The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 514

Liora’s POV

“Are you ready for this?”

Callum looked at me, holding the torch in his hands. We were pressed against the outer wall of the academy, a rickety wheelbarrow sitting beside us. Inside the cart were fireworks—ones we’d quietly purchased from a shop down the street. Just enough to create a large boom that would draw the witches out. Just enough to buy Zane a little time.

He nodded. “No killing,” he repeated for the third time before I could say it. I’d said it more times than I could count. We weren’t here to kill any witches. Just to create a distraction that would last long enough for Zane to find Marcus and get him out.

That was the plan, at least.

With a breath, Callum touched his lighter to the wheelbarrow, which we had taken from an alleyway nearby, and we dove behind a nearby wall as sparks flew. Callum caged me against the wall, chest pressed to mine, eyes locked onto me. My gaze flicked down to his lips, just for a moment. So did his.

Before our lips met, the whole thing went up in, fireworks booming loud enough to make my chest rattle. The wall exploded, rock flying. Black smoke climbed the academy, scorching the white stone.

A bell started clanging somewhere overhead. Doors swung open, and witches came spilling into the courtyard beyond the wall, robes flapping, hands already lifting.

So far, so good.

Callum and I looked at each other one last time. He gave my hand one squeeze, then stepped aside and shifted. I pinned myself flat against the wall as he leapt out into the courtyard in full view of the witches. I heard the witches scream as he began tearing through the courtyard, slamming into stone benches, knocking over planters and chasing the witches around the space.

Just as I poked my head into the courtyard, a blast of shimmering energy arced toward me, straight from the palm of a witch who had spotted me before I spotted her. I ducked, and the blast went over my head. Before I could fully recover, another witch shouted something and ran at me.

I ducked again, spinning, then knocked her legs out from under her with a swipe of my foot and dove behind a large planter.

Gods, there were so many of them.

I had two more closing in on me when a different sound cut underneath the bell.

This one was lower. It came up through the soles of my boots before it reached my ears, a deep droning sound that set my back teeth aching. Every witch in the courtyard went still at the exact same moment, heads tilting back, all looking up toward the tower in unison.

Callum’s wolf swung its head toward me, ears pinned flat. The look he gave me told me all I needed to know: we were both thinking the exact same thing.

Zane.

The witches turned toward us again, this time forming a line. Before I could react, a solid force, like hard air, slammed against my chest and sent me stumbling backwards into Callum’s furry body behind me. The wind knocked from my lungs, making me gasp and clutch at my chest.

Callum snarled, leaping at the witches, sending three scattering as his jaws snapped directly next to their faces.

Another witch came at me just as I was regaining my breath. I spun out from below her as she leapt toward me. My shoulder slammed into a stone bench, sending pain barking up through my neck and into my skull. In my momentary daze, I felt a cold hand, colder than it should have been, clamp around the back of my neck and fling me onto my back on the grass.

“Wait,” I said, my voice coming out raw and hoarse. “I can explain—”

“Explain it to the headmistress,” the same woman muttered.

The witches dragged us down one corridor and then the next, deeper and deeper into the tower, too fast to pay attention to our surroundings, until we reached a tall door that one of them pushed open with a tilt of her hand.

The room past it was lit by glimmering lights that shone like stars from above. Shelves ran up the walls, and a basin of water glowed in one center, and at the far end stood a wide desk upon a raised platform with a figure behind it, back half-turned to the door.

I barely saw any of it.

Because there, on his knees in the middle of the floor, wrists locked behind him in the same shimmering energy that forced Callum to shift, his head bowed and his face streaked through with soot and dried tears, was Zane.

His head came up when the door opened. His eyes found mine across the room, red and swollen and full of pain, and I understood without either of us saying a word that there was no Marcus waiting at the top of that tower. That there never had been.

Behind the desk, the figure turned around and lifted her veil.

“Headmistress Oakes,” one of the witches said, bowing her head and pressing her hands together, “we’ve captured the intruders.”