Free The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) by Travis Simmons Page B

feel it. All she did feel were the eyes of some predatory animal on her. When she opened her eyes and looked down, she saw a glint of amber from within the shadowed hood.
    And just like that, the figure vanished, along with the pull on her alarist wyrd. In a whisper the voice of Chaos left her awareness, and Mag was once more able to breathe comfortably. A peace infused her mind when the figure left. But she knew, without knowing how she knew, that it would be back. This wasn’t the end.
    A knock on her door made Mag jump, and a startled cry drew the attention of several passersby below. She turned around to the shadowed room as the guards opened the door, and her blond charge, Astanel, stepped inside the chamber.
    “I’m surprised they let you in here,” Mag said, stepping from the chill night air and into the room. She shut the balcony doors behind her and the small fire began to warm the room almost instantly.
    Astanel didn’t speak, only went about stoking the fireplace for her, and lighting the lamps with a turn of a knob on the wall instead of with his own wyrd. The golden room brightened and seemed to chase away some of Mag’s dark thoughts.
    “What happened today?” Astanel asked, sitting in a large red chair near the curtained balcony doors.
    Mag sighed. “I honestly don’t know.”
    “They’re saying you attacked them,” Astanel told her, casting his eyes down to where his fingers fidgeted in his lap. “I thought you were different.”
    “Don’t you even think about challenging my change of heart,” Mag warned him.
    “Or you’ll what? Use your darklight on me?” Astanel asked. “You were my hope that I could shake the alarist grip on my wyrd.” He whispered the last, not wanting anyone to hear what he had to say.
    “It wasn’t my doing,” Mag said. “We were moving the debris, and suddenly the rubble shot out everywhere. It was like the darklight slipped into the weaving without my knowing it. No one sensed it before it attacked.”
    “I’ve never had that happen,” Astanel said. Mag wasn’t sure if he was being helpful, or if he was still accusing her.
    “Neither have I,” she told him.
    Astanel was silent for a while before he spoke again. “What caused it then?”
    Mag thought of the shadow she had seen in the streets below. She didn’t want to think it, but because of all of the legends she’d heard, and the feeling she had gotten from some alarists in her past, she wondered if what she’d seen was an extension of Arael. But golden eyes? It wasn’t beyond his power to weave illusions. She’d never actually met Arael, but she couldn’t help wonder if she had seen a shadow of his power that night.
    “I think it’s the Beast,” she told Astanel.
    “But why you?” he asked. “And will this happen to me as well?”
    “There’s no way I could know that,” Mag said, spreading her hands wide. “And I don’t know why it’s happening to me. Maybe because I’ve escaped his grasp before, and he’s calling me home?”
    “That’s not home. Home is with the Goddess,” Astanel said fervently, leaning forward.
    Mag itched her head and turned away. “I have to believe that.” But at the mention of the Goddess, something cancerous twisted deep inside of her.
    “There’s no reason you can think of that he would choose you?”
    “There are many reasons,” Mag said. “I saw him in the Orb of Aldaras; it’s not hard to imagine that he saw me as well. Plus, I’m on this side. Did you know that we’re going to Lytoria?”
    “What’s that have to do with anything?”
    Mag ignored the question. “We’re going to Lytoria because the Council of Guardians think that’s where our final stand will be.”
    “Okay?”
    “It’s possible that he’s trying to use me on the inside, working against the group.”
    “Then why would he have done that with the wreckage today?”
    “Who knows the mind of Chaos?”
    “That sounds like a weak excuse.” Astanel sighed. “Alright,