Derive by Jamie Magee Page B

fighting swim it paused and allowed her in. A second after she vanished, I crashed into The Fall. The jolt nearly knocked me out; at the very least, it stripped my energy. The only way back to the shore was a slow crawl of a swim, one that lacked any powers those of The Selected carry.
    Halfway to the shore, I felt a pull on me; the next second, I was on the shore. My grandfather had pulled me here. Instead of asking what happened or evaluating the breach, I stared at him, wondering what he had done with Skylynn. Before I could say anything, he said, “Well, guarded, with the Allurest.” I let out a sigh and rushed my hands through my soaking hair.
    That was the second time I’d ended up in that emerald sea today, and I wasn’t thrilled about it.
    “Explain,” I bit out, turning my back on my grandfather to face my men.
    “You want them to explain?” I heard in sharp response from the soul I loathed, Camlin. He emerged from the men and leered at me. “Really?” He glanced at all the men. “Didn’t I tell you? He’s bewitched. He let that demon in. He has been locked away with her all day! What happened?” he said, increasing his scowl. “I’ll tell you what happened! Your pupil, the soul in your care, decided he wanted a little adventure and went for a swim.”
    My eyes shot to The Fall.
    “That’s right. Cashton jumped. Seconds before The Fall ever opened. What kind of teacher are you anyway? Did you not even bother to tell him the basics, the risk of moving that soon? He is dead . At the very least, lurking with the dead. And if that wasn’t a valiant enough screw up for you, then let me tell you that girl that you could not catch is more than likely dead, too, because that demon sucked your energy dry. That was Cashton’s younger sister. Two crested souls were lost today due to your poor, unmanaged leadership. The Selected are worthless . No one wants this carelessness guarding our borders. No wonder we are facing peril.”
    Every man around him moved, placing him alone and openly stating disapproval, even malice, toward the Hermetic that was sent here only to find fault.
    During his rant, I had evaluated the shore. We had not yet set the mold of Cashton’s crest in the marble, but the place where he always meditated had a guitar lying there, one he always carried with him. Not far from that point was another. When I saw that, I doubted all my lessons given to Cashton were lost; he knew enough to place something that was saturated with his energy there, knew enough to create a tether on his own.
    What was blowing my mind more than anything was that now there were three more spinning circles of ice in the emerald sea, all separate, all perfect.
    I moved toward the guitar, Cashton’s place. This task of emerging was not something he could have done on his own. The process took energy and concentration. He must have believed that whoever was helping him would secure him. That was a fatal mistake; his tether of energy was broken, jaggedly, as if it had been cut in a hasty rush.
    This was a set up, one that I knew no Selected member would have the stomach to do. We respect this process too much.
    Cashton was lost to us at this moment, and it would take every Allurest we had, every Selected we had, years of gazing into that Fall to even find a sign of him. I knew who did this. Just as well as I knew my own name.
    Camlin was blocking me. He was not letting me see his day. Not one moment of it. Something he had apparently picked up on, more than likely right after the last time I had called him on his B.S., the time that I stated verbatim what he was sent here to do: destroy our role as protectors of this barrier.
    “Open your mind,” I growled as I charged him. I had his shirt gripped in my fist.
    “Why? So the evil you have been fondling all afternoon can get her claws into me? I think not.”
    I doubted I could stop myself, even if I had taken the time to think. I reared back and slugged him. If