DESECRATION, Serial: Part 1 of 3 (Book One of The Wizard Queen at Sixteen Series)
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Izzy jumped up, ran over, and wrapped me in a big bear hug. “Did you survive?”
“Yes, and there won’t be any betrothal to Bart.”
“Hey!” Izzy patted my shoulder. “That’s absolutely fantabulous!”
“But Zarius is in there telling my father that I’m having some kind of illicit relationship with Rory.”
Izzy wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Well, are you?”
“Izzy!” I whacked her shoulder. “Of course not.”
“Sorry.” She snickered. “I was curious. Let me rephrase that—your brother is a total troll-butt,” Izzy said in a hoarse whisper. “So, anything else with your dad?”
“Yes,” I whispered back. “He’s calling in a seeker to see why Cheeva chose me.”
Izzy slapped a hand over her mouth, her eyebrows shooting up. “No!” The shout was barely muffled by her hand.
“We have to be quiet, Izzy!” I whisper-shouted.
She nodded her head in spastic agreement. “Hey, at least it isn’t like it was a couple of hundred years ago when the Nostradamus keep had seekers running around all over the place.”
“There is that,” I agreed.
The more I thought about Zarius in there with my father, the more furious I got. Right now I felt more powerless than I ever had before, and I supposedly possessed super-strong magic inside me. I needed protection from him. I needed to be equipped with the knowledge to defend myself.
I needed a translation amulet!
“Izzy, you want to do something really stupid and dangerous?”
“You bet,” she said, without even a second’s hesitation.
“That’s why I love you. You’re my own personal Don Quixote!” I started walking.
“Not sure if that was a compliment,” Izzy said, following me. “But what is our mission, since I’ve already decided to accept it?”
“We’re running up to Zarius’ room to steal a translation amulet.”
Izzy halted mid-step. “Um, Addie, there’s getting a backbone and then there’s reckless abandon. I didn’t mean I wanted you to concoct a spur-of-the-moment, harebrained scheme destined to fail.”
I turned and jogged toward my immediate family’s bedchambers. Cheeva paused, but then followed after me.
I glanced back at Izzy and mouthed, “Are you coming or not?”
She shook her head, rolled her eyes, and with a huge sigh, jogged after me.
CHAPTER 14
Spiteful Maneuverings
As we stood outside Zarius’ bedroom door, fear momentarily paralyzed me. Izzy was right. Charging forward with this foolhardy escapade reeked of more than recklessness. It was pure crazy.
But damn it! After years of putting up with Zarius, and especially his spiteful maneuverings yesterday and today, I needed to control something! Anything! Even if it was my own temporary insanity.
“Do you think it’s safe to open his door?” Izzy whispered.
“No,” I replied.
To which Izzy shot me an impatient look, crossing her arms over her chest.
I shouldn’t have dragged Izzy into this. It wasn’t fair. “Izz, why don’t you go home and leave this to me. I had no right to pull you into this.”
“Forget that,” she blurted. “If you’re doing it, then I’m doing it, too.”
I could tell Izzy wasn’t budging. “Then we better do it fast,” I said. “I’m counting on the fact that my brother believes that no one else in the world would dare mess with him.”
“You’re probably right about that,” she said, but she didn’t take the next step.
I reached for the doorknob and waited a couple of seconds. Nothing happened. I opened the door and paused for another few heartbeats, but still nothing happened.
Izzy ran into the room. “We’ve got to hurry. He could be finished talking to your dad by now.”
We both ran to Zarius’ desk and started rifling through the drawers. She took one side and I took the other.
“What does it look like?” Izzy asked.
“I have no idea! I guess it looks like an amulet.”
“You really put a lot of planning into this, Addie,” Izzy said with a huff. Her searching became as frantic as my own.
I could hear my heart pounding in my ears and I started to hyperventilate. “It’s got to be here somewhere!” I didn’t even try to whisper this time. “Where, where, where?” I ran trembling hands through my hair. Calm down and think, Addie. Where would I be if I were Zarius’ translation amulet?
“His pants!”
Izzy shot me an incredulous grimace, like I had finally and officially lost it.
“The pants he wore to school yesterday,” I explained as I ran full out to his closet.
The maid hadn’t been here yet and sure enough, there were uniforms in his clothes hamper. Still, panic threatened to overcome me. Absolutely sure Zarius would show at any second, I almost yelled to Izzy that we needed to escape. But instead I searched through his pockets with shaking hands.
My fingers wound around a cold metal object about the size of a pocket watch. Had I really found it? I pulled it out and studied the intricately carved amulet.
This had to be it! FINALLY!
“I found it!” I called as I ran back into the bedroom, where Izzy had continued her search. I thrust the amulet upward in a victory wave.
Izzy turned wide, panicked eyes on me. I swiveled to face the closed bedroom door and listened. Over the low rumbling of Cheeva’s growl, I heard the sound of a ferret chattering before the squeak of the door knob turning.
Then, the door opened.
My heart slammed against my ribcage.
Fleetingly, I wondered if a sixteen-year-old could have a heart attack. I’d put my heart through a lot in the last twenty-four hours.
Zarius’ entrance had happened in less than a second. I didn’t even think to hide the amulet. I just stood there like I was facing a firing squad and there wasn’t any way out.
There wasn’t any way out.
We’d been caught red-handed and it was all my fault.
Izzy and I would be retrained. Images of Lucia Amador’s vacant eyes flashed in my mind. I gulped hard.
“What the hell!” Zarius blinked once, twice, and shook his head in total astonishment. His gaze darted from my guilty face to Izzy’s guilty face, to the amulet in my hand.
“Hey there.” I gave Zarius an awkward half-smile, half-grimace with a mini-finger wave. Hey there? Really?
Clearly, I didn’t think well under pressure.
“What are you doing in my room?” He scanned his room. From the looks of things, it was safe to say we’d ransacked it. He shook his head one more time and stared at the contents of my hand. “That’s my amulet.”
Izzy shot me a look that said your brother is a real mental giant. But I knew the truth. He wasn’t stupid—just shocked. He’d be over that soon enough.
And I so hated being right.
A malicious smile slowly turned up the sides of my brother’s thin lips. Nonchalantly, he stroked back wispy hanks of his hair behind his ears. Even his ferret stopped chattering. “I don’t even know if I need to understand why you broke into my room to steal my translation amulet. The simple fact is that you did. I think that’s quite enough.” If possible, his vindictive smile grew wider. He enjoyed torturing us just like he enjoyed torturing anyone he had power over.
“A friend needed it,” Izzy blurted out.
Zarius only chuckled. As if he had all the time in the world, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He then proceeded to repeatedly rap his fingernails against the back of the case, relishing the clicking sound as if it were an instrument of torture.
Which it was.
Zarius narrowed his eyes at Izzy. “Looks like that someday has come a lot sooner than I thought it would, Isadora Van Horn.”
In that instant, Izzy’s expression transformed from terrified to enraged. A smile mirroring Zarius’ curved her lips. In an obvious attempt to one-up
him, she arched a single, perfectly-shaped red eyebrow.
His smirk faltered, but then resumed almost as quickly. “What, Isadora? Do you really think you can concoct some story that will make all of this go away?” He motioned toward the mess in his room and then resumed his confident sneer. “I think not,” he gloated in a parody of politesse, as if they were playing a game of chess and it was her move, but he had his checkmate ready.
“Well, since you asked so nicely, Zarius. Why, yes, I think I do,” Izzy said demurely.
“And what would that be?” Zarius opened and closed his fingers in a bring-it-on gesture.
I glanced back and forth between them. I couldn’t imagine there was any possible way to talk us out of this mess. I had no bribe that would sway my brother, nothing I could exchange for his silence. I didn’t even have any sibling blackmail stories to tell my father. Zarius was too careful for that.
Izzy patted one slender finger against her lips repeatedly, but Zarius just waited patiently like a mountain lion waiting for a rabbit to emerge from its winter burrow.
“Well,” Izzy began calmly, “thank goodness Addie happened along when she did. I let you trick me into following you to this part of the keep. Then, you pushed me into your room and proceeded to have your way with me. Addie came along and stopped you just in the nick of time.”
My mouth dropped open in unadulterated disbelief.
THIS IS THE END OF
PART ONE OF… DESECRATION.
To find out what happens to Addie, and her friends, please purchase Part Two of DESECRATION, Book One of the Wizard Queen at Sixteen Series.
Below, please find an excerpt
from Part Two of DESECRATION:
Part Two Excerpt…
SSCHHHRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEESCCHHHH!
An unearthly hissing shriek passed over my head, followed by the THWOP of immense wings pushing gusts of air down. My hair whipped against my face, blinding me. Adrenaline surged through my body, instantly morphing my sorrow into heart-pounding dread. Another sweep of massive wings and a demonic hissing cry whooshed over my head.
A terrorized scream tore from my throat as sharp talons brushed at my hair.
Frantically, I patted the ground, searching for the flashlight. In my mindless panic, I didn’t even think to form a shield. My hand felt the cool metal of the flashlight. With trembling fingers I turned it on. Pulling myself onto my knees, I pointed the flashlight above me in a frenzied wave, creating a nightmarish beam of light wavering in the air over me. An expanse of ghostly white wings wove between the trees, blinking in and out of the light.
The unearthly hissing screech started up again. Fear jolted me, and I stumbled, careening onto my side. Desperate to see the creature descending, I rolled onto my back to keep my eyes on it.
This was it. I was going to die with Rory hating me and me hating myself. Some sorcerer had sent a ghostly winged demon to kill me.
WOOF. Cheeva barked. It dawned on me that it wasn’t a particularly menacing bark. In fact, it was a friendly, almost playful sound.
I turned to where Cheeva was staring. In the beam of the flashlight, which now lay on the ground, a beautiful barn owl landed on the forest floor a few feet away.
I slowly sat up, blinking my eyes. I studied the owl. It had a pearly ivory underside. An outline of soft brown feathers formed a rounded heart around fathomless black-brown eyes.
LINKS TO PURCHASE:
DESECRATION PART TWO
DESECRATION PART THREE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hadley Holt is…an author of paranormal and fantasy YA (Young Adult) who has always loved to write. She also nurtures an incurable fascination with all things supernatural and fantastical. From a young age, she imagined stories about dragons, wizards, witches, ghosts, shape-shifters, vampires, and other magical creatures. As life often does, it blessed Hadley with family - a hunky husband and amazing children, and with family came a rewarding career. Hadley spent many years in the not-so-magical world of finance and mortgage banking, but the stories were always there in the back of her mind, demanding to be set free.
Thanks to the housing market crash, Hadley finally realized her dreams. She now breathes life into her magical tales of reluctant young heroes finding their inner power to stand up against terrible creatures and even more terrible odds
Connect with me online:
hadleyholt.com
facebook.com/hadley.holtauthor
twitter.com/Hadley_Holt
LINKS TO PURCHASE:
DESECRATION PART TWO
DESECRATION PART THREE
Thank you for reading DESECRATION, and if you liked it, I would appreciate it if you would encourage others to read and enjoy this book by recommending it to your friends and writing a review.