Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6), Lan Chan [free ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

one stage or another. Lex and I were certain of it. Though he fought with the battle-hardened conviction of a warrior, that kind of rage could only come from someone who had lost everything. Speaking of lost things, he held a blood blade up to my line of sight. “We’re going to need to talk about this.”

There was no need to respond. The shifter relinquished me into Angus’s jurisdiction. “Wait, what about Andrei?”

Though his hold was no less firm than that of the shifter, he didn’t stop me from turning. “He will be patched up.” How could such a plain sentence be filled with so much foreboding?

I wasn’t sure what Angus’s version of patched up meant, because when Andrei and I were marched before the Council, he was still limping. The cut on his brow wasn’t healed. By contrast, I’d been taken hostage by the Iron Court guards in a makeshift camp on the outskirts of the shifter tundra. While a pair of Fae guards made sure I didn’t try to escape, I’d been given a mug of ambrosia and a chocolate muffin.

“Do you feel like passing out?” the stunning blue-haired Fae medic asked me.

Shoving half the muffin top into my mouth, I shook my head.

“And your arms and legs seem attached.”

I couldn’t dispute that. She patted me on top of my head. It wasn’t until she held up a handful of red berries right up to my nose that I noticed what was happening. Pet. She thought of me as some kind of lower being like a pet. Grimacing, I swiped the dew berries from her hand and swallowed them whole. The sweet nectar slid down my throat and was the only reason why I didn’t say something snide.

Andrei looked like he could use a whole basketful of dew berries. Though I wasn’t sure the medicinal fruit from the Fae realm would have much effect on him. Still, he seemed to rally as we were deposited in front of the Council in one of the shifter conference rooms.

From what I’d heard, after Raphael lost consciousness, Seraphina had been annexed from the rest of supernatural society. Over half of the Nephilim resources were now directed to keeping him safe. That meant no more Council meetings in their chambers. In fact, it seemed to mean fewer Nephilim council members, period. Megan was the only one of the Nephilim present. I was glad of it. Only one missing Nephilim gave me pause.

I swallowed hard at the spot Kai would have occupied had he been here. Staring at the ground at their feet, I made myself take a sobering breath to stop from giving into fear. No matter how accomplished I got at summoning, no matter how long I sat there calling his name into the veil, he’d never turned up.

In his place was a woman with thin, birdlike features wearing a black cloak and a leather necklace adorned at even intervals with inch-long teeth. A sickly sweet but also bitter aftertaste filled my mouth the longer I looked at her. It was the same tell that they would scent on me at first sniff. Necromantic magic.

After what happened with Jonah, the elite guard had decreed that whichever mage was in charge of the Dominion Prison couldn’t also sit on the Council. Not that Basil had any interest in the latter. In response to my scrutiny, the sorceress raised her left hand to scratch at her ear. The gesture caused the sleeve of her cloak to fall loose, revealing a tattoo on her wrist. The number three inside a thorny pentagram. The symbol of the Dark Trinity, keepers of sinister magic. Suppressing a hiss, I turned my attention elsewhere.

Griff sat next to her but on the edge of his seat, as far away as possible. Though they possessed no high magic of their own, like their hides, the para-humans had iron-clad natural mental shields. It made them somewhat impervious to the suggestions of the malachim. In a role reversal that must have grated heavily on the other supernatural species, the para-humans were now some of the only guards effective at handling the protection of all their cities. Griff seemed to take no pleasure in it. His posture was weary with fatigue.

The room was filled to the brim with elite guards now. Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw Dorian leaning against the wall. As head of the Sentinels, the shifter arm of the elite guards, and a former Zambian wolf pack member, we had always shared a silent connection. Today, his eyes had glazed over when the Blonde Shifter, a leopard from what I’d seen, had shoved me into the room in front of her.

Beside me, Andrei was boring holes into Victoria Amos with his gaze. Ever since he’d found out that the Council had covered up what truly happened to his family, Andrei’s antagonism towards his great-aunt had ratcheted up a notch. Sometimes, when we were on a hunt together, I swear he muttered to himself in his sleep about murdering her.

Biting the inside of my cheek, I laced my hands behind my back and tried not to appear too interested in everything around me. That became impossible when the mating link became a taut grip around my heart. The door opened and Max stalked in from the adjoining rope ladder.

6

My mouth turned dry as I did everything I could not to directly glance at him. My gaze landed instead on the Blonde Shifter. The familiar appreciation in her greedy eyes sucked the wind from my lungs. Perhaps I hissed aloud because her head turned in my direction.

The smile she shot me was so full of malice, I broke eye contact immediately. Scraping my front teeth over my tongue, I sank into a silent, ten-second meditation. It was meant to snap me out of unpleasant emotions. Instead, what my mind did was throw me images of the blonde’s ample chest and legs that went up to her armpits.