Twenty-year-old Claire must deceive a vampire prince to infiltrate the monarchy and discover their secrets while resisting her desire for him.
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Nothing in my life has ever been easy. Including the mission my family has sent me on.
My sister and...
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Combattre (verb) to fight
Deciding to stay and fight was the easy part. Or rather, as easy as it was for me to admit that I couldn't leave Bastien. No matter what my family told me to believe about his kind or the complicated feelings I had toward him.
Living long enough to escape this graveyard and find out what those feelings meant was going to be much harder.
I might not be the smartest person in my family, but I knew the reason Hera wanted her witches to capture me was so that she could kill me and start her power-grabbing spell all over again. Or worse, she wanted to eat me whole so she could imbibe her grandmother's magick like a snake eating a chicken egg.
Aunt Vera did say she'd seen a dark witch do just that.
I swallowed hard as sweat broke out across my feverish skin.
If she was willing to attack a sanguine partner of one of the twelve vampire princes, then whatever magick that now resided in my veins was worth risking ruin over.
Which meant I couldn't hide behind my status anymore. I was a target.
And if I'd learned anything from my family, it was that targets had to become very good at firing back at the shooter.
Only...I didn't know how to use my power. Earlier, when I'd pushed Bastien away, it seemed to shoot out of my bare hand, but I thought dark witches needed a wand to focus their magick.
Through the pain throbbing in my head and my blurry vision, I watched as Bastien continued to battle the murderous witches surrounding him.
I wanted to help him. No, I needed to help him. He couldn't do this alone. Neither one of us could. Together was the only way.
So, I focused on the group around him and opened my hand, willing whatever dark thing was inside me to crawl out once again.
I wanted to hurt them. I wanted to make them pay.
I chanted those words over and over again. Curling my fingers in anger, I squinted my eyes and begged the magick to shoot out, but nothing happened.
Frustrated and beyond disappointed with myself, I let my weary head fall against the big wolf's neck. Why couldn't I do it again?
Maybe Mama was right, and I really was useless. Even when I had magick, I couldn't use it to save the man I was fated to.
The wolf's ribs expanded and contracted with a slow breath, and then he turned to nuzzle his cold nose against my arm, which was oddly comforting.
