Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) by Diane Farr

he looked uncomfortable. I’d never seen Lance Donovan look uncomfortable before. “Well, that’s not carved in stone.”
    “Amber thinks it is.”
    “Okay.” He sighed and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees so he didn’t have to look at me while he spoke. “The Council chooses which spellspinners get to reproduce. There’s so few of us, we have to be careful about pedigrees . So there’s nothing personal about it. It’s just, you know, what’s best for the race. Amber and I make a good match. We’re not closely related, and…” His voice trailed off and then he shrugged. “Amber’s not so bad. She just doesn’t like you.”
    “When you have a baby with someone, you are linked to them forever.”
    “Well, yeah. In a way. But—“
    “In a way ?” I was trying not to get upset, but I couldn’t help it . “In a big way! How can you say there’s nothing personal about that?”
    Now he looked at me, frowning. “Zara, you’re thinking like a stick. Amber’s no threat to you.”
    “She tried to kill me! And don’t tell me she’s not powerful enough. I know she’s not as powerful as I am, but she could do it. All she needs is better luck and some advance planning.”
    “And an order from the Council. Trust me, Zara, she just lost her temper. She won’t really try to kill you unless the Council tells her she can. And she doesn’t have that yet.”
    “Yet?”
    “I honestly don’t see that happening.” He was trying to reassure me. “ If the Council decides to move against you , they w on’t send someone like Amber to carry out the directive. Certainly not alone. They know you’re powerful. They’ll probably send a group.”
    “And what are you and Rune and Amber, if not a group?” I was definitely feeling shaky now. “ And where is Amber ? I don’t think she went to Denny’s for a piece of pie! She’s going to the Council, Lance. She’s going to tell them what happened here tonight . They’re going to send a freaking army .”
    I could feel my words hitting home. He hadn’t thought about that, but now that I’d said it, he acknowledged it was likely. Likely that Amber would run to the Council. And likely that they’d listen to her.
    I was on a roll now. “Don’t forget what she said about you. You can’t side with me against them, Lance. They’ll take you out.”
    “I have to side with you.” His angry eyes bored into mine. “We have wholesoul .”
    “Do they know that?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?” Why is it such a freakin ’ secret?
    “Because it doubles our power. Don’t you know that? Can’t you feel it?” His frustration was palpable, a moving, breathing thing to me. And I knew it wouldn’t be that to anyone else on earth. “Our combined power is a threat to all of them. If they find out we’ve got wholesoul before they’ ve accepted you, Zara, that fact alone will make up their minds. They’ll kill us both rather than let us rule over them. ”
    I felt my eyes widen in amazement. “ But I don’t want to rule over anybody.”
    “Me neither. But we could. And that will be all they need to know.” He sighed and shook his head. “I told you it was rare, right? Wholesoul ?”
    I nodded, speechless.
    “ And I think I also told you that we have no written history.” He frowned in concentration. “Rune knows more than the rest of us. There’s a lot of oral tradition, you know. Legends and lore. And some of it is about wholesoul .” Humor gleamed briefly in his kryptonite eyes. “Which some of us think might be a fairytale. Since nobody in our times has ever had it.” Until now.
    I had a flash of realization. “You were among them. You didn’t believe in wholesoul .”
    “ Right. But I recognized it when I felt it . Any spellspinner would. We all know the stories. And in the stories, usually the two people with wholesoul join forces and, you know, overpower the others. Sometimes spilling a lot of spellspinner blood in the process . There were