Wicked Grace (The Wicked Book 3) by Luna Joya

Author:Luna Joya [Joya, Luna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781648982927
Publisher: City Owl Press
Published: 2023-02-13T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter

Sixteen

Joelle’s head ached with a pressure even she couldn’t heal unless she wanted to interrupt the arguments once again. Alexei and Yulia fought over whether the demon hybrids had a legitimate stake in the fight against the Order or not. Their back-and-forth had gone from quiet civility to angry tirade.

“They’re slaughtering our people for being born supernatural instead of human,” Alexei said. “This should be everyone’s fight.”

Yulia shook her head. “Our kingdom has suffered no losses. I’m not pushing my father’s subjects into a war that doesn’t directly concern us.”

“You’ll just wait on the sidelines for the rest of us to take care of the problem for you?”

“The Order has targeted witches and humans for the most part. I didn’t see the witches rushing to help my father’s kingdom when we had cold winters and famine. And humans? Other than marrying into our lines, what good are they?”

Ouch. Joelle struggled to keep her mouth shut. Sure, she didn’t qualify as remotely human given her skin’s symbols and magic light show, but to discount an entire species as nothing more than breeding stock? What had Alexei’s parents been thinking when they’d encouraged a match between these two? Enemies to lovers might play out great on the screen or in a novel, but Alexei and Yulia might literally kill each other.

“What about their experimentation on supernaturals?” Alexei asked. His voice had gone low, and he stared at her instead of Yulia.

A chill went over her skin the same as when one of the voodoo priestess’s ghosts had walked through her. Joelle wanted to run from the room, to avoid this conversation with him. She’d been able to talk with his sister, but she hadn’t imagined telling him because doing so seemed too big to handle.

“You know,” she blurted out. Not her smartest observation, but she couldn’t think past the horror of him realizing how very broken she was.

Yulia interrupted her pity party. “Know what?”

Alexei didn’t answer which meant he’d given Joelle the awful honors of recounting the nightmarish existence that had led to her night terrors unless she downed a sleeping potion. Pretend it’s a report. All facts. No emotions. She could do this. “The Order marks supernaturals for culling.” Her brother had been forced to mark targets for years. She forced down the bile at the guilt over what he’d done to protect her. “The targets that aren’t immediately executed are either slated for later termination or captured for study.”

Narrowing her eyes, Yulia asked, “Explain what you mean by study.” Her accent went thick, making the final word sound like a war crimes accusation.

“Testing the limits of powers, torture, and dissection. For the last, my captor, Noxx, sometimes waited until after death, but most often conducted her analysis while the subject still lived.” Joelle wrapped her arms around herself as if she could block out the memories of the blood, of the screams. “She studied the origins of supernaturals, but the experimentation seemed to mean more to her. As though she was looking for something.

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