Threatened [W&W Book 2]

Chapter 31

The lady was standing at the door, clutching a necklace in her hand.  Her eyes were wide with horror and then horrified comprehension as she looked between Anya and her husband who was lying unconscious on the floor.  "Anya?  What are you doing?" she shrieked.

But she knew.

How odd that Anya did not care in that moment.  All she could feel was the exciting thrum of enormous magic under her control.

Anya looked at her lady impassively.  She knew that she should feel something more.  She should feel sorry for how she was hurting this woman who had tried to be kind to her.

She could not summon the proper emotions, as if the river of power separated her from her feelings.  Moreover, she did not really care that she could not feel.  What had trying to be good ever gotten Anya?  What had caring about other people ever gotten her?  She had lost nearly everything and even what she had left was being stripped from her.

She and the rest of the peasant class were left to struggle to survive while nobles such as this turned their heads and ignored the injustice which permeated the world.  What did they care for the suffering of others?

In a just world, Anya would never have been forced into such a corner as she was now in.  She would never have been left alone to become Thorne's prey.

This world was not just.  Why should she let them judge her?  If she let them catch her, it was almost certain that she would die, whether she deserved it or not.

Even if she deserved it, she could and would not let that happen.  Even though she could not even feel her affection for her siblings under her euphoria, Damani and Kallie remained her true purpose.

Anya jerked Lord Wildwood's magic roughly, but he was already too gone to care.  Lady Theresa stepped further into the room as if she would attack Anya with her bare nails alone.

Anya took a portion of Lord Wildwood's magic and molded it into a weapon, as Jim had taught her to do with her own.

She would finish her task and flee.  She and the twins could leave the country, perhaps even the continent and never return. 

Then, Anya would never let any of them be vulnerable.  She and what was left of her family would never be at the mercy of any lord or ruler.

Anya moved to bring the magic to strike Lady Theresa.

Unbeknownst to the lady, it hung there in the air like the scythe of death, about to destroy her.

But instead of attacking her, the lady foolishly rushed past her with swimming eyes.

"Oh, Wildwood," Lady Theresa said in a voice so wretched that it pushed through the rush of power and hit Anya squarely in the heart.  Lady Theresa kneeled down beside him and her back was such an easy target that Anya could not miss.

Anya faltered.

The invisible weapon hovered in the air, but Anya could not do it.

All the things that Anya had known she should have been feeling flooded back into her.  She was miserable and despicable.

Damani and Kallie needed her.  She had no time to savor the euphoria of taking his magic.  There were only a few threads left.  Anya moved her magic to pluck them.  She had to finish everything and hope against hope that Thorne had even one spark of honor in his dark core.

Then Anya felt the impact of something like a boulder crush her.  The blackness was mercifully quiet and still.

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