The Breakers Ultimatum (YA Urban Fantasy) (Fixed Points Book 3) by Conner Kressley Read Free Book Online Page B

was meant to protect above all others. But I didn’t protect her. I put her at the greatest risk I could think of. Still, what choice did I have? My intentions were noble and, if fate was good, maybe she’d understand that someday.
    I hadn’t realized my eyes had closed until I felt myself drift into sleep. And then, as though it had never left, the dream returned to me. My name was the first thing I heard, soft and distant; like from the far end of a tunnel.
    “Owen!”
    It didn’t take more than once this time for me to respond. “I’m here!” I yelled. I had no idea who was calling for me but, at this point, I’d have spoken to Allister Leehman himself so long as he was willing to listen.
    The voice sounded again. “Owen!” And with it came a light that illuminated my surroundings. I was in the tunnel again. Stones surrounded me, arching overhead.  Torches sat lit in intervals along the walls, allowing me to see symbols carved into the rock. I moved closer to them, tracing them with my fingers and trying to decipher them. But they were foggy and unreadable.
    “Owen!” The voice was closer now, and I almost recognized it.
    “I’m here,” I muttered, but my attention was on the symbols. They called to me, begging to be read, asking to be unraveled. But the more I looked at them, the foggier they became. And I knew I’d never be able to read them, not here, not like this.
    “No, Owen!” The voice called. It was loud and full of dread. And, what was more, I finally recognized it.
    Sevie stood beside me now. He panted and sweat fell in drops from his hair. His eyes; brown and tearing up, looked straight ahead, straight at the symbols. Though he didn’t say it, I could tell from the look on his face that he knew what they meant. And it wasn’t anything good.
    “You can’t read them, Owen,” he said, batting back tears. “If you read them, we can’t ever go back again. Nothing is the same if you read them.”
    “Sevie,” I said, turning to him. Pain flashed across his face and, just like it had since we were kids, his pain hurt me more than my own. “It’s gonna be okay. I’d never let anything happen to you.”
    He pulled away from me, his jaw setting and his face twisting into a mask of anger. “Then why would you bring me here?! I don’t belong here, Owen! I don’t care what they say. I’m not what she told you!”
    My heart sank, and then broke into so many pieces that I forgot this was a dream. I was standing here, really standing here, watching my brother plead with me about something he had no business knowing.
    The crone had told me so much when I went to see her. She told me that I was the Dragon, something I already knew. She told me that I’d have to let Cresta go if I wanted to see her survive, that after I did, the next time I saw her would be the day I killed her, and she told me something about my brother; something I’ve tried to forget every minute since then.
    “Sevie, it’s okay,” I said, trying to pat him on the shoulder, the way I did when we were young and he used to get down about one thing or the other. But not only did he pull away, he swatted at me, knocking my hand back. It was the first time he had ever hit me. Sevie and I weren’t the type of brothers to tussle with each other. He was too soft for that, too loving.  In fact, the idea of hurting him was the thing that plagued me the most when Cresta, the others, and I went up against the Council. It wasn’t getting killed, or being branded a traitor again. It wasn’t even losing her which, for me, was more of a certainty than a possibility. It was the look on Sevie’s face, the prospect of him having to attack me, and the grim necessity of having to fight back.
    But I should have known better, that it wouldn’t come to that. I should have known that someone like him would have seen what was right.
    “You’re my brother. You’re not anything else,” I said, surprised at the sheer amount of tears that