StrategicSurrender by Elizabeth Lapthorne Read Free Book Online

scenarios
revolving around the manuscript made it hard for her to understand what each
strand could indicate.
    Time extended in her magical state and even though only a
few moments had passed Kiera felt as if she had spent hours banging her head
against a brick wall. Eventually she began to feel as if she were drowning
within the myriad of complexities surrounding the folder and needed a breath.
Drawing back and lowering her focus of magic, Kiera rubbed her head, exhausted,
the beginnings of a headache pounding at her temples.
    “I could have done without that,” she remarked tiredly.
Closing her eyes and massaging them for a moment, she collected herself.
    “There are about a million possible roads connected to that
beast of a script,” Kiera began, “and all of them are tainted with the
potential for evil and mass harm to all of wizardkind. Anyone who gets their
hands on that set of papers will have far too much power and knowledge for my
peace of mind.”
    “I agree,” Hayden said quietly. “I didn’t even look at it in
the same manner you obviously did—I took but the merest glance. Something of
that power though, something destructive enough that caused even Morgan to show
an unusual amount of caution about it could be nothing but pure evil waiting
for a vessel. I didn’t need to delve deeply to know the contents of the folder
could be earth-shattering.”
    “Literally,” Kiera muttered darkly. “If any one wizard or
witch learned how to harness time, how to cause rifts and tear holes into our
very fabric of reality…the mind just boggles.”
    “Let’s not even dwell on that,” Josh interjected. “I get the
creeps just hearing the words spoken aloud. So…”
    Kiera frowned. She had gathered Hayden had been struck by a
completely crazy idea that would blow all the other more “normal” ideas out of
the water. That, in effect, was exactly what they needed. Morgan had trusted
them with this puzzle to look outside the regular frame of mind, to think
on a totally different plane to anyone else.
    As her headache receded, Kiera racked her brain to catch up.
The memory of all the threads of potential surrounding the ritual flooded back,
burned into her brain. Kiera picked up different threads, examined the
possibilities and discarded thought after thought.
    Regardless of which strand she studied, they all were
tainted with evil. Kiera sat back and let her gaze return from inside her head
until she once again watched Josh.
    “That manuscript, the entire ritual, is evil from start to
finish,” she insisted quietly. “I don’t see any route we could take to keep it
from potentially causing harm to people. And that’s what Morgan wants—for us to
do something with it that will keep wizarding kind safe.”
    “But he wanted us to think outside the box,” Josh reminded
her. “Morgan wants us to do something no one else would think of to do. Just
clear your mind for a minute, Kiera. Ignore the fact this is a dark manuscript
of untold power. If you’re wanting to protect someone from something, what do
you do?”
    “I’d make it impossible for them to have access to it,” she
replied promptly. It was difficult for her not to think in terms of the
actuality of the grimoire there in the room with them, but she managed to pull
back slightly and look at this from a less involved point of view.
    “If this were something else, say an artifact or a relic,
I’d suggest we take it out of circulation,” Kiera replied. “We could hide it
amongst the archive boxes, or even bury it in the catacombs somewhere. There
are literal mountains of old, unusable relics down there. Hide it in plain
sight. No one would ever believe an item of such dark value would be placed
down there with all the dust and ruins.”
    “And if it were a dangerous artifact?” Hayden probed,
obviously leading her to where he had already mentally arrived. Kiera shrugged
at his suggestion and replied off the top of her head.
    “Why I’d