Bloodline Diplomacy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 3) by Lan Chan (best short novels .txt) 📕

Bloodline, Kai had spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the source of my power. It was only when Azrael came forth to claim me that he dropped it.

“I come from where I come from,” I said. “When I figure out how to unbind my grandmother, she’ll be able to tell me.”

The blonde woman laughed again. “I’m afraid that might be difficult, sweetheart. I don’t know who that woman who raised you could be, but she’s definitely not your grandmother.”

Everything around me stilled. I turned back towards her slowly. Unsure how it happened, I was suddenly an inch away from the gate. “What did you say?”

She drew up in front of me and stepped closer. She wasn’t all that much taller than me. “You heard what I said.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You’d say anything to get your own way.” My voice hitched.

“Blue,” Kai was beside me. Sophie came to stand on my other side.

The blonde woman smirked. “That’s probably a fair assessment. But it doesn’t serve my purpose to lie to you about this. We want you to stay. So we need you to know the truth.”

“I know the truth.”

She blinked. If not for the trash she was talking, I might have believed she wasn’t enjoying what she was saying. “She might have raised you unwittingly, but she’s not your grandmother. For one thing, she’s a magical dud.”

Something clenched around my heart. I felt Basil’s presence behind me. She looked up into his face and her smile turned feral.

“Let’s go, Lex,” he said. His hand was on my shoulder, but I didn’t budge.

“Now who’s lying?” the woman said. “You’ve known since you were unbound and you didn’t say a word.”

My breath was ragged when Basil turned me to look at him. Grooves bracketed his mouth. “Basil?”

“Let’s go,” he repeated. “We’ll talk about this at home.”

I shrugged out of his hold. The blonde woman chuckled. “That’s right. You say you’re doing what’s best for her, but you keep her locked up behind a fallacy. Bethany Hastings isn’t your grandmother.”

And suddenly, the swell of the ocean wasn’t the loudest thing in my ears. It was the sound of my own internal screaming.

6

Tears stung my eyes. Inside my head, my brain threw up objections. No, no, no, no. No! My entire life had been turbulent. We moved around so much I never managed to even get used to the street names. But Nanna had always been the constant. Nanna had read to me and taught me to draw and to garden. And now they were telling me she wasn’t who she claimed to be.

My lips quivered, but when I pulled my hands away from my mouth, my teeth gritted together. The world wavered in front of me. When Kai tried to grab hold of me, his hands slid right through my body. In contrast, the air around the blonde woman shimmered. She phased through the iron bars of the gate.

Reaching up, she placed her palms on my temples. They were solid. “Breathe,” she said. I shoved her away and rounded on Basil.

“The truth,” I said. He didn’t hesitate.

“I didn’t know before I was unbound,” he said. “I believed she was your grandmother. I believed it the entire time I was cursed.”

“And now?” The frantic throbbing in my chest turned cold at the look of pity and shock on the faces of the supernatural beings around me.

“I remember the day your great-grandmother cursed me. I didn’t know Bethany until then.”

“You said you watched her grow up.”

He rubbed his temple. “I thought that was true.”

“You see,” the blonde woman said. “They even lie to themselves.”

I ignored her. “Who is she then?” I asked.

Basil shook his head. “I don’t know.”

It wasn’t good enough. I started stomping away. “Blue!” Kai snatched at my wrist.

“Take me to Seraphina.”

I thought he would object but the world disintegrated into a ripple of green and silver lights. I shivered as the feeling of pleasure and pain permeated my body. We landed in the walled garden where Nanna now spent her days. Nanna. I couldn’t even call her that anymore.

“Did you know?” I stared at him. Those emerald green eyes of his were two stones of darkness.

“No. I would have told you.”

I believed him. He knew the consequences of lying to me. Basil didn’t really lie to me either, but that didn’t alleviate the shard of glass that was tearing into my throat.

“I don’t know what to do?” It was a squeak. What I wanted was to run through the place, find my Nanna, and figure out if the blonde woman was somehow lying. What I did was sink against Kai when he wrapped his arms around me.

“I knew we shouldn’t have gone to meet them,” I said into the hard muscle of his chest. It was muffled, but he must have gotten the gist of it because his fingers threaded into the hair at the nape of my neck.

“You could never have prepared for that,” he murmured into my hair. After a long beat he added, “Whether or not she’s related by blood, she still raised you.”

A single tear, the only one I would allow, slid down my cheek. I could feel my mind trying to push the notion into a box so that I could continue to keep a lid on the scream. The urge to lash out was strong. If I went down that road, I would probably phase, and that would bring down a troop of guards on us.

As it was, somebody had noted that we had appeared out of thin air. “Malachi,” a voice behind us questioned.

Kai unwrapped his arms from around me. The frown on the other Nephilim’s face deepened when he saw me. “Is something amiss?”

“We need to see the human,” Kai said. There was no give in his request. The other Nephilim nodded and swept his cloak aside. I wasn’t sure if it was a conscious gesture, but the action revealed the broadsword strapped to his hip.

He led us