Table of Contents
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Also by Izzy Shows
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
Thirty Five
Thirty Six
Thirty Seven
Thirty Eight
About the Author
High Stakes
Book Six of The Codex Blair Series
Izzy Shows
Copyright © 2017 Izzy Shows
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC
BookflyDesign.com
ISBN: 1548594725
ISBN-13: 978-1548594725
For my father, who never once questioned my dreams and always believed in me. My mother, who taught me the freedom found in creative pursuits. For Josh, my boyfriend, my biggest cheerleader, and my most devout fan. I couldn’t have gotten here without any of you.
Contents
Mailing List
Also by Izzy Shows
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five
6. Six
7. Seven
8. Eight
9. Nine
10. Ten
11. Eleven
12. Twelve
13. Thirteen
14. Fourteen
15. Fifteen
16. Sixteen
17. Seventeen
18. Eighteen
19. Nineteen
20. Twenty
21. Twenty One
22. Twenty Two
23. Twenty Three
24. Twenty Four
25. Twenty Five
26. Twenty Six
27. Twenty Seven
28. Twenty Eight
29. Twenty Nine
30. Thirty
31. Thirty One
32. Thirty Two
33. Thirty Three
34. Thirty Four
35. Thirty Five
36. Thirty Six
37. Thirty Seven
38. Thirty Eight
Also by Izzy Shows
About the Author
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Also by Izzy Shows
The Codex Blair Series
Grave Mistake
Blood Hunt
Dark Descent
Wild Game
Grim Fate
High Stakes
In The Codex Blair Universe
The Fallen’s Crime
The Fallen Hunter
One
I could hear Weylyn whining in the background. My giant arctic wolf of a familiar acted like a puppy dog, and I loved it. Just then, though, I wasn’t wholly there. Couldn’t get my mind to work properly.
I was in a new environment, and that always left me feeling unsettled.
A new man’s house.
Diego.
I hugged myself, staring out one of the windows in Diego’s living room, my mind a thousand miles away and thinking about running.
Just run. Just bolt out the door and run until your lungs burn and your muscles scream at you. Just run.
Something wet touched my fingers, and I flinched. I looked to my right and saw Weylyn there--he wasn’t in his husky form, which meant that he was every inch of his massive wolf. He easily cleared my shoulder with his head, so he’d had to duck down a bit to be able to lick my hand.
I patted his head, turned, and wrapped my arms around his neck. I buried my face in his fur, realizing then that I was aching for a sense of familiarity.
Weylyn shouldn’t have been able to give me that sense of familiarity, because he was just as new to me as Diego was. But there was a part of me that felt like Weylyn had always been there, waiting for me, waiting to help me. I couldn’t deny that there was a bond between us that went further than the bite he’d taken out of me to allow our thoughts to flow together.
I’d gotten Weylyn, my familiar, during the thirteen trials I’d had to endure to prove myself worthy of training to be a Wizard. Yeah, I still wasn’t a Wizard yet. How fucking annoying was that? I’d almost died multiple times, I’d barely got rid of the mark in time to avoid getting executed, and I’d figured out that one of the officers of the First Hand was tainted when no one on the High Council had been able to.
But apparently, none of that is enough to earn you Wizard status. You have to train. You have to study. You have to test. Ugh. I’d never done that well in school. I just wasn’t able to get myself to focus. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the material; it was that there was always something else that was more interesting going on somewhere else.
And don’t even get me started on tests. The freezing sensation that settles into your chest, immobilizing your heart while your brain races at a thousand kilometres a minute. Your eyes blur, and none of the letters on the page make sense. You can’t focus, because even though your heart is frozen, you can somehow hear your heartbeat in your ears.
I hadn’t liked tests in school, and I had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t going to like them any more now that they had ‘Wizard’ slapped in front of them.
Deep breath in.
We aren’t dealing with that yet, so there’s no need to freak out.
Weylyn whined and tucked his head farther down, his jaw pressed against my back, so that he effectively pulled me closer.
“You will be fine. I will not allow anything to happen to you.” The sound of his voice in my head still surprised me, but it brought a comforting warmth with it, and I allowed my body to relax somewhat.
I extracted myself from his hold and turned to face Diego. He was standing in an archway that led farther into his house. I didn’t know where it went, exactly. The room was large, and the ceiling was high above us, leaving plenty of room for our familiars. In the centre of the room were a couch, a coffee table, two chairs that faced the coffee table from either side, and a fireplace directly opposite the couch. At his side was a rather large cougar. Nowhere near the size of Weylyn, but definitely bigger than your average cougar.
The cougar was his familiar, just like Weylyn was mine. The size of your familiar is apparently in direct proportion to the potential power a Wizard can wield in their lifetime. So, just because Weylyn was ginormous now didn’t mean I was all-powerful at the moment. It meant I had the potential to be something impressive.
I didn’t know how I felt about that. A
t the time, it had certainly puffed me up quite a bit. To look at the High Council and see all their shocked faces as they regarded the size of my familiar--yeah, I had enjoyed that. But now it felt like it was another expectation for me to live up to, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to do that.
Taking in a deep breath, I tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. Then I folded my arms over my chest and straightened my back.
“So, what’s your familiar’s name?” I tried for a smile, but I couldn’t get it to reach my eyes. I didn’t need to see my reflection to know that. I was trying very hard to be normal, but I didn’t do well in new and strange situations.
Funny, isn’t it? My whole life now was new and strange situations, but I didn’t usually get the time to focus on how different it was. Now, standing in Diego’s living room, it was all hitting me like a truck full of bricks.
The Order knew who I was, and I had a mentor now--Diego had volunteered to do that for me--and I was going to train to be a Wizard.
“Desideria,” he said, reaching out a hand and scratching between her ears. She purred. His American accent hit my ears as something odd.
“That’s a pretty name,” I said.
“It means desire.” He smiled at me, and it looked genuine. “But, somehow, I think this isn’t what you really want to be talking about.”
I grimaced. “You got me there. I don’t know what I want to talk about. It seemed like a safe enough topic.” I dropped my hands, swung them behind my back and then forward again to clasp them together in front of me. I took a few steps to the left, then thought better of it and walked back to Weylyn.
He was my rock in the storm of emotions I was experiencing, and I needed to be near him.
“You’re safe here,” Diego said, concern flickering in his eyes.
How can you know that? I thought I was safe with Aidan, but then they took him, and he died. How do you know that’s not going to happen to you? I’m bad luck.
And there it was. The root of my issues at that moment. Not the fight with Viktor--though I was still shaken up about fighting the tainted officer and almost dying in the process--but rather the possibility that I’d grow attached to Diego and lose him as well.
I didn’t have it in me to lose any more people, not after losing Aidan and Malphas.
To be fair, Malphas hadn’t died like Aidan had. He’d just left me.
But it was still a loss. I still missed him, no matter how stupid that was. Who misses a demon? Scratch that; who misses one of the Fallen and wishes they were around to joke with? A stupid girl, that’s who. I’d continue to kick myself about that until the end of time, I was pretty sure.
I didn’t give voice to the concerns that were burning inside of me, the question that was on the tip of my tongue. I knew Diego would tell me he wouldn’t be going anywhere, just like Emily was always saying, but there was no way for them to know that. OK, so maybe they wouldn’t leave me. Let’s ignore my abandonment issues for the moment and focus on the larger issue--what if they died? What if one of the monsters I was fighting decided to get to me through the people I cared about?
Better not to care.
You can’t take back that kiss.
I stiffened at the memory that intruded out of nowhere. My lips pressed against Emily’s, the light that had flooded into me, the taste of her purity. The blush that had crept across her cheeks.
My eyes widened a bit, and I shook my head to clear the memory away.
Diego frowned. “Are you all right?”
“Just processing everything,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
“But you aren’t fine right now. Why don’t you tell me what you’re trying to work through?” He pushed off the doorway, walked into the room, and took a seat in one of the chairs. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “I can try to help.”
He can’t help. He’s going to die.
Fear paralyzed me for a moment. I knew this was a deciding moment in my life--whether or not I accepted his help, whether or not I let him in. If I did, I would be risking his life. Nothing was going to stop me from fighting the monsters, and there could be a day where the monsters wanted to take my people from me.
Could I work with him without coming to care for him?
I studied his face. He had darkly tanned skin, the kind that doesn’t come from the sun but rather from generations of evolution. His brown eyes were warm and welcoming, and his thin lips were still smiling at me. He was a tall man, and he had muscles that had to come from fighting the same monsters I fought.
Hadn’t he said he was fighting a war with vampires in the States? I thought he’d mentioned that. That would explain his physique.
But it was his eyes that I kept coming back to. He had the look of a kind and caring uncle, the one that you talked to instead of your dad because he understood you and didn’t judge you for your teenage silliness. I had attached myself to Aidan foolishly, and I could see now that it was because I had lacked any kind of caring parental figures in my life, and he had seemed to fit the bill from my twisted point of view.
Would I do the same to Diego? I shuddered at the idea of it. Hadn’t it gotten Aidan killed?
I didn’t want to go through that again.
You’re being a little ridiculous and rather self-centred. Aidan died because he was too foolish to bring in reinforcements. Not because you cared about him.
The logical side of my mind was speaking up and reminding me that the world didn’t revolve around me. But the frightened child who lived inside of me, who had never gotten over the various beatings her foster fathers had given her, couldn’t understand that logic.
All she saw was someone who didn’t want to hurt her, whom she would certainly lose.
I shut the door on the child inside my mind and locked it tightly. I didn’t have time to listen to her.
Deep breath in.
I walked to the chair opposite Diego and sat down. I heard Weylyn moving behind me and saw him sit down at my right. I allowed myself to take some comfort from his presence here.
“I think you’re going to die like Aidan did,” I said, opting to be up front for once. Normally, I’d keep everything as close to me as possible and not share my thoughts--and even now, there was a part of me that was screaming how bad an idea it was to share my fears with this new person--but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he could help, I wanted him to try.
Surprise flickered in his eyes. “That’s what you’re worried about?”
I frowned. “What did you think I was worried about?”
He relaxed and leaned back in the chair. “I thought you thought I was going to murder you or something. You know, the kind of thing a normal girl would be worried about when she’s in a new man’s house. Alone.”
“Oh.” I waved a hand dismissively. “I’m not worried about that. You had plenty of opportunities to get me killed during the trials. If you wanted me dead, I’d be dead already.”
I watched as approval filled his eyes. “That’s very astute of you. But to answer your original concern--I’m not going to die like Aidan did. I can guarantee you that if I’m going to die, it will be very different.”
He was making a joke, I realized belatedly. I almost wanted to throw something at him, but I recognized it for what it was--he made light of situations that made him uncomfortable, the same way I did. Talking about Aidan had to hurt him. The two of them had been very close.
“You know what I meant,” I said, shaking my head.
“I do,” he said, sobering. “And I also know that part of the reason Aidan died is because he didn’t think to call for help. I wouldn’t make that mistake.”
“I tried to warn him,” I whispered, looking down at my hands as if they were the most interesting things in the world. “I tried to tell him it was too much and we wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“Look at me,” he said, his tone too commanding to ignore, so I looked up. “If you come to me and tell me t
hat you think something is too big for the two of us to handle, I promise I will take you seriously.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding. He was promising to listen to me, that he wouldn’t ignore me if I came to him and warned him. That meant a lot, and I allowed myself to relax somewhat.
“All right, well, that’s good,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Good. Now that we’ve cleared that up, is there anything else eating at you?”
I shook my head. We hadn’t really addressed the root of the problem--that I was afraid someone would use him against me if I grew to care for him. But I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“Then I think we should go ahead and discuss your training. What it’s going to look like, what I’m going to expect from you. Are you ready to talk about that, or do you need more time to process everything that’s happened? I realize that the trials were harder on you than they should have been. I have no idea why they picked those trials in particular, but they weren’t the usual ones.”
“I didn’t think they were,” I said, smirking.
“And yet you didn’t cry foul play,” he said, narrowing his eyes as he watched me.
I shrugged. “Why would I? It would just be a mark against me. They would have thought I was weak, and they certainly wouldn’t have adjusted the trials to be closer to what they normally are. I had to finish what they set out for me.”
He nodded. “That’s true, but most people would have given up when they realized the cards were stacked against them.”