Free Enchanter's Echo by Anise Rae

face. “My fault. I’m too much of a junkyard rat for this place.”
    “I’m the one who’s sorry.” Bronte looked as shaken as Aurora. “Your father,” she whispered almost as if she was talking to herself. Tears pooled in her eyes. She clenched at her wrist and held it tight to her chest as if the medallion still encircled her there. Every senator wore the medallion around his neck, but for some reason, Bronte had worn hers around her wrist, a detail odd enough to be included in the newspaper articles.
    Tears pooled in the woman’s eyes.
    Aurora’s power stirred at her sadness. Her vibes readied for action, needing to repair the sorrow. Enchantresses were compelled to assist life to thrive in any way possible, a nearly unstoppable urge. She stepped forward to offer a touch despite her own grief.
    “I wasn’t there for my car,” Bronte whispered.
    Aurora stopped, surprised.
    Beside her, Allison gasped, her eyes wide with horror. “Bronte…no.” The whispered words were thick with warning.
    “I asked him to cut off the medallion,” she confessed.
    Aurora startled, as if her bones had rattled. Only the death of the senator could make the medallions release. No senator would ever try to cut one off. To do so would echo through every mage in the territory and seriously injure the senator. Plus, the rebound would kill anyone who tried to do the cutting.
    Allison put her hand over Bronte’s lips, a delayed attempt to seal in her secret. “Oh, Bronte, confession is good for the soul, but it’s bad for blossoming romance!”
    Aurora ignored her and stared at Bronte. “You can’t cut off a medallion. They’re the most powerfully enchanted metal possible.” Thanks to a childhood with her father, she knew more about enchanted metals than anyone she’d ever met.
    Bronte brushed away Allison’s hand. “I know. Now.” Her grieved whisper barely carried. The energy of Bronte’s sadness wrapped around her, a cold embrace.
    “The reverberation would have been terrible if you’d tried to cut it off,” Aurora explained. “It would have killed you both.” The syphon might have been ignorant, but her father hadn’t been. “He would have been crazy….”
    A punch to her belly couldn’t have stolen her breath any quicker. Though she hadn’t had much contact with her father in his last years, the entire junkyard had known he’d been on the prowl for a way to entice the reaper’s scythe to his neck. His metallist’s power had sickened his mind. He’d craved death like an addict.
    When this syphon had walked into his shop and asked for the impossible, he would have recognized the specter behind her request. Death. At last.
    Aurora’s knees weakened as a tidal wave of truth nearly crushed her to the floor. He hadn’t attacked Bronte like the newspapers had reported. Slowly, she spun away, picturing the scene. She knew exactly how he would have removed a stuck bracelet. He would have gripped his founder’s axe…his most prized tool…poised it over the medallion’s chain. Aimed. Struck. The power would have rebounded into him like lightning.
    It would have been fast way to die.
    She closed her eyes at the pain.
    The story about the car and her father trying to kill the syphon…lies. All lies.
    “Oh, this is terrible!” Allison cried. “I just wanted us all to be friends.”
    Friends? Liars. All of them. Liars with unlimited power, that’s what these people were. She twisted back around to face them. “How could you not have known?” The bite in her voice filled the room, muffling the effect of the soft music, but it played on, determined.
    Tears streaked Bronte’s face. Why had the woman even confessed? If the Republic knew what she’d done, she’d be scorned forever. She’d just handed Aurora enough information to blackmail her for the rest of her life.
    Bronte dropped her head and looked up through her dark bangs. “I was raised as a Non-mage. Believe me, Nons don’t know about medallions.