of her energy on the line dividing the two pieces in her hand. “Opravit.”
The stone edges began to erode and blur, mending back together until it was one piece. This time, Adira gasped. Before coming to Miss Balek’s home, she’d only used spells she’d practiced in private for months, and none of them had ever come to her on the first try with such ease. This was surreal.
Something rumbled behind her, followed by a loud screeching that shook the ground. She spun around. On the other side of the room, one of the plows had reanimated and was now dragging its iron moldboard across the concrete.
“Oh, wow,” Erik whispered from beside her. “Now what?”
Miss Balek came up beside them. “Now someone needs to stop it before it puts a hole in my wall.”
Adira shook her hands at her side, trying to clear her mind. So some of these runes weren’t just runes that protected the sector. Some of them powered objects, which would explain why nothing else anyone had done had reactivated that plow until now. But she wasn’t about to destroy the rune if she didn’t have to.
This was the purpose for negative spells.
Suddenly, it made sense. The Othala witches had cast enchantments for objects to power themselves. Then some objects had been given negative spells to keep them on hold until they were needed.
Adira still didn’t know how to do that. She could only guess. The object needed a pull. She just needed to direct her magic differently. Normally, her magic was explosive. This time, it needed to be concise. She needed to confine the space, create a vacuum.
Her dad had taught her about that when she was little, though she hadn’t realized at the time it could ever pertain to magic. Still, it was the only way she knew to create negative energy.
Stalking closer to the crawling machine, Adira braced herself and focused her energy through an imagined tunnel. “Blok.”
It didn’t come out sounding very confident. And it didn’t work. Either because she just wasn’t capable, she did it wrong, or she’d used the wrong word. She didn’t know. There were too many variables. But the plow was approaching the other side of the room, and Adira needed to stop it before it took the house down.
“Maska,” she said more confidently, foc
using to mask the enchantment and funnel it into a negative energy.
Still, nothing. The plow was barely a few feet from the wall now. Adira stood in its path and held out both her arms, creating a tunnel with her hands. This had to work.
“Skrývat,” she said.
The plow didn’t stop. Adira didn’t move.
“Try again,” said an older male witch. Jedrick was his name, if she recalled, though they’d not spoken much before.
Somehow, that was more motivating. He barely knew her and still thought she could do this.
She tried again, putting all of her confidence and energy into it. “Blok! Maska! Skrývat!”
Finally, the plow slowed, coming to a halt just as it pressed against her toes. She let out a slow breath, feeling as though she might faint, while the rest of the room cheered.
Against all odds, Adira had figured out the most useful piece of magic she could ever use to protect herself—the ability to conceal it.
It was an exciting development for Miss Balek’s home for witches. Things had been accomplished today that had never been before. Accomplishments that solidified Adira’s worst fear.
She really was destined to be the regent’s queen.
Over the next week, Adira trained harder than ever before. Accepting her fate gave her the motivation she needed to follow through. She even used the helichrysum and rosehip seed on her wounds to be sure her injuries would be as healed as possible before she had to face the ravager. Alec followed through as promised, first bringing her a satchel of items from her home, and also in making each day of training more severe than the one before.
The ups and downs of their relationship, if one could call it that, leveled off. He still refrained from sleeping with her, but when they were together, he was with her. He tortured her with his kisses, teased her with his touch, and, when she trained well, rewarded her with some of the most pleasurable sensations she had ever felt in her life.
Still, Adira wanted more.
She closed the door when he followed her up from training on the twelfth day and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Tomorrow is the last day,” she said quietly. “Then what we have is gone.”
Origin: an Adult Paranormal Witch Romance: Othala Witch Collection (Sector 1) Page 10