The Path of Giants by B.T. Narro (best novels to read .txt) 📕

enough about these sorts of things to warn her not to do it. Her mother, bless her heart, was always working, and Greda’s job was basically to talk about sorcery. The advice to shut up wouldn’t come from her mouth, either.

Every now and again Eden’s father would come home and take more of her mother’s hard-earned money. Eden had told her to stand up to the degenerate, but Mother was as cowardly as she was kindhearted. Mother had tried to talk to her husband to get him to change. She thought he would. Eden, however, knew he would sooner die than give up drinking and gambling.

Before Pearson, the fire mage, had showed up at Eden’s barbershop for a trim, she had heard of the man. There were not a lot of good things being said about him around the capital. Akin to the other fire mage, Josef Webb, who had taken advantage of poor Remi, Pearson was known for dabbling in illicit affairs. Most people stayed away from him.

She remembered their first encounter vividly.

“I’ve heard that you’ve been talking about sorcery,” he’d told her.

There had been something in his tone that immediately made her nervous, but she was still stupid enough to answer all his following questions.

When she had finished cutting his hair and telling him everything she knew about ordia, he told her to meet him in the basement of the Old Guard the next day, and it wasn’t proposed as if she had a choice. She knew the establishment. It was a large and usually busy tavern.

It wasn’t just curiosity that drove her to that meeting. It was fear. Pearson warned her that they could either be allies or enemies, yet all of his enemies would soon be dead.

He said that if they were to be allies, he would make Eden and her mother rich in a matter of months. The fighting would be over that quickly. When it was done, she would likely never see him again, and neither she nor her mother would have to work another day in their lives.

Eden had heard of dteria and knew it was more prevalent in Rohaer. She first thought Pearson was a spy for the king of Rohaer, but she soon found out the truth when she showed up to the Old Guard tavern and was led by someone into the basement, through a locked door.

It was that evening that she first saw just how powerful a dark mage could become. She watched Cason use nothing but sorcery to snap the neck of someone who had refused loyalty to Valinox. Cason wrapped the energy around her neck next.

“Are you with us or against us?” Cason had asked her.

“I’m with you,” she said. It was the only answer she could give.

She was glad they believed her.

It was soon after that she learned that the king, Nykal Lennox, was looking for promising young sorcerers like her. They told her they expected her to be recruited, and then they explained just how powerful Rohaer was with Valinox on their side.

She had heard of the demigods, but she didn’t know just how real they were. Valinox and Cason convinced her that Nykal Lennox had no hope and that this would all be over soon. He would surrender. Very few people would die. She could help make sure of it by acting as a traitor.

She would be rewarded handsomely when it was done.

Eden had believed all of it at the time. However, these days she was starting to wonder if she’d made the right decision. She could’ve betrayed Valinox and told the king that they were trying to use her against him and the others. They could’ve devised a trap, and maybe Valinox would be dead by now. This thought kept her up many nights. But she had been too afraid of Valinox to betray him, and it was only recently that she had started to doubt that he might win this.

Cason had been the only one loyal to Valinox who had the ability to heal any wound in a matter of seconds. Valinox had tried to keep him alive at all costs because not even Valinox could heal like Cason. All demigods regenerated much faster than any human, but only Souriff had the gift of healing, like Cason and Jon did.

Eden was both eager and reluctant to let go of Valinox as they landed deep in the forest. She didn’t like the feeling of her chest against his muscly back, but she would rather stay close to him than be alone so far into Curdith Forest. What the hell could he possibly want her to do here?

“I’m getting tired of you disappointing me,” he told her. “You will not disappoint me again.”

Valinox didn’t look too different from an ordinary man, with brown hair that was a bit messy. But his eyes…Eden never felt so small and insignificant as when they bored into her. He always looked as if the last straw was about to break, and he was about to snap with it.

“Do you understand me, human?” he asked

“I won’t disappoint you again,” she said.

He looked north, then casually said, “You’re going to open the rift to the fae world now.”

Had Eden heard that correctly? He didn’t like it when she questioned him, though.

“It can be done with ordia,” he added.

“Pardon me, but isn’t there a stronger mage of ordia who can do this for you?” She had been wondering if this was the case for some time, because there was no mage of order within Valinox’s group in the forest.

“Opening a portal that wants to open is easy. It’s closing one that’s hard. This is your chance to prove that you can still be useful to me after all your failures.”

She reminded him of something that probably wasn’t going to help her, but she couldn’t keep it in: “I did kill a powerful enemy. The fire mage.” There wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t think of Remi and the