Page 107 of Magic Claimed

He set down the anchor, stepped through that perfect circle of swirling colors, and disappeared, followed by pairs of his minions moving together. Two, four, six… I counted until I reached forty-eight, and then just sat back in my chair. At least a hundred people followed him through that gateway, armed with stolen magic, ready to wreak destruction.

And standing against them were my family, and however many of Faris’s people he’d been able to summon in time.

Certainly nowhere near a hundred.

Nowhere near enough to win this battle and protect the humans at the same time.

It was possible that even with all our efforts, we would still lose. That Blake would succeed, and hatred would win.

And I was tied to a chair. My hands bound. My magic barely beginning to reawaken.

I was so used to being the one to act. The one to step up and protect others. The one to carry the burdens. But once again, there was nothing I could do except wait. Wait to see whetherour plans would fail. Wait to see if hope was lost. Wait for someone else to rescue me.

I didn’t care for it at all, and honestly, my patience wasn’t quite up to the task. By my calculations, it had been nearly ten hours since we arrived here.

Plenty of time for our plan to be put in motion.

Plenty of time to explore the facility and find the missing kids.

So where in the hecking heck…

“What was that?”

One of the two minions behind me turned to look over his shoulder.

“Did you hear something?”

“Someone’s knocking on the door.”

The second minion shrugged. “No code, no entry. Don’t worry about it.”

Behind the desk, the six people wearing headsets suddenly began to murmur and point, looking confused as they moved from monitor to monitor.

“What now?” One of the men behind me strode towards them with an impatient curse.

“About half of our cameras are offline,” a woman called out. “And three of the doors are throwing error codes. Started down on the first floor. Where the…” She paused. “Where the test subjects are being housed.”

If it hadn’t been for the tape over my mouth, I would have been completely unable to stop the evil grin from spreading across my face.

And it would have grown even wider when we all heard astrange grinding sound from the locked doors, like gears full of sand, cracking under the strain.

My guards finally began to look concerned and mutter swear words under their breath, but it was much, much too late.

There was a loud pop, and the air suddenly filled with my new favorite smell—the unmistakable aroma of deep-fried wiring.

A moment later, the doors flew open, and everyone stopped to gape…

At the pale, slender form of Kes standing in the hallway outside.

TWENTY-FIVE

Blake’s peopleseemed frozen in place—either by magic or by shock—as quiet, easily frightened Kes regarded me with an uncharacteristic frown.

“Not much help, are you?” she announced in a deep, growling male voice.

To their credit, our enemies tried. But they were human, and before they could even reach for their stolen magic, the slender half-fae was on them in a whirlwind of blows that somehow sounded meatier than her tiny fists would suggest.

A few minutes later, all eight were lying on the floor, tightly bound by cut-up lengths of electrical cords and gagged with the same tape they’d used on me.