Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 108517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
“To shove?”
“Have you ever seen little kids fight? Eventually one of them loses it and just shoves the other to the ground to make them stop.”
“Were you angry?”
“Yes. Mostly I was scared that Mom and Cornelius would die.”
“And Konstantin? Did you want to shove him, too?”
“He forced this confrontation on us. Did you see all those bodies? Arabella had to kill nine people. We all take it for granted, but she is probably the most sensitive of all of us. Things bother her deeply. She thinks about them for days. I don’t even know how deeply this damaged her. She’s my little sister, and I was supposed to protect her from this crap, except that I can’t.”
“I think we’re safe,” he said.
I glanced at him.
“You’re worried you might hurt us, but you are still you even when your black wings are out. You didn’t hurt me in the pool. Your magic was pouring out like a flame, but you never targeted me. You just flirted and tried to seduce me, and then pouted.”
I pushed away from him. “Pouted?”
“Mhm.”
“I was hissing in your face. How is that pouting?”
“Your hissing was endearing.”
I put my hands over my face. He was impossible.
“The point is, you don’t blindly lash out, Catalina. You’re striking out at people you perceive as a threat to your loved ones. Whatever it is breaking through, let it. It needs to come out.”
“You really think so?”
He nodded. “I’m not saying this in my capacity as your devoted fiancé but as an antistasi Prime. You hold yourself on a very tight leash. It is atypical for a mental Prime to be that controlled constantly. The threat level has escalated, and so did your response to it. I don’t think you can effectively suppress it, but you do need to recalibrate.”
And the only way to recalibrate would be to practice this new power until I could learn to control it.
“So what, choose a target and hope for the best?”
“Yes.”
“What if it gets out of control?”
“I will help you. I promise.”
“Okay,” I said.
We sat together for a few moments.
“I suppose we have to sort out the mess with Konstantin,” I said.
Alessandro grimaced. “Unfortunately, we can’t keep him in a cage indefinitely. As much as I would enjoy it.”
I scooted off the bed. “Why does he call you Sasha?”
“He knows I don’t like it.”
“And how does he know that?”
“Because he is my fourth cousin,” Alessandro said. “He keeps reminding me, as if I will forget. Family. Can’t live with them, can’t strangle them. It’s terrible.”
Someone, probably Patricia, set up two chairs in front of Konstantin’s cage. I took one. Alessandro sat in the other, tossing one long leg over the other and looking every inch an Italian aristocrat.
We had briefly stopped at the office to write a contract. I had asked him about the cousin thing on the way, but he avoided it. He didn’t refuse to answer, he just changed the subject. That was okay. He would tell me eventually. I could recite his genealogy down to his great-great-grandparents. There were no Russians there anywhere. It was all Sagredo and British mental mages.
Konstantin studied us through the bars. He looked stunning. If the night in the cage affected him, he would never let us know.
“I’m glad we’re finally in control of ourselves,” the prince said.
I didn’t take the bait. I just looked at him.
“Shut up and listen,” Alessandro told him. “I’ll keep it brief, and you can fill in the gaps.”
Konstantin gave him a go-ahead wave, a gesture at once elegant and dismissive. Arrogant jerk.
“We know that as of last year, Arkan refined the last two samples of the Osiris serum, achieving a stability rate of twenty percent,” Alessandro said.
Linus had been livid when he’d found out. Up until last year, Arkan’s modified serum killed the majority of his volunteers. Now they had a roughly one in five chance of surviving with their bodies intact and new latent powers activated.
“Arkan is building a network of allies by secretly supplying the serum to Houses with failed vectors and duds. He had been very careful in his selection, but last summer he got greedy. He gifted a sample to House Dolgorukov. Aleksei Antonovich Dolgorukov is the current Minister of Defense. Arkan wanted to buy a future favor.”
Arkan was screwing around with a family in the highest strata of Russian society. He must have been sure the serum wouldn’t kill its recipient, except his chances of success were still only twenty percent. It was a huge risk. His arrogance was getting the best of him.
“House Dolgorukov has two magic bloodlines,” Alessandro continued. “Pattern and precognition. The two work together, making the Dolgorukovs excellent strategists. Inna Dolgorukov, the eldest of three scions of the House, was born without magic, a fact House Dolgorukov went to great lengths to hide for seventeen years. How am I doing so far?”