Shadow Demons Read Online Free PDF Page B

nervous butterflies. I’d been waiting to hear what happened to him that day.
    “I was holding on to you, pulling as hard as I could, but you were slipping away from me,” he said, his eyes dark and stormy. “And then Aerden’s spirit stepped into my body. It was the strangest feeling, like inhaling such raw power. My entire body felt electric and so incredibly strong. I don’t know how to explain it except to say that by joining his power with mine, Aerden became like a key. He unlocked the powers that had been sealed inside of me for so long.”
    I listened, my body tingling with excitement. “So you have all of your old powers back?” I asked.
    “I’m not sure,” he said. “I feel strong. I can definitely feel the old power flowing through me, but I can’t really test them all. I don’t want to take the risk of someone in the Order finding out that I’ve got my powers back.”
    I thought for a second. My skin broke out in goosebumps. “You spent all that time trying to find a way to get your powers back, and in the end, it happened accidentally. Call it fate or whatever, but the bottom line is that there was a way,” I said. “And if there was a way to break that spell, there’s got to be a way to break the spell that binds me to Aerden.”
    Sadness settled in Jackson’s eyes. “Even if that’s true,” he said. “It could take decades to find the answer.”
    Silence stretched out between us. It was the unspoken words that hit me in the deepest part of my heart. I only had a little more than a year before the Order would initiate me. We didn’t have decades to figure this out.
    We were running out of time.

Worth Fighting For
     
    “Do we really have to go?” I asked, stepping out of the boat and onto the rickety dock. “I wish we could stay here together forever.”
    “Harper…” His voice trailed off, regret eating the edge of his words.
    “Yes?” I whispered. Fear ran through me with a cold shiver. It was as if just stepping onto land had broken the spell of this magical night.
    “I think that’s the hardest part of this whole thing,” he said. “No matter how I feel about you now, I know that there’s an end to all this.”
    I lifted my chin. “I don’t know that,” I said. “And neither do you.”
    Jackson took my face in his hands and stared deep into my eyes. “There’s so much more to this world than you realize,” he said. “And no matter how much I might want things to be different, we can’t count on having a future together.” He shook his head. “You just don’t understand.”
    I swallowed and fought against the sting of tears. There it was. The one thing I didn’t want to hear from him. Not tonight. Not ever. I hadn’t lost hope yet.
    “You could help me understand,” I said, my voice wavering. “You could tell me everything you know and we could sit down together and try to figure it out. We’ve got a year before I turn eighteen. There’s still time to find a way out of this.”
    His green eyes searched mine in the moonlit shadows. There was so much pain in his eyes. “We’ve been over this a hundred times,” he said. “There’s no way to break the connection between a Prima and her demon without killing everyone.”
    “How can you be so sure?” I asked. “If there’s a spell to transfer the Prima line from one family to another, then maybe-“
    “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said sharply. He pulled his hand away from mine, and I immediately missed its warmth. “Besides, we didn’t find the books. Someone else got there first, remember? And since we aren’t even sure who that was, we don’t even know where to look for them. Not that there’s any guarantee we’d find anything in them that could help.”
    I bit my lip, unsure what to say that might bring back the closeness we’d had on the boat. Crap. Why was I constantly ruining things between us? Every time we got closer, I had to start running my mouth. And things had been going so