Meredith had always known about magic. Her family was magic, one of the most powerful mage lines out there. Having lost her parents to all the fighting though, she stayed far away from it, focusing on school and lading a primarily normal life.
Unti...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"Mages hunted you?" Like they hunted her father.
"Who told you that?" Paul's tone was dark, and she realized that he was referring to her thoughts of her father.
"Rush did," Mer said carefully, trying to avoid thinking about him too much.
"Did he try to turn you against your own kind?" Paul's voice was spiteful, and she blanked her mind. Thinking about kittens, rainbows, anything but what she couldn't let Paul find out. The man narrowed his eyes, noticing.
"Forget it. I will continue." Paul shrugged her off, and she was happy to have something else to focus on. "Mages hunting us was no great threat. We could read their minds and see their attacks, as we had gathered as many as we could into our minds. What hunted us to extinction were the vampires."
Wonderful, and here she thought this couldn't get any more awkward.
"Why did the vampires hunt you? Could you read their minds too?"
"No. We are well known in the underworld as vampire killers." Mer felt pain as she imagined Paul attacking Rush, just like she didn't want... didn't want... someone else to attack Rush. Who was it? "That why there are so few of us left. Our voices paralyze vampires and our touch breaks spells. We are anti-magic in a world full of it. Everyone's enemy and stealers of knowledge, we are no one and yet everyone at once." Paul paused for an awkward moment, eyeing her in a manner she wasn't used to. "Mer, about Remus Shade."
Mer didn't know if she wanted to have this conversation right now. It was hard for her.
"The Aurions can't fight for you back because you are a sacrifice, but I have no such restrictions. When you walked in the other day with dark energy surrounding you, I had been prepared to kill him."
Paul paused as she imagined how that likely would have gone. Poorly, very poorly.
"You don't understand our power. I could have easily killed him alone. It's only when we are outnumbered that we perish." That thought wasn't any better than imagining Paul die at Rush's hands. "I had intended to protect you, but when he appeared at your side out of thin air, you smiled at him... The feelings in your mind were flustered, confused, and nervous. They were not what I had expected from a sacrifice given to the Shades.
"There was a nervous fear about you, yes, but it wasn't terror or desperation. It was clear he hadn't harmed you, but when I heard about how you had injured him from your aunt, I thought you were dead. Then I saw you at my door, looking in wistfully, and still, there was no fear, no plea for help. Had you asked me just once, I would have freed you, but you don't seem to be unhappy, not as I would expect from a mage captive of a vampire." Paul was silent, and she let out a slow breath.
"I know I'm supposed to be dead, twice over I think, five if we're counting on Rush's terms, but I'm not. Being with him is strange, terrifying at times, I suppose, but really, Rush has been kind to me."
