“Like sentries.”
I was about to shoot him another look when the name sank in. “Order of the Sentry.”
He grinned and nodded. “Sentry. That’s what we’ll call it for short.”
For the first time in days, I truly felt like smiling. “Come on, let’s go recruit our first members.”
“I WANT to thank you all for gathering here today.” God, I never thought I’d start a speech with that line.
I stood on the stage in front of the entire coven and glanced across the crowd of women of every shape and size, every ethnicity, hair color, eye color. Some wore glasses. Others had piercings. Most of these women would have never run in the same circle, let alone found themselves living together. They’d come from all walks of life, now exiled and forced here because they had nowhere else to go. Few smiled. Most just looked so, so defeated.
They needed something to believe in. They needed hope. I knew exactly what I needed to say.
“One year ago, I was just some dumb kid wishing something would happen before I died of boredom. Then Alec von Leer found me and tried to kill me. Be careful what you wish for, I guess is the lesson I learned from that. The Council declared me the prophecy, the one destined to save our world, if you can believe it. Barely a day into my life as an elemental, and they deem me powerful enough to go up against the darkest elemental in the world. It took four different handlers to train me. Four. Alec was hell-bent on destroying our world by destroying the prophecy. But we had other plans. Despite all the odds stacked against us, we beat Alec. I questioned the Council then why they’d decreed a twenty-two-year-old with no experience, no knowledge of the world they’d asked her to save, as their best line of defense. You know what they told me?”
I looked across the crowd. They looked back, captivated by my story. “They said questioning the Council could label me as dark. That’s it. No real explanation, only a threat to stay in line and keep my mouth shut or else.”
I moved to the other side of the stage. “Fast forward to the next year. They import in a new handler for me, Spencer Dalton from the UK, a quad with the innate ability to beat any opponent he’d ever come up against. How could that possibly go bad, right? Well, it did go bad. Turns out Spencer is a leecher.” I paused as the crowd gasped. “Sounds like I don’t have to tell you how he gets his powers by leeching them from others, draining them dry before leaving them to die. That’s who the Council brought in to train me. As if dealing with a handler trying to steal my powers wasn’t enough, come to find out Spencer and Alec had teamed up to—guess what?—destroy our world by destroying the prophecy. But wait, there’s more. There was a third partner, one no one saw coming.”
Drawing in a shaky breath to hold it together, I continued. Bryan moved up behind me and rested his hands on my shoulders. I leaned back, gaining strength through the control he pushed to me through our contact. “My mother, Samantha Reed. The prophecy before me, assumed to have died fulfilling it, returned from the dead to—what else?—destroy our world by destroying the prophecy. Unfortunately, this time, they succeeded.”
Several more gasps and a few sniffles. “Our world as we knew it was no more. Dark elementals had been using dark magic to enhance the powers of young elementals. Some did okay, but others…” I hesitated as the memories of sending so many innocents to Carcerem still haunted me. I remembered how torn up the guys were when they’d lost that kid during an extraction. “They weren’t strong enough for that much power. It consumed them. It killed them. They were just kids.”
I lowered my head and regrouped. “Those who survived were the first to be outlawed by the Council, dividing our world even more. Being magically enhanced was now a crime, one that got you sent to prison just for being different. None of us could possibly know what that’s like, being persecuted and separated from our friends, our family, all for the crime of being different.”
A lot of nods in unison told me they still followed my every word. “There was a terrible attack last fall, one that killed the head of the Council, several members, professors, even the headmaster of the academy, perpetrated by one woman. My mother. She’d handed the Council to the man now in charge, Virgil Graves. How did he repay her? He killed her, right in front of me.”
My voice cracked, and I drew in a shaky breath, swallowing several times. The crowd was still, silent aside from the occasional sobs and sniffs. I glanced to my right, to Stace standing there, hands folded in front of her, tears streaming down her cheeks. She’d been there for me through it all, supporting me, fighting for me, even covering for me with the Council when necessary.
I pointed at her, bringing my point home. “Stacey Layden stepped in as headmistress and kept the academy going despite the chaos and growing tension. She kept the students safe from the dark elementals trying to destroy our world. This is the thanks she gets. Arrested for being a witch, tortured for not giving up the location of this coven. She was willing to go to prison to protect you.”
Lowering my arm, I rested and let that sink in. “The Council tried to arrest me for the same reason. The prophecy. The one they’d deemed the protector of our world. The one who’d fought tirelessly alongside four incredibly powerful elementals, defeating the dark side time and time again. None of that mattered. I’d challenged the Council. I’d stepped out of line
