Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
And simple was helping Adelaide to help her. Rolling up my sleeves, I pressed my hands on her arm.
“What are you doing?”
“Think of me like your battery for now,” I replied and exhaled, feeling the magic hum under my skin as it moved through my fingertips.
“Druella, this is dangerous!” Jericho snapped at me.
“I know. I’m okay. It’s not everything, just enough to keep you going, Adelaide.” My hands got hotter.
“This is what your magic feels like?” She gaped at me.
I didn’t realize magic felt different in all of us. “Focus on Tala.”
“I’m sorry,” David whispered, taking a step back from us. “I’m really sorry. Maybe I really am cursed, guys.”
“Does this look like the right time to have a pity party?” Adelaide snapped at him.
“Adelaide. Focus,” I replied.
“Go home, Dave. I’ll see you there,” Faye said to him. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but she shook her head.
I wasn’t sure what had happened or if he had done anything wrong, but I knew, just like Faye, that everyone would blame him because it was David. He’d been moved from one circle to another, over and over again, before finally being put with the seventh. Witches liked three things—living, magic, and gossip. The Whitmore family had been the center of all three for decades. Apparently, they were all cursed, and only one in a generation could live.
I personally checked, curious to see what curse was responsible for taking so many of the Whitmores, but I didn’t find anything. There was no curse on their family. But there was more evidence to the contrary than my opinion.
Like the fact that Faye’s mother had died during childbirth despite being healthy for days, and David’s mother died a few days after his birth. Their father had been struck by lightning and died right in the middle of the street. It was only the two of them now, but everyone believed since Faye was part of the ninth circle, the last Whitmore to die would have to be David. It didn’t help that in each circle he went out with, someone always got injured. If not for Faye, I was sure David would have been ostracized or kicked out of the coven.
“My brother is just as strong as I am,” Faye whispered as she knelt and took hold of Tala’s good hand. “He’s just always distracted and worried—”
“I know, Faye,” I replied, nodding. She said this more often than she realized it, and I wasn’t the one she needed to convince. I knew there was no curse on them…well, other than the fear that came from everyone believing there was.
“That should be good enough for now.” Adelaide dropped her hands tiredly, and when I did, too, stopping the flow of magic from myself to her, she collapsed into my arms.
“Adelaide?”
“I’m okay. Just tired.”
She was not. She was burning up, and blood was now dripping from her nose.
“This is what happens when—”
“Jericho, not now, thank you!” I snapped at him, laying her on the grass.
“She will be fine,” Mrs. Reyes said as she walked up to us with my uncle beside her.
He glanced between Tala and Adelaide before his brown eyes shifted to me. “Are you simply going to let this stand, Druella?”
“What?”
“The vampires of these lands have broken the treaty between us. There needs to be a punishment for it. This cannot continue!”
“And what exactly do you want us to do?” I asked, rising from the grass. “We are already destroying any vampire who dared to come close—”
“Then do not destroy just any vampire,” he explained, stepping closer toward me. “I’ve called for a meeting with the leaders of the vampires here. He always sends his so-called son because he obviously does not think we are worthy enough to meet him. Go and show him, all of them, what a mistake it is to mess with our coven.”
“You are telling us to destroy Taelon Swan?” I gaped.
“I am telling you to do what you were born to do. Show them our wrath,” was all he said before he walked around me and toward Tala and Adelaide.
He left me exposed to everyone else’s gaze since all of my circle were now here, waiting, expecting, and pissed off, burning with the desire for vengeance.
All of them were burning with the desire to kill vampires, all of them except me.
“Druella, are we going or not?” Tate stepped up, hands balled, his hair tied up, and the hum of magic flowing within him.
I was their leader, but I always felt like a follower at times like these.
“We are going.”
* * *
The meeting was to happen at the county border of Bymoor, which was marked by a still water creek that sat beside an old wheat mill that no one used anymore.
The meeting…or battle was to start at high noon.