Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6) Lan Chan (uplifting novels .TXT) 📖

“So, all that talk about doing what is necessary was just talk? You really are a complete waste of space. If you won’t do what’s required, then hand over Alessia’s blood.”

I backed up even though Noah was a barrier. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Does it appear as though I’m making a joke?”

As she stepped closer, the air about her rippled. The red cloak she wore over her detailed brocade dress billowed softly against an invisible wind. I tasted bitterness in the back of my throat as a haze of smoke descended on her. Noah began to growl softly. From where I stood, I saw the hairs on the back of his nick thicken and stand on end.

“You think you know about sacrifice?” Agatha spat. She made a gesture, as though peeling apart a magical curtain. I gasped at the sudden change in her appearance. Gone was her youthful projection and in its place was a crone. Her hands became knobbly at the joints, her skin stretched tight and blackened at the fingertips. She reminded me of what was happening to the alphas in the Cabin.

“You...” I spluttered.

“This is the price of magic,” she cackled. “This is what it means to wield the kind of power that will beat back the forces of Hell.” She stepped past Noah and he didn’t move a muscle. I glanced sideways at his broad back and realised he was trembling. She had him under some kind of immobilisation spell.

Before the malachim, before Raphael’s coma and the fall of the Reserve, her magic wouldn’t have been able to affect him so easily. Shifters had a certain amount of natural resistance to magic. But right at this moment, Noah was completely at her mercy. Even if I had thrown a protection circle around him, she was too strong not to be able to break it.

“Think about what you’re saying,” Agatha urged, her gnarled figure invading my personal space. “You want to abandon your course because it’s getting a little bit harder. Or is it that you don’t want to lose that pretty face of yours?”

Trapped in her mesmerising gaze, I blurted, “There has to be some other way.”

“Tell me what it is, then,” she said. “Because it sounds like you want the power without paying the price. And that’s not how the world works. You’re a blood witch. Blood is never clean.”

Her words ran through my head all afternoon. It ate at me until I was too distracted to help in the infirmary. “Perhaps you should have the day off,” Doctor Thorne announced after the third time I accidentally ran into something and dropped the contents of the glass I was holding.

Knowing that my mind had lapsed into obsession, I ignored Noah’s displeased glare and went to the library. “You may as well go home,” I told him. “I’m going to be here a while.”

“I’ll stay.”

That conviction wavered when the afternoon sun sank low in the sky. His distraction was palpable. “I told you that you can go back.”

“My duty is to guard you while you’re at the Academy. Do you need to do this right now, though?”

“Yes.” It was all I said as I skim-read yet more pages in the Druid’s Grimoire about the possibility of retaining your soul when performing blood magic. Every time I ran into the same thing. Supernaturals had their own cause-and-effect rules, but their magic was powered by a source that had once gifted them with immortality. I was a weak human who would die after a short lifespan. It was a trade-off, really. The power of the human soul as it was unmade versus the power of magic in the everyday. I knew which I would choose at this moment.

My stomach grumbled, but I ignored it. Knowing that I was sinking into a research rabbit hole, I grunted when Noah shifted in his seat yet again. “I know this isn’t fun,” I said. “I really don’t need protection here. Tony’s outside, and Marshall and Curtis are probably circling the perimeter. There’s no need for you to hover.”

When he didn’t say a word, I glanced up to find the wolf in his eyes. “My duty is to–”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re very dedicated. I get it.” Sighing, I breathed through my nose. “Sorry. I know I’m snapping. I just get like this when I keep coming up against a brick wall.”

“Why are you doing this?” He leaned in to get a closer look at the topic of the paragraph I was reading. “‘Life essences cannot be replaced through artificial...’ Sophie. What are you trying to do?”

He slid the book away from my line of sight. “Nothing!”

“Then why does it seem like Agatha is right. You want to take the power without paying the price.”

I gritted my teeth. “The price is unfair!”

In my head, I replayed a conversation I’d had with Lex over and over again. That this mission of hers to destroy Lucifer wasn’t worth her life. That there were other alternatives. At the time, I hadn’t known that she was already unravelling because of the Angelical. Biting the inside of my cheek, I rationalised that I would still have preferred her alive than to stay in this limbo where she was lost. But in that alternate universe, Lucifer would be free, and we would be dead or enslaved. Was Agatha right? Was I just too weak to make the sacrifice?

“The price is the price,” Noah said.

I snatched the book back. “What did my great-grandfather do to stay intact?”

He shoved a hand through his hair. “Don’t start down this road again.”

“Are you trying to protect me or everybody else?”

“Both,” he hissed.

I flipped pages furiously. “Maybe that isn’t a choice!”

“There’s always a choice!”

“Not a good one.”

He slapped his hand down on the book to stop me from turning the pages. The pressure caused me to tear one corner. I winced. “Good or bad, when you make a choice, you live with the consequences. You want to have a do-over when you can’t!”