Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (3 page)

He’d taken my mother. Ryder. Marcella. Ewan.

Fury spilled into my blood. Empath ignited.
 

I charged.
 

The tip of my dagger sliced across his stomach, smooth and quick.

Bastien studied me with cold curiosity. Nothing. No pain, no reaction. He wasn’t even bleeding.

Fear twisted in my gut. What was he?

A hurricane of dark energy gathered around him. Light and air churned, sucked into an invisible vortex. An involuntary gasp escaped my lips.

Magic boomed.

An invisible force shoved me against one of the porch’s wooden posts and pinned me there.
 

Cataclysmic power drowned me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

Strange eyes bored into me. He tilted his head, a predator studying its prey.
 

“Kendra,” he rasped.
 
“It’s not time yet.”
 

Empath strained, but couldn’t gain traction. Suffocating power pressed in, digging under my skin. Magic flared in protest, an immune system reacting to an infection.

“Time…for…what?” I ground out.

“The end. You’re not ready.”

Heat devoured me. Sweat dripped from my pores.

Bastien’s eyes suddenly widened and his hold slightly eased.

A different current of energy lashed against me. It whipped through the empty arms of the surrounding trees, bright and familiar.

Someone’s Virtue.

A sharp, tingling sensation hit me like a cold shower and the world disappeared in a flash of white.

When it reappeared, I was on the porch and someone stood between me and him.

Rhian’s back was ramrod straight, her frame radiating command and authority. Potent energy gathered around her, a coil ready to spring.

“I never recognized you,” she said quietly. “It was my mistake.”

Oh God. Rhian was powerful.
 

But Bastien would kill her.
 

“No!” I staggered forward and an unseen energy snapped me back.

Magic pulsed around her. Every time I inched forward, she teleported me back.

“Haverleau’s greatest Governor remembered in history as the one who worked alongside the Shadow for years.” Bastien shook his head. “The failure must sting, but it’s really not that surprising. After all, you couldn’t keep your family safe, either.”

The air around Bastien darkened. Black ribbons of magic rose behind him, undulating like thick tentacles. Two shot forward.

Light burst around Rhian. She disappeared, reappearing in the parking lot to my left. Another ribbon launched toward her.

She teleported again, this time landing behind him.

Her Virtue flickered. She was using too much magic.

“Tell me, does your failure as a mother keep you up at nights?” Bastien slowly turned to face her. “Do you imagine the pain of your daughters, their screams as they lay dying?”

I would kill him again and again. I would destroy him.

The skin on Rhian’s face tightened, clinging to bone. Her face was so pale.

The writhing mass of tentacles around Bastien hurtled forward at once. Rhian’s Virtue flared.

Light exploded as clashing energies savagely ripped open the air.

I screamed. A flash of cool white blinded me.

A moment later, the light faded. I stood beside a familiar desk.
 

Aubrey gaped at me.

“Whoa.” Helene hastily backed away and bumped into the fireplace. “You just came out of nowhere.”

Jeeves’ face was a cold, hard mask. “The Governor.”

I ran faster than I’d ever run in my life.
 

Hold on. I’m coming.

Jeeves kept pace beside me,
kouperet
already in hand.

A group of visiting gardinels and chevaliers were gathered in front of a government-issued SUV in the courtyard, their boisterous conversation echoing through the air.
 

The driver’s side door was open. Fujio, a visiting chevalier from New York’s Rivelleu community, leaned beside it.

My throat burned, lungs straining to keep up with my demands. Jeeves and I flew down the steps.

The group looked over in surprise.

“Move!”

Fujio blinked. “Wait, what —“

I leaped into the driver’s seat, shut the door, and started the car. A moment later, Jeeves dove into the passenger seat.

A hand slammed against the closed window. “Kendra!”

The car’s tires squealed as we shot out of the courtyard.
 

We accelerated down to the street and I banked a hard right. The car jolted. Jeeves gripped the door handle.

Ahead, the sky had darkened to charcoal. The earlier mist had thickened, ominously creeping down the street.
 

The car began to shake. Wind howled, hurtling magic against us. Curious elementals emerged from their homes, pointing to the disturbance in the sky.
 

“You need to get everyone inside,” I told Jeeves.

“
Sondaleur
, the Governor is—”

“Look at it! They’re not safe.”

Behind the cafe, white and black rays spiraled up in a violent tornado of energy.
 

If gardinels and chevaliers investigated we would have another massacre on our hands. Bastien could crush someone with a simple blink.
 

Jeeves needed to warn them before they went running in blind. I wouldn’t have any more deaths on my hands.

Tension rolled off him. He was trying to find another solution.
 

“This is between me and him, Jeeves.”

The car shuddered. We were close.

Finally, a short nod. “Understood.”
 

I slammed on the brakes and the SUV screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. I jumped out and dashed toward the cafe.
 

Magic scorched my skin. Gritting my teeth, I pushed through the blanket of heat to the back porch.

Rhian stood before Bastien, body rigid, arms locked to her sides. Black vines circled her, weaving in and out, nipping at her skin.

“Stay back!” Her voice was reedy.
 

Bastien looked fine. Relaxed, even amused. “Well, look at us. Reunited again. I told you she’d come back, Rhian.”

A wall of searing magic blocked my way. I strained, but couldn’t move.
 

“Let her go!”
 

Cold eyes met mine. “The Governor is our audience,
sondaleur
. Our witness.”

Another surge of corrupt energy cleaved the air. The streaming black bands tightened around Rhian and lifted her off the ground.

White light flickered. She was trying to teleport.

The macabre vines released her one at a time until four remained, holding her twenty feet above the ground. One crawled up her torso and wound around her throat.

Fear briefly flashed across my grandmother’s face. Then she closed her eyes, her face slack with acceptance.
 

The vine tightened.

No.

Every cell in my body struggled against the power pushing me back.

“Let her go!” I ground out. “I’m the one you want.”

Bastien shot me a disinterested look. Black spots appeared in his pale green eyes like ink drops in water. They spread slowly, a stain from within.

“Don’t you understand how useless this is, Kendra?” he said calmly. “You cannot destroy me. You will deliver everything I need. It is in your nature. I am violence, chaos, rage. I am a part of this world and you cannot separate me from it.”
 

His magic seethed, suffocating and demanding.

“This hurts, doesn’t it? Seeing her like this?”

He shook Rhian like a rag doll, her dangling legs swaying in the wind. Blue tinted her skin.

“Face me! Fight me, you coward!”

“I’m not one of those elementals or humans you can manipulate,
sondaleur,
” he said coolly. “I name the time and place.”

“Now! We end this no—“

Another burst of energy. I dropped to my knees.

Empath wrestled his magic back. I had no doubt that if my Virtue fell, his energy would suffocate me as easily as the vine around Rhian’s neck.

“We will face each other when I decide.” He chided, a teacher reprimanding a child. “Haverleau no longer interests me and you are not ready yet, Kendra.”

Fury and pain welled up. I didn’t want him to hurt Rhian. I didn’t want him to hurt anyone else.

But he wasn’t done torturing me yet.

Blinking back my tears, I lifted my head.

“When?”
 

“The numbers hang high where red towers over sea. Can you find me now?”

The lilt in his voice transformed the words into a song.

It made no sense. “What?”

The air thickened. Fiery, immortal magic raged against me, a greedy devouring force that wanted to swallow us whole.

“This is the beginning. Find me, Kendra. Do you understand?”
 

Empath faltered against the onslaught. Rhian’s head drooped.
 

I dug my fingers into the floor and diverted part of my magic into her. Threads of her essence were beginning to slip away. Her Virtue was fading.

Like Marcella.
 

I shoved deeper, filling the cavernous spots left by her disappearing Virtue with my own.
 

But fighting on two fronts was nearly impossible.

“Do you understand?” Bastien repeated.

I had to release one or the other. Either way would kill me.

“Yes!” I yanked my Virtue out of her. “Let her go!”

His dark hold shattered.
 

The abrupt release of energy cracked the air. Empath, without anything to push against, boomeranged back into me with enough force to send me toppling back a few feet.

Another horrible thump came from my left.

Bastien pivoted on his heel, entered the woods behind the lot, and vanished.

The sky cleared and the winds died. Everything hurt. Using my arms, I slowly dragged myself forward.
 

The sound of pounding feet preceded Jeeves’ arrival. He knelt beside my grandmother, his elegant hands gently touching her face, her throat.

My legs were too shaky to stand. I crawled toward them.

“Is she..?” I croaked.

“She’s alive.” Jeeves said shortly, his phone already at his ear. “Stay there,
sondaleur
. Help is coming.”

My gaze remained fixed on the still figure crumpled on the asphalt, her rigid, iron posture now broken and twisted.

Two more pulls and I was beside her. A lock of greying raven hair brushed against my skin.

Others arrived. The world spun with energy, movement, and voices.

But between us lay only silence.
 

I reached out and laced my fingers through hers, marveling that the Governor’s iron fist was nothing more than soft skin covered by a fragile web of wrinkles.

I gently squeezed.

After a long moment…

The faintest squeeze back.

***

The door opened and Marquisa Catrin Bessette exited. Grief etched fine lines and grooves on her elegant face. The stark pain reflected within her eyes made my throat ache.

As head of the Rivelleu community in New York, Catrin was no stranger to loss. But recent events would’ve pushed anyone to the edge.
 

An undercover operation had resulted in the deaths of ondines, gardinels, chevaliers from her community. Just two weeks ago, her daughter, Renee, had been recalled to the ocean, reverting to her ancestral dessondine form. She’d suffered additional gardinel and chevalier losses in the attack on the Selkie Kingdom.
 

And now this. Rhian was her best friend.

Catrin opened her mouth slightly, then closed it and touched my arm. Silent, she hurried away.
 

I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.

The scent I associated with my grandmother hung heavy in the air, a combination of lavender, cedar, and tradition.

Rhian had been rushed to the small clinic located in the basement level of the Governing House. Witnesses had already begun to spread rumors and taking the Governor to Lyondale Hospital would’ve caused widespread panic. Instead, Jeeves had Daniel come to the Governing House.

The Healers did what they could for the bruises and cracked bones. But they couldn’t do anything for the magic that had drained out of her. Too much of her life essence had been lost.

It was the first time I’d been in her living quarters. An enormous mahogany four-poster bed dominated the space, imposing and coldly beautiful at the same time.

Rhian looked tiny, her frail form swallowed up by the mounds of pillows and thick bedding.

Bookshelves lined the wall, the shelves filled with thick biographical tomes and works of non-fiction, especially science. I didn’t know she liked to read.

Modern artwork hung on the walls, bright, vivid colors of orange and magenta, colors I never thought my reserved grandmother would like. They added zing to the neutral palette of the room, a touch of unexpected humor.

A large television screen hung over the fireplace. The shelf to the left housed an extensive DVD collection. She enjoyed older movies, foreign films set in Paris and Italy. I wondered if she’d ever traveled there, if she’d seen as much of the world as she wanted.
 

I pulled up a chair beside her. The nightstand only carried one item: a silver frame facing the bed. It was the first thing she saw when she got up every morning.

Three photos looked back at me. One of my mother. She was young, maybe younger than I was now. A brilliant smile I’d long forgotten she was capable of lit up her face. Long, curly hair flew around her, lovingly caressed by an invisible wind.
 

The second photo was of Marcella on the day of her binding. She wore an ivory gown that emphasized her delicate features and raven locks. Her eyes were bright with hope and joy.

The third photo was of me.

My head was tossed back in laughter. I couldn’t place when the photo had been taken, but it looked as if I were crossing the Academy quad. The way my chin angled indicated I’d been talking to someone.