Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
She almost sprinted to it, but Augustine caught her hand in his. The sudden warmth of his touch was like a burn to her overclocked senses.
“Together,” he said, and it sounded like a plea.
She forced herself to slow to his pace. They ran across the warehouse to the door. He paused before it, checking, his gun raised, and stepped through. She followed.
A rectangular room, a hundred and fifty feet long and three hundred feet wide. Kennels lining the walls. A yellow line painted three feet from the bars with the word SAFE stenciled on the outside of it. And eyes, looking at her from the cages with silent desperation.
A kaleidoscope of scents swirled around her: bear, tiger, fox… So many, so many sparks of life reaching out for connection, some strong, some fading, all terrified. Her magic splayed out, and she felt them all at once. If they had voices that could speak, they would be screaming, “Free us!”
She was lost. Overwhelmed by the intensity of it all. By the suffering, by the hopelessness. They didn’t comprehend, they only knew they were trapped and they were scared, but the human part of her understood what they could not—why they were here, what would happen to them, and how much it would hurt.
She tried to breathe, but there was a steel band around her chest, and it couldn’t expand. A solid clump blocked her throat. Tears blurred her vision, and the world faded into a haze of red that cut like broken glass. A dark chasm opened by her feet, and she teetered on the precipice. If she fell, she would come apart, unravel like a tattered cloth, melting into the two dozen animals scrambling for her magic.
She heard something, a voice, words, but she couldn’t make them out. Something wrapped around her, solid, protective, pulling her back from the bottomless pit of pain.
“Diana, come back to me. I need you here with me.”
Augustine.
She locked her hands on his arms, still blind, and held on until she could breathe again. His scent washed over her, a barrier to all others, and she locked onto it and took a small step back from the edge.
Gradually, with agonizing slowness, her inner world reasserted its balance. Her mental defenses rose, shielding her from the sparks scraping at her with their claws, begging for connection and safety.
A slow breath.
Another.
She had almost lost herself. It was the fate feared by every animal mage. She had come this close only once before, when she had been young and inexperienced. She was no longer an unsure 13-year-old, she knew the risks, and she ought to have made preparations.
It was Kitty, the timer on her phone warning her that too much time passed since the cub last fed, Celeste’s suffering, Kayson’s and Aleah’s loved ones’ grief, and Woodward’s imminent return. They had all combined inside a pressure cooker, and it nearly broke her.
And then there was Augustine, both making it all worse and infinitely better. If it weren’t for him, when Woodward did return, he would find her on the floor, catatonic, a living husk without will or reason.
“Diana…” Augustine’s whisper was like a velvet caress.
She squeezed his arms tighter around herself, savoring his touch for the last time, and then pushed free.
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
She didn’t look at his face. She didn’t know what she would see. Concern? Revulsion? Pity? She couldn’t risk it. Not now.
The scents still clamored for her attention, but she sorted through them with confident ease.
There it was, the familiar warm scent, like a dandelion made of sunshine. The moment her consciousness brushed it, a surge of magic focused on her, insistent, demanding a connection. She forced herself to rebuff it, walked toward the cage on the far left, and stopped before the bars.
Kitty pawed at the bars with her fuzzy, blue murder mittens. “Meeya!”
It wasn’t even a meow. It was a demand that said, “Well? Aren’t you going to get me out? What took you so long?”
A padlock secured the door. She almost panicked for a split second, and then Augustine reached over and unlocked it. She blinked at the keys in his hands.
“It was hanging by the doorway,” he said. “They’re numbered.”
She swung the door open and scooped the cub into her arms. The tiny blue tiger licked her face. They were not bonded, but the cub sensed the magic that connected her and Celeste. She knew that she was with her other mother.
Augustine spun around and fired. A stream of bullets tore through the Menagerie and bit into a construct by the doorway, a large feline shape crafted with metal and magic. Strangely shaped parts rained onto the floor. The construct sank. Blue magic pulsed, and the scattered parts flew back to it, sliding seamlessly into place.
A second construct stalked through the doorway and paused next to the first, its lines sleek.