Tia Rider
We had chosen our place, etching our lives into a new land. Then we had defended that land when called upon to do so. And we'd won. We'd maintained our freedom.
But magic attracts magic.
As they say.
So when the sorcerers showed up, holding my recent past hostage — along with a future I had dreamed I might build — it was just as expected. In fact, I might have been getting just a little bored playing at being Emma
...They called me an amplifier. And they had bred me, raised me, and trained me to be a killer with preternatural precision. I was capable of taking, holding, and transferring power that wasn't my own with a simple touch. Skin-to-skin contact. Along with four others of my generation, I could infiltrate any magical organization, extracting whoever or whatever I'd been ordered to extricate. Then I could destroy all evidence of our passing presence.
...We had run.
We had adapted.
And when our magic came back, we changed course again. Hiding instead of running, knowing that we needed to remain hidden from the Collective. Knowing that our lives, our freedom, depended on it.
Then the sorcerer showed up, drained and disoriented. And when my past came quickly following him, I had to make another choice.
Fight or flight.
Continue to deny the power that resided in my blood,
Three days. That was all the reprieve we got before one of the Five showed up, injured and on the run. The snowstorm that had encased the property, as well as stifled the town, hadn't even melted away.
That wounded prey led our newest adversary directly to me, to Christopher. Inconvenient timing, but not unexpected.
It was the betrayal forcing me to stay my hand against that adversary that shocked me. Betrayal from the least likely
...With two of the Five compromised, I had no choice but to go on the offensive. Hiding out — even if I was pretty much in plain sight these days — in the tiny corner of peace we'd carved for ourselves in the Pacific Northwest was no longer an option.
But the person or persons responsible for dragging me away from the life I'd fought to build, to protect? Well, they would regret every moment that I had to divert my attention toward
...