Rise of the Magi Read Online Free PDF

wrinkles, and if you frown any harder your lips are going to fall clean off your face. When you look like that it freaks me out. Spill it. Is there something more I need to know about this?”
    His hand covered mine, making no attempt to remove it but pressing it harder against his face. “For the level of timeline breech she’s committed, they could strip her memory completely. She would cease to be who she is or remember any of us. Even her personality could change.” His Adam’s apple made a jerking bob, and a harsh breath escaped him. “It has happened once before. The young woman went mad and had to be imprisoned until she withered enough that her mind …”
    Opening my senses, his grief spilled over me, aged and thick like rotten wine. I gasped.
    He turned away from me again, though his hand remained clamped to mine.
    I rubbed his arm, and with my voice soft, said, “You knew her. What happened?”
    Face tilted up, he remained that way for a long while before speaking. “Without the mind, the body will die. It took years.”
    A blue streak of profanity blasted through my head, and I held it from escaping my lips in the face of Gallagher’s pain. Who had she been? His mother? Sister? Daughter? Would it be polite for me to ask if he wasn’t offering the information? I decided to leave the subject, at least for a while. “If the Overseers think, for one second, I’ll allow anyone to lobotomize Brígh over this, then I’ll punch another thought right through Tameryn’s skull.” Tameryn had been Brígh’s mentor for more than a year. Still eying Gallagher’s statue-like form, I began to pace. “Liam and I are supposed to make decisions for the fae, right? What we say goes, and I say that’s bullshit. Her telling us could save thousands—if we can figure out what it all means in time.”
    Gallagher cleared his throat hard. “The Overseers do not consider themselves under your rule, but serve the Goddess directly.” The edge to his voice could have shaved Liam’s scruff clean off.
    “They can’t think the Goddess would want this,” Liam said. “It’s her children who are behind this clusterfuck in the first place. She should want to help us.” He turned those haunted ocean eyes on me, uncertainty shining out from within. “Right?”
    I thought on that for a minute, all I’d been through over the years. She’d sent me animals to help me when I needed warmth and protection, shelter, bugs to warn of Parthalan’s nearness. She’d given me amazing abilities I didn’t entirely understand why or how they worked, but ones that had gotten me out of more than a few tight places. “She wouldn’t have given us these gifts and helped us to this point only to destroy us. It doesn’t make sense.” When Gallagher had nothing to add—and I noticed he’d had less and less insight over the last few weeks—I said, “Set up a meeting for me with these Overseers, and after that, one with every race on this planet that has intelligence and is willing to listen. Let’s meet at the coalition headquarters. Please. As soon as you can do it.”
    Gallagher shifted his feet, holding up a finger, his body rod-stiff. “The second, I will gladly do. Immediately. However, the Overseers do not allow males into their domain. I have no authority to demand anything from them even if I had the ability to enter their realm. If I try to go, their portal will not allow me passage.” He shivered again, and his unease made me shake, too.
    Roughing a palm over the back of his neck, Liam squinted at Gallagher. “Portal? Don’t they live here? In Iress?”
    “They do, indeed. Mostly, though I’d rather they lived a thousand miles away from here. They have powers I do not fully understand, unnatural ones if you ask me, which seem to have grown stronger of late. And, even when I have seen them within the city, I cannot penetrate their thoughts any better than I could jump head-first into a boulder and succeed in gaining