Betrayal Foretold: Descended of Dragons, Book 3 by Jen Crane

Author:Jen Crane [Crane, Jen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780996575645
Publisher: Carpe Noctem Publishing, LLC
Published: 2016-05-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

“You’re doing it wrong,” she said for the fifth time in an hour.

Abia’s sharp tone zapped any tranquilizing effect the soothing ocean waves made. But we weren’t there to relax. We were working. I was learning. Abia had instructed and corrected me mercilessly for nearly a month, and I’d made great strides. Or I thought I had. Abia seemed less than impressed. As with all things magical, my abilities began within my chakra, the window to my soul. I knew this. I was familiar with it. Practiced, even. But I was still a novice, and, I suspected from observing Abia’s frustration day after day, a bit slow.

“I’m sorry,” I said for the fifth time in an hour.

Abia and I had gone over the basics of everything she intended to teach me: telepathy, telekinesis, spell-casting, ward-building and breaking. There were others, I was sure, but my brain was fried. We had worked every day for weeks. I had ingested massive quantities of information, and—I thought—was doing a fair job of putting the knowledge into practice.

“The key to entering another’s mind, Stella, is seduction.”

The talk of chakras and seduction was all too reminiscent of a similar conversation I’d had with Rowan Gresham. He was my first teacher, the one who helped me find my animal forms. He had been someone I trusted very much.

I still felt the sting of his betrayal. The wiser I grew, the more I realized I should never have placed that much trust in Gresham in the first place. It was naive to let myself fall for him. The moment I met Rowan Gresham my internal radar shouted Warning! Danger! And I had heeded my gut feeling. I’d been cautious.

But somewhere over the course of our relationship the line between wary and want had blurred. If I’d been older, I probably wouldn’t have been so surprised to learn he had an ulterior motive to get close to me. If I’d had more experience with men, I might have suspected something like that from the beginning. Instead, I was flattered that a man like him—cultured, powerful, and mysterious—wanted me like I wanted him.

I wondered how Gresham fared after discovering the truth about his wife’s death. I wondered if he still missed her. I wondered if he still missed me, though I knew I shouldn’t.

When I first entered Thayer, I depended on him for nearly everything. I knew nothing and no one else. I was young and stupid and snarky. But I had grown—away from him, into the arms of another. I had grown as a woman, and as a citizen of Thayer. I victoriously found, and then tragically lost, family. I faced unimaginable challenges and fears. And I had conquered them all.

I now faced another set of challenges. The first was growth as a magical being, embracing and mastering my inherited abilities. Due to my unique heritage as the child of an omni father and dragon mother, I had access to greater magical ability than the standard Thayerian. Than the standard dragon, even.

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