Free The Van Alen Legacy by Melissa de La Cruz

could do about her heart. Her wildly beating, treacherous heart. Because all she wanted to do was run into Jack’s arms.
    “Jack,” she breathed. Even

saying his name was difficult. Was it so terrible that she had wanted so much to see him again?

God knows she had tried to stop thinking about him, had banished all thought of him to the

darkest corner of her mind.
    Yet he was always there: in

her dreams, she always went back to the apartment above the city, to that spot by the fire. You

couldn’t stop yourself from dreaming, could you? It wasn’t her fault. That was the annoying part.

However much she wanted to, her unconscious always pulled her back to him.
    To see him, living, breathing,

right here in front of her was like a direct assault on everything she had tried to hold on to

during her year-plus in exile. She had convinced herself that her love for him was dead and

buried, locked in a treasure chest below the sea, never to be reopened. She had made her choice.

She loved Oliver. They were happy, or as happy as two people could be with a bounty over their

heads. Jack was not hers to love, and never had been. Whatever they had once meant to each other

was no longer. He was a stranger.
    Besides, he was bonded now to

his vampire twin, to Mimi, his sister. It didn’t make a difference how Schuyler still –

regrettably, felt about him. It just didn’t matter. He was already bound to another. She was

nothing to him, and he to her.
    “What are you doing here?” she

asked, because he was just looking at her in silence, even after she had said his

name.
    “I’m here for you,” he said,

his mouth set in a grim line.
    Then Schuyler knew. Jack was

here on behalf of the Conclave. He was here to take her back to New York.
    Back into

custody. He was here to take her back to face the Inquisitor for sentencing. Innocent or

guilty, it did not matter, she knew what the verdict would be, they had turned

against her. Jack was one of them now. Part of the Conclave. The

enemy.
    Schuyler backed into the

opposite wall, toward the other door, knowing it was useless. The wards, the protections in place

meant there was no way to go but up and out. She would have to try it. Take a running start on

the wall and jump high enough so that she would crash through the glass. Jack noticed her eyes

flick toward the ceiling.
    “You will destroy this room if

you attempt it.”
    “What do I care?”
    “I think you do. I think you

love the H’tel Lambert as much as I do. You are not the only one who used to play in its

gardens.”
    Of course Jack had been here

before. His father had been the former Regis. The Forces had probably stayed in the same guest

wing as she and Cordelia. But so what?
    “I’ll do it if it’s the only

way. Watch me.”
    Jack took a step toward her.

“I’m not your enemy, Schuyler. No matter what you think. You’re wrong. That way is lost. There is

a protection you don’t feel, one that Lawrence did not teach you about. You will shatter against

the glass. And I will not have any harm come to you.”
    “No?”
    “You don’t have a choice. Come

with me, Schuyler, please.” Jack held out his hand. His flashing glass-green eyes were suddenly

gentle, pleading. The foreboding look on his face had all but disappeared. He looked vulnerable

and lost. It was the same way he had looked at her that night. When he had asked her to

stay.
    She gave him the same answer

she had back then.
    “No.”
    Before she could take a breath

she was already running sideways and up, so fast that she was a pink blur against the gold wall,

and then she had thrown herself upward so that she broke through the ceiling, sending a rain of

crystal shards crashing down on the marble floor. It was all over in an instant.
    He was wrong. She knew the

spell that held it in place, and she knew the counterspell that had destroyed it. Contineo and Frango . Lawrence had