Falling for your Fate

Chapter 41

Chapter 41

I had been here for two weeks now and every morning, afternoon and evening was the same. In the morning I trained; in the afternoon I trained, and in the evening I trained. Each day was a new set of children and a new challenge for me to extend my powers. Each time I managed to control them for a little longer and each time I felt my heart darken. Weighed down by the thoughts of what he was going to do with these children and how he was going to use my powers to do it.

Today, was the worst.

When I came into the alcove, there were only two children, both of their eyes misted over and dull. They were standing on separate sides of the cave and their bodies stiff with Jerome's control. The girl had long red hair that fell in waves around her frail frame. She looked around nine, and the young boy standing across from her looked about the same. He had jet black hair that stuck up from the top of his head in all different directions. He looked only slightly more healthy than the girl across from him, and I could only assume that the girl had been here longer.

The only warning I had for what was to happen next was my father saying, 'she's yours,' before her eyes flashed back to their natural blue and the boy launched his body at hers.

Out of instinct, I had wrested control away from the girl, her soul weak and pliable from my father's extended manipulation and I easily forced her out of the boy's path.

"What are you doing?" I hissed in outrage. My heart was thumping loudly in my chest until it was almost all I could hear.

"You need to know how to command them to fight."

"Stop this," I shouted, forcing the girl to slide against the edges of the cave and stay well away from the boy my father was controlling. He was circling her like a champion boxer or a predator hunting its prey.

"The only escape, my darling girl, is if you kill my fighter. Only one of these pawns will see dinner tonight." There was a detachment to his voice that was growing all too familiar. It was the distance of a man who had lost the humanity in him years ago.

"I won't."

"You don't have a choice." He smiled, sending the boy careening after my skeletal girl without so much as a breath of warning. A blow hit her side, and I felt the jolt in my own, even if she couldn't, but I didn't flinch. Not when I knew that man who insisted on calling himself my father was watching me. Calculating my every move, my every action, in anticipation of what I would do next.

He had been doing this for centuries and had seen every person the world had to offer, ten times over. He believed the world was his to take.

Another fist struck the girl's side, and in response I sent her scrambling across the cave, so she stood in front of me facing the already advancing boy. Rocks scattered across the cave floor, the heavy beats of his footsteps jarring against the silence. My thoughts felt like they were pounding against my forehead but all I could see was the darkness in the boy's eyes. He was lifeless, trapped and doomed to do the bidding of the man grinning across from me.

My skin stung with the pain my flesh and blood was willing to commit against innocents. There was a fire inside of me, and the longer I watched the boy, the higher the flames burned.

The boy was no more than a breath away when I felt the warmth surge inside of me. Like the first rays fo the sun bursting over the mountain tops, the power overwhelmed me. The alcove was swallowed by the blinding light, stretching to ever corner and every crevice. I heard the startled scuffle of my father's feet and was rewarded with the look of a man whose world had just shifted underneath him.