Cursed Magic, Book Three of the Relic Guardian series is now available 🙂
Jamie Oxford: Friend. Foe. Bane of my existence!
I should have known better than to trust Jamie with the location of Pandora’s Box. The minute I tell him, he steals it from under MI5’s nose. Maybe I’d be impressed – if I wasn’t so furious. Now it’s in the hands of an infamous Magicai, determined to sell it to the highest bidder, who could unleash the next apocalypse. No big deal, right?
Jamie can try all he likes to redeem himself, but as usual, the fate of the world rests in my hands. Now, I have to recover the box for a second time, before it’s opened.
If only I could do it without Jamie tagging along for the ride.
Maybe the apocalypse is better than dealing with that idiot.
***
Excerpt:
My long overdue study of translation runes and the power of tongues over the past month had paid off. Using my spells, I could decipher every word on Pandora’s Box, or rather, the copy of them I had taken.
I might have been inside the most secure archives in England, deep within the London Magicai Library, where few were permitted to tread, but it would have been more than foolish – catastrophic, even – to bring Pandora’s Box through the heart of the city. It was secure, where it belonged, at the Great British History Museum.
The tension in my stomach did not ease, however.
No, it brought me no joy to translate these glyphs. My skin was cold as I read them, though it was warm – stiflingly so – down here. They foretold doom, should the box ever be opened: plagues upon the world of sickness and ravages against all good and whole until the earth lay in ruin and wreck.
Thank goodness I‘d gotten to it in time. Thank goodness I’d recovered it before it had opened. Thank goodness I’d been able to stop it. I hated to think anything might be locked away from the world, never to be seen again, but if ever an object deserved to be hidden away for all time, it was Pandora’s Box.
I remembered how it felt to hold it in my hands, as if the malevolence inside leeched out and bleached the life from me, poisoning me.
I shuddered. I was really glad the box was no longer in my care, to say the least. I knew as I sat there researching it, my boss, Duncan, would be placing it under wards beyond my knowledge that would keep it safe, secure, and most importantly, unopened.
At least, I thought he would be, but at that moment, my phone rang and his name flashed on the screen. I answered the call within a second; as much to silence the loud ringtone in the silent archives as to find out why he called.
“Duncan?”
“Zoe. I need you back here now.”
“What’s up?” I said, startled by the shaking of his voice. Not fear, not upset, but anger it seemed.
“We have a problem – a huge problem.”
Icy fear plunged through me. “The box. It’s not..?” I breathed. I didn’t dare say it. Open.
“No,” he said quickly, and a huff of relief escaped me. “Not open. Not yet. But it’s in danger.”
“I’m on my way.”
***
Cursed Magic is the third book in the Relic Guardian series, you can find it here!
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