by Jessica Gunn
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
The Changed
Hunter Circles Series: Book Three
Jessica Gunn
Copyright © 2017 Jessica Gunn
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Contents
About The Changed
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
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World Key
Also by Jessica Gunn
About the Author
ABOUT THE CHANGED
I’m Krystin Blackwood, and for the past three months I’ve been locked in Ether Circle Prison.
Luckily for me, the Leader of the Fire Circle knows I’d never willingly kill all the people I did when confronted with Kinder’s magik at Cianza Boston. Although it’s certainly taking him long enough to rescue me.
But even when I finally escape, it’s only to find that someone’s going around killing Hunters using Giyano’s M.O.: tongues torn out, magik shorn from their bodies. And with Giyano as MIA as his loyalties, there’s just one other suspect: me.
If I don’t prove my innocence and defeat the person responsible, I might be headed right back to prison, unable to help the Fire Circle win their war against Lady Azar… and barred from completing the Alzan prophecy when Lady Azar succeeds in my absence.
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Chapter 1
KRYSTIN
Cold stone. Hot magik. These were my constants.
My magik flared, my very blood changing along with it. Twisting and writhing, my blood transforming until the guards finally let me fall to the stone floor of my prison cell, tugging off my T-shirt to reveal the tank top underneath. Refuge, at last.
My bare shoulders slid along the ground as I laid on my back. I spread my arms and legs as wide as I could, searching for as much contact with the stone as possible without having to strip naked.
Cold stone. Hot magik.
Illusions of rescue wrapped in rainbows of colors flying around me.
I walked in a forest like this once, taunted by a dancing ether flame. By all the elements. Twirls of wind and torrents of water zipping around me like dragons.
What was reality?
“Two months!” a guard screamed in my face. “How much longer do you think you can hold out?”
I clamped my mouth shut. Instead of answering the middle-aged Ether Circle Prison guard, I glanced him over. A tiny vein protruded from his forehead near his receding hairline, pulsing with every moment that passed without an answer from me.
The longer I gazed at it, the more that vein looked like a worm caught beneath the surface of his skin—one that shone with bright rainbow colors, all different shades of magik. I smiled. Those shades had been welcome friends, painting the world with color when they weren’t tearing my magik—my body—apart.
The guard slammed his fist on the table, the sound like a gong ringing in a tiny space. The reverb caught in my ear, growing until the world muffled. “Do you even realize what you did, witch? Or are you totally lost to your magikal insanity?”
Witch.
I met the guard’s gaze through hazy, clouded vision. “I’m perfectly sane. You, on the other hand…” I made a show of squinting my eyes, of focusing on that wriggling vein on the guard’s forehead.
Silence. Not a single thought.
This drop of loneliness fell into a giant abyss and there I was, adrift in darkness.
The guard swallowed hard, dropping his pointed finger. “Stop trying to read my mind, witch.” He shoved both hands behind his back and readjusted his gaze to right above my head. “Where is Kinder now?”
Ha. Joke’s on you. I didn’t know where Kinder was. I didn’t care where she’d run to.
All I cared about was when Giyano was getting here to save me.
The guard banged on the table again before rounding it. He stopped at my side, yanked back the chair I was sitting in, and turned it to face him. Dizziness rolled my empty stomach. I sucked in a deep breath, blinking slowly.
“Tell me where the Betrayer of Darkness is!” he screamed, spittle flying from his lips and landing on my face. “You worked for her. You must know.”
The room spun, my vision splicing into technicolor slices of light. Blue for the water-elemental magik I’d housed, pink for the ether. Twisting and turning, transmuting my magik into an abomination. Like Kinder. Like Riley. Like anyone with both magik types housed within them.
And yet, the light of reality, the sharp clarity with which the weight of the guard’s spittle landed on my lips, a droplet so heavy, I felt it despite the insanity around me… I was alive. For better or worse, I was alive.
And I was innocent.
A sharp pain bloomed across my cheekbone and blazed a trail up the side of my face. The thwack of the impact came next, flooding my ears and shifting the kaleidoscope around me. The guard pulled his fist back, knuckles red.
I blinked at him. “Seems shitty to punch the person responsible for saving Alzan.”
He reeled back once more and the impact of this punch rocked the chair, sending me teetering to the ground. Metal scraped against metal and my head slammed against the stone. I smiled as steam rose around my aching head.
Cold stone, hot magik.
A bubbling sensation rose in my throat and I giggled. “Cold stone, hot magik,” I sang. Only reprieve. Only refuge.
“Crazy witch,” the guard spat as he bent down, grabbed me by the shoulders, and righted the chair. My hand glowed red, like a beacon in the night, requesting the guard halt all motion now. “Fucking crazy.”
“Not crazy,”
I replied. “You’re the crazy one.”
A burning smell of charred flesh wafted into my nostrils. The guard screamed, backpedaling away from me. The kaleidoscope around me spun faster and faster, a dizzying array of shapes and colors.
“You burned me!” the guard shouted. “How the hell—”
His words cut off as flames engulfed the room.
Cold stone. Hot magik. Magik that had burned since they’d imprisoned me here three months ago. At least, I thought it’d been three months. I honestly couldn’t tell anymore.
At least the insanity had let up some. With the finality of my magik flare, clarity resumed.
Days bled together as they passed. Guards delivering food were the only indication of time passing, but even that couldn’t be trusted. They’d deliver it at different times to mess with me.
A chunk of bread. A fruit. Some bland mix of something I’d rather not identify. I swallowed it down, waiting for the day I got out of here.
For the day Giyano rescued me.
I hadn’t given up hope. The mark on my hand still burned, glowing at intermittent intervals. A message to me, whispering: Hold on. I’m coming. But even Giyano couldn’t waltz into Ether Circle Prison and break me out. It’d take time, and I’d deal with this as long as I needed to.
Besides, if Ben and the others were going to save me, they would have already done so. Unlike Giyano, Jaffrin—Leader of the Fire Circle—had connections with the Ether Head Circle. They were above him, but they liked him. And if Jaffrin hadn’t gotten me out of here yet, there was either no way of convincing the Ether Head Circle I was innocent, that I’d been manipulated, or Jaffrin himself would rather see me imprisoned here.
He’d kept me imprisoned for most of my life anyway.
Giyano’s mark on my hand burned, a searing ache that turned into pleasure on its way up my arm. I glanced down, lost in the distraction of the glowing red emanating from the swirls and dark black veins. Whatever he’d done to me months ago, it’d never reversed. And combined with Kinder’s magik, with her shoving more magik into me than I could handle, I had no idea how I was still alive.
But I was. I had to be. The ache in my bones from being unable to move in this tiny room, the twist in my ankle that never healed correctly… the burning, fiery pain that erupted from my fingertips every few hours… All of these things were impossible if I was dead. If I’d lost my fight with the magik flare after all.
I leaned my head against the stone wall of my cell, ignoring the slight shock of electricity delivered into my skin. A warning. The cell had been marked with magik to keep me inside, to keep me from being able to escape via word-magiks.
It hadn’t stopped me from using my other magik.
My fingertips burned as my hands pressed against the stone wall for support, taking in more electrical warnings. I’m not escaping, I promise. Even if I managed to escape, I doubted I’d stay hidden for long.
An ache throbbed in my hand beneath the burning and dread. The pain traveled up my palm to the tip of each finger, pulsing in waves.
“Fuck. Not again.”
Every few hours, my new power awoke. Because every few hours, I remembered why I was in here.
Instead of believing I’d been manipulated by Kinder and saved by Giyano, the Fire Circle thought I’d sided with them both. That I’d chosen this path against the Circles. The look on Ben’s face when he’d found out I’d been visiting Giyano had said it all.
Ben hadn’t fought for me either. I couldn’t blame him. I’d sought help from his son’s kidnapper. From my own father’s murderer. And in return, I’d gotten a jail cell and a new power.
A new magik altogether.
Flames erupted from my fingertips, bathing the stonework beneath them in a red and orange light. The wall turned black, but my fingers didn’t burn. It wasn’t the flames that hurt, but the force at which the magik left my body, one so unaccustomed to fire-elemental magik.
My heart rate raced, breath coming in short gasps as my veins burned from the inside out. This foreign magik, this change forced upon me—it’d kill me, I was sure.
The flames grew, lapping against the stone wall, and I cried out as I turned away from it, aiming the fire out into my small cell. Wave after wave of fire flew from my hands, heating the small room with no way out but between cell bars. The flames leaped near my mattress, overtaking the sheet and pillow, and the one newspaper clipping the guards had allowed me to have. An article about a building exploding in downtown Boston. Cause: gas leak.
It hadn’t been a gas leak, but a magik war. One fought within myself.
“Stop!” I commanded the flames, shaking my hands. The shaking only sent the waves of fire dancing, undulating across the space. “Stop it, please! God, why?”
Unwieldy, unruly. This fire-elemental magik was not my own. It didn’t—or wouldn’t—bend to my will no matter what I tried.
I balled my fists and swung them in an upward motion, hoping to stamp out the flow of fire, but instead, my lunch tray flew across the cell. I ducked, barely in time to avoid being struck by the plastic saucer as it shattered against the stone behind me.
What the hell?
My eyes narrowed as the flames died down. I turned, studying the remains of my lunch tray. All of my previous magik had been erased. No more telepathy. No more telekinesis.
Then how had that tray moved?
I swiped at the air in front of me like I used to when I had telekinesis.
Nothing.
Curious, I shifted my focus from the shattered plastic to the air around the plastic, then pushed my hand up through the air. The pieces of the tray moved, floating in the air like a mobile in a nursery.
“Cut that out, Blackwood.”
The remains of my lunch tray fell to the ground. I snapped my gaze toward the guard in front of my cell. “Go to hell.”
His eyes, wide and dark, took in the sight of my room. “Again? Control your damn magik or we’ll take it away.”
I put on the sweetest smile I could. “And deprive you and your friends of this show?” The guards got off on watching us all try to escape our cells—by magik or sheer force.
No one ever seemed to actually get out, though. Wards or other magik, no doubt.
The guard crossed his arms and gave me a pitying upper lip. “I think this time we’ll let you wallow in this mess for a few days.”
“Suit yourself, asshole.” I was tired of being transferred into what was obviously a torture chamber while they cleaned the room out, anyway.
“You know it was lack of respect for authority that got you locked up here in the first place, right?” His voice boomed, but for the faintest hint of tremor floating on the air.
My eyes narrowed and I charged the bars, gripping them. They buzzed a magik warning at me, one I ignored. “You do know who I am, don’t you?” I smiled at his shaking hands. “Thought so. If you know who—what—I am, then you know it wasn’t a lack of respect for ‘authority.’ It was everyone else’s lack of respect for me and the power I wield. You assholes should be getting me out of here and helping me control this new magik, not letting me nearly kill myself trying to figure it out on my own. I’m the damn Daughter of—”
“Alzan doesn’t want your treason,” the guard said as he reached forward and pulsed ether magik at the cell bars.
I yelped before they connected, jumping back as the ether magik spliced up my fingers and into my arms. My body shook as I backed away, glaring daggers at the guard.
The guard laughed and started to pace away, back down the cell block. “No one wants a traitor in their midst, not even if she’s the savior of Alzan. The world will burn instead.”
Chapter 2
BEN
I was so tired of waiting. For Jaffrin to get an update on Krystin. For the Ether Head Circle to realize she was innocent. For anyone to give me the go-ahead to pick Krystin up from Ether Circle Prison.
But all I did lately was wait, presently in the lobby of Fire Circ
le Headquarters for Lissandra, the admin, to let us upstairs and talk to Jaffrin.
I paced the space between the front windows looking out at the City of Boston and the missing persons board, where one space had been cleared off. Riley’s space. He’d been on that board for two and a half years.
Not anymore.
My feet ached as I paced, digging my heel in on each step. Between the aftermath of Kinder’s attack and the Fire Circle almost being revealed to Boston, there hadn’t been much time to think about Krystin’s predicament. But it’d hung over my head anyway, filling the free time away from work with a dozen strategies for breaking into that prison and saving her. Except on the days where I didn’t want to. On the days I’d rather let her stay in there for good.
I hated what she’d done—seeking Giyano for help. Giyano of all demons. But I hated even more that with the space three months had given me, I understood why she’d done it. And that I’d do the same thing if Riley or Rachel were on the line. If it was a matter of life and death for either of them, I’d buck the Hunter Circles’ creed of killing, not siding with, demons.
But I’d never ask Giyano.
I froze in front of the missing persons board, reeled back my arm, and punched straight into the wall below it. Except it wasn’t drywall but metal, and my knuckles, only recently healed from punching the magik-barrier glass in the quarantine chamber upstairs, buckled beneath the impact. Blood seeped out around them, but I held my fist steady.