Weekly Snapshot: Heartwood
Big surprises are in store for everyone.
Jack decided against smiling. His teeth scared people. “Jack Coby,” he said, extending his hand. “Nice to meet you. Any friend of Elena’s is a friend of mine.”
Grace’s gaze moved from Heather to him and she reached out. Their fingers touched, and Jack’s nerves jumped hard.
He couldn’t see any sign of Grace’s power yet, but in the barest meeting of skin energy jolted through him, unexpected and disastrously uncontrolled. Challenge. Protect. Destroy—No! He snatched his hand away and smashed down his body’s reaction with every ounce of trained willpower and one overriding thought: NO. Pumping up nerves and muscle to battle readiness was the last thing this situation needed.
He retreated behind Heather, clamping iron control over the power surge as he moved. Energy bled through his skin as fast as he could channel it away. Heather’s feathers fluttered in an intangible breeze, and their soft edges lit up gold with shimmers of visible light. She snapped her wings open, curving them protectively forward around Elena and Grace, and aurorae sparkled like rainbow glitter in the air.
Grace turned paler than pale and closed her eyes. Her lips moved silently—praying, it looked like. Jack couldn’t blame her. If thinking what the fuck counted as a prayer, then he was praying too. He’d never felt anything like this in his life, and he never wanted to feel it ever again.
What he wanted was to get Elena away from it as fast as possible.
Spoilers will abound after this point, so I'll be sharing more from other works for the next month or few. Bear with me.