The Lost and the Chosen (The Lost Sentinel, #1)

by Ivy Asher

I turn up the volume and let the music coax out my inner beast, as I mentally map out how I’m going to dominate this match. Talon always makes fun of this part of my pre-fight routine. He doesn’t understand my need to visualize beating the shit out of someone, especially when I don’t know who my opponent is yet. Unfortunately, it’s just one of the many things I’m not able to explain to him. Traces of whatever it is that exists inside of me light up throughout my body.

He looks like he should be walking into a boardroom instead of this concrete, lemon-scented locker room. His suit is custom-made and pristine, at odds with the old, gruff, Viking vibe the rest of him exudes. He had long hair the first time I met him. The blond locks danced in the wind, and ocean blue eyes stared up at me, as I stood on top of his SUV with a rock in my hand. I was fifteen and homeless, running from a couple of assholes who got pissed that I dared to fight back when their group tried to steal my backpack. Talon wears his hair buzzed now, his beard shorter, more well-kept. The facial hair does little to conceal his square jaw or sharp nose. I discovered over the years that his blue eyes only ever seem to soften for me. Everyone else gets the ruthlessly cold and calculating side of Talon. Me? I get the protector and friend. At six feet two inches, he’s tall enough to hulk over me, and everything about him——from his size to the way he carries himself——oozes, don’t fuck with me.

Talon—protector, friend, Daddy long legs

I roll my neck in an attempt to alleviate the anticipation I feel. This always happens to me before a fight. It’s not nerves, and even the word anticipation doesn’t quite capture the true essence of the feeling. It’s more a drive to get on with it, a need to attack.

I don’t know what it’s like to have parents that give a shit about you. I never met my father, and Beth—my egg donor—threw me away, like the garbage she always told me I was. Talon’s the closest I’ll ever get to experience how a parent should act.

My eyes land on a man watching me with such a quiet intensity that it sets off an alarm in my brain.

There’s no flash of fang or reddening of his eyes, which would make it easy to confirm my suspicions. I call them fanged fuckers, but I doubt that’s how they refer to themselves. My best guess would be they’re some kind of vampire, but none of the ones I’ve killed ever tried to eat me; for some reason, they just wanted to take me.

The first time one of them attacked me, I was fourteen. It would have been easy to dismiss the speed and strength, or the glowing eyes as some kind of shock-induced hallucination, but I knew better than to try and convince myself that I mistook what I saw. That it was impossible. After all, if not for the impossible things I was capable of, that thing would have taken me wherever or to whomever it wanted.

My bloodlust simmers inside of me, and I revel in the potential for a challenge. I make eye contact with colossus for the first time. He licks his lips and starts air kissing, then flicking his tongue at me. Is this guy serious?

I don’t find Talon waiting to congratulate me in his usual position by the door. I don’t see him anywhere which sends a trickle of unease through me.

flash of something catches the peripheral of my eye. I freeze and scan my surroundings, alert and ready for an attack. I swear I just saw something run past me, but I don’t see anything there now. I find myself expecting the creepy, dark-haired guy from inside to pop up out of nowhere, but all I see is an expanse of packed dirt and a smattering of small shrubs. Just as I’m about to turn away, I notice a faint shimmer in the air about ten feet in front of me.

My internal power perks up, eager to answer my call. The strange markings that showed up all over my body on my sixteenth birthday begin to tingle in anticipation. I call on the energy in the markings that line the bottom curve of my butt cheeks, and throwing knives become solid in my hands.

I focus on a man who looks to be almost seven feet tall, with long red hair that falls past his shoulders. He pulls a knife from his side,

Aydin—fireballs, long red hair, almost 7ft tall

You don’t kill someone who’s surrendering. Isn’t that like a rule or a code that fighters are supposed to live by?

He’s tall with dark hair and furious green eyes. Something about his face seems familiar, but I don’t have time to think much about it before I’m dodging and evading his attack. I don’t fight back, because I’m not sure if I should.

Lachlan—uncle/father’s twin, tall, dark hair, furious green eyes

I reach over my shoulder and stroke one of the lines of markings on my back, and a staff solidifies in my hands.

I see the moment the tattooed guy realizes he’s about to get seriously fucked up. Something about the sad resignation that bleeds into his expression compels me to let go of the energy that keeps the staff solid.

Evrin—tattoos

It’s time to end this shit and show these assholes what I can really do. The command stop bellows out around me again, and for some unknown reason, this time I listen.

The chanter stands just behind Aydin, and I can feel his caramel brown eyes on me as he brushes back a few wisps of his raven locks from his face. He’s not as tall as some of his buddies, and I would place the lot of them in their early to mid-forties.

Silva—twins’ uncle, caramel brown eyes, raven black curls, caramel skin

Evrin’s dark brown hair fades from long on the top to very short on the sides. It’s super disheveled, either from all the activity or how he styles it. He looks strong like the others, but I wouldn’t call him bulky, like the men they were fighting. His features have a baby-faced quality to them. He looks younger, closer to his thirties than the others in this group. The innocence in his face is at odds with his heavily tattooed body.

Evrin—close with Aydin, healing magic, innocent face in contrast to heavily tattooed body, dark brown hair long on top shaved on sides, soft brown eyes

Aydin, the ginger giant. He easily stands a foot taller than me, and he’s thickly framed and stacked with muscle. His red, wavy hair hangs just past his shoulders, and I offhandedly wonder why he doesn’t tie it back when he fights. It must get in the way. He has a short beard that softens the angles of his jawline, and his dark denim blue eyes bear those crinkly wrinkles people who laugh and smile a lot get. I find it odd when I notice he’s not bleeding or favoring the side that I know took a knife earlier.

Aydin—elemental magic...fireballs, long red wavy hair, dark denim blue eyes, 7ft tall, short beard, crinkles from laughing/smiling a lot

“They’re traffickers. We have orders to kill them.” “Well... I didn’t know that,” I snap back, the righteous indignation falling from my voice.

Keegan, the tall tan man with light brown hair and blue eyes, comments.

Keegan—seems closest to Uncle Lachlan, spell magic, tall, light brown hair, blue eyes

“We’re paladin. We’ll find out anyway. You might as well make it easier on yourself and just tells us,” Keegan coaxes, his soft-spoken words matching up with his easygoing surfer vibe.

I meet his caramel eyes, raising my eyebrows in unspoken challenge. “And strong,” Keegan adds. “I don’t know you. We’re not friends. Don’t touch me.”

in silence for a bit, and I’m starting to relax, the sounds of the tires against the smooth road beginning to make me sleepy. “So what’s your name?” Evrin asks me, breaking up the quiet atmosphere.

I wrestle with how vague I should be about how I grew up, but my gut tells me to lay it all out there. I go with my gut. “Until I was fifteen, I was raised by a monster of a woman named Beth. There wasn’t a single moment where Beth let me forget how much she despised me. I had a sister. I was five when Laiken was born⁠—.”

I was somehow other, but I never really questioned my humanity underneath all the extra I could do. “So what the fuck am I, then?” “Well, witch is probably the name you’re most familiar with, but we call ourselves casters,” Silva tells me.

“So give me the everything I need to know about being a caster cliff notes,” I urge no one in particular.

one of five categories: Offensive magic, Defensive magic, Elemental magic, Spell magic, and Healing magic. There are casters out there with abilities in more than one branch of magic, but it’s rare,”

“What do you know about your father?” someone murmurs, but I don’t open my gritty eyes to identify who. “When I could catch Beth drunk enough to ask about him, she always said he was a fling, that she didn’t know who or where he was. But some obvious holes existed in that story. The biggest being that I have a different last name from her. I couldn’t tell you where the hell it comes from though because, eventually, I stopped asking questions. It wasn’t worth the beatings,” I mumble,

I’m a sweaty, tangled mess. What the hell just happened? I exhale a shuddering sigh and scrub my hands over my face to try and release more of the coiled tension trapped all over me. What the fuck? Small, intricate symbols run up one side and down the other of both my middle fingers. I turn my trembling hand over and find an eight-pointed star mark

I stroke my now marred skin absentmindedly. Fuck, first Beth kicks me out and now this? I take a deep breath and release it slowly. Just when I think I couldn’t feel any more lost, the world has to slap me in the face with something else. I sigh, story of my fucking life.

“This is where we’re staying. We all decided it would be best to do a quick beacon spell. It will confirm for sure if you’re a caster, and everything we need for the spell is here,” Silva tells me. Aydin gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “So you guys just up and decided this, and now you expect me to what...go with it?” I ask, incredulous. “It won’t take long, and then we’ll take you home. We’re leaving tomorrow, so this is the only chance you’ll get to find out for sure.”

I have magic. Maybe. I look back and forth between my eyes and take in the seafoam green color that leaks into a darker jade that rims my irises. Long, thick black lashes frame my large eyes, and I have a small straight nose that turns up at the end. Beth used to taunt me about my posh nose, always doing whatever she could to make me feel insecure. But I liked my eyes and my nose, so it didn’t bother me. My lips, however, are a whole other story. They’ve always been big and a constant source of teasing and torture when I was younger. Some people call them bee-stung lips, but Laiken always joked that mine were more wasp attacked.

Vinna Aylin—caster, 22yrs old, paid fighter, 5’8”, seafoam green turning jade large eyes, long thick black lashes, small straight nose that turns up at the end/posh, wasp attacked lips, long midback almost black hair with hints of plum

my long, almost black hair. I tilt my head and find the hints of plum that peek through in the right light. It’s down to the middle of my back now, cut in layers that under normal circumstances, make it look voluminous and textured. Right now, it just looks matted and tangled. I may not have known that magic was behind the things that I can do, but I’ve been using it in many ways since it first showed up.

When I’m done fighting off my inner Disney princess, I notice that the others are seated on brown leather couches and chairs arranged in the middle of the lounge area of the room. “All right, Vinna, we’re all set. We just need your blood, and we can get this spell started,” Keegan tells me.

Silva explains, and I notice for the first time that he’s standing by a set of windows instead of sitting with everyone else. His ebony curls hang loose, instead of in a ponytail, and it makes him look younger than the mid-forties I pegged him as initially.

Aydin growls and turns to scowl at Silva. He looks pissed as he stares daggers at Silva and then Lachlan. The venom in his eyes immediately makes me second guess what’s going on. Aydin turns to me, and we watch each other for a beat without speaking. “This spell will also send out a signal to any blood relatives that you may have,” he grumbles. “You deserve to know everything that it does.” Aydin’s words take a second to sink in, and when they do, I’m fucking livid.

For a child to obtain magic, both parents have to pass it down. We don’t know how you ended up with nons, or how you’ve even survived on your own for this long. It doesn’t make any sense. We need to know where you come from.”

Pricks. Well, the jokes on them. They can tell me if I’m a caster, but they’re leaving tomorrow, so even if they discover someone related to me, it doesn’t mean I’ll let them find me again. Now that I know about them, I can try to track down some other casters and see if they can teach me more about my magic—that is, if that’s even what I am.

“Impossible!” I turn around at Lachlan’s pained shout. He leaps over the back of the couch and slams me into a bookshelf. I’m so shocked that I don’t initially react. He has one hand around my throat and the other digging into my shoulder.

Rage overtakes my shock, and I call on the runes of two short swords. I move one to Lachlan’s throat and the other to his dick. The look on Lachlan’s face is pained and manic, but I see the trickle of fear that seeps into his face when he registers the blades biting into him.

Silva moves toward me, and I crouch defensively. He raises his hands in a placating gesture and stops. “I won’t hurt you. I just want to know if you know where Eden is, or Vaughn and Lance?” Silva’s voice breaks with emotion when he says the name Eden. I stare at him, completely confused.

“I’m related to you?” I question, looking at Lachlan like he’s shit I just discovered on my shoe. He solemnly nods, clearly not any happier about this revelation than I am.

I stare at Lachlan with more scrutiny than I previously had. His hair is dark like mine and styled in a very McDreamy kind of way. His eyes are a darker green, more emerald to my sea foam. We share the same high cheekbones and oval face, his the masculine version of mine. He’s all chiseled jaw and manly edges with the faintest hint of stubble on his face. I choke a little on my sudden thought.

“Vaughn Aylin…we’re identical twins,” Lachlan laments, his voice breaking at the admission. This revelation shakes me. This is what my father looks like. I stare at Lachlan, going back over the pieces of myself in his face.

“Another coven of paladin requested help with a nest of lamia they were assigned to purge. The other coven required more protective magic, so the elders assigned Vaughn. No one ever returned from that mission. The entire coven of paladin, and the lamia they were supposed to exterminate vanished. “It’s been over twenty-three years, and we’ve never stopped looking.

I can connect most of the dots now. What happened to the people they love, it makes it easier to understand the frustration and sadness that’s palpable and suffocating in this room. What I don’t get is the anger and hostility that’s directed at me. Why am I being attacked over something I wasn’t even alive for?

“You’ve come in contact with lamia?” Aydin asks, his look of shock matching the expression on everyone else’s faces. “Um...yeah,” I answer cautiously, not sure why this seems to be an issue. “By the moon, how have you survived this long on your own?”

“Lachlan is your family, and he’s claiming you; you have to go with him,” Keegan tells me. “I’m not some sweater in the lost and found or a dog at the pound; you cannot claim me.” “Vinna, you’re a caster, and as a caster, you’re considered underage and claimed by your parents or a guardian until your awakening,” Evrin explains to me with soft, sympathetic brown eyes.