Ruler [Blood Magic, Book 3]

REBELS [Blood Magic, Book 4] - First Teaser

Excerpt (from mid-book):

"Do you know if they've gotten anything out of him?" Heinrich asked.

I shook my head. "He's fighting with everything he's got, but he's starving and they've been using magic on him and doing tests. Torturing him. I just don't know. When I'm there, it's awful." I could feel the tears bursting free from my eyes. "It's worse than anything. Even being locked in that cell at the compound." My breath hitched and I swallowed a sob. "They're going to kill him."

"Not yet," my father said. "They want you and me first."

I suddenly felt very tired, which was saying something considering I constantly felt exhausted these days - or twitchy, as the bond tried to drag me to Keel and our mutually assured destruction at our enemy's hand. "So what, we just go on like this? I can't do it. I can't watch that happen to him. I can't keep feeling it with him. I can't..."

"So what do you-"

I cut my father off, I didn't want to hear him say we had no options. I'd heard that enough already, and I still had one. "I don't know. But if there is an answer, I think it's in there," I said, gesturing at the bond magic tome on the night table. "Inside it."

The people in the room who needed to understand what I meant by that did, and they ushered the others out, so we could continue our conversation in private.

"What do you expect to find?" My father asked as he shut the door behind them.

"I'm not sure. But from the small amount of investigation I've already done, I know that Cella and Rook hid all the juiciest spells, the most powerful ones, inside the pages, where they could only ever be seen by the book's owners."

"Because spells like those-"

"Would be dangerous in the wrong hands," I finished for him, unable to contain my impatience. "We already know this. And we know that Cella and Rook were smart and could work bond magic unlike any that Keel and I have ever imagined. If there's anything, it's going to be in that book. I just have to find it. But there are a lot of pages to search."

That thought made me tired too. How many times would I need to dive in and out of the book to find what I was looking for? How much longer would Keel have to suffer? What if the spell I was seeking didn't exist? What if there wasn't anything powerful enough to get Keel out of the sorcerers' clutches?

"How can we help?" Lucia said, reading the expression on my face a little too perfectly.

I looked from her to my father to Arthos and Kristiana. "Couple guards on the door to make sure no one comes in while I'm in there, and maybe someone to stay behind in here, just in case."

"I'll do it," Lucia said.

"And I'll take the door," Arthos volunteered, then turned to Heinrich and Kristiana. "Perhaps our sorcerer friends could supply a spell-slinger to help me out? You know, just in case."

"We most certainly can," Kristiana said, and made her across the room. "I'll have someone sent right up."

"And some food," I shouted after her. After all, this wasn't the sort of thing one did on an empty stomach. 

REBELS [Blood Magic, Book 4] coming to Wattpad January 2020.