The bigger mistake wasn’t letting him try to crush her with a kiss. It was trying to match him movement for movement.
Heat spread through her body still, blooming up like roses reaching toward the summer sun and down like autumn roots trying to hold fast through winter. Her skin felt fevered, made new by all the places he had touched her, as if the pleasure was a blessing and now she was reborn.
She kept poring over the memory, tracing it repeatedly, hoping the repetition would dull its effect. Instead, it scored it into her brain, into every nerve ending in her body, her skin prickling with the need for him to do it again. Stella clenched her thighs together against the building ache.
“Sayla’s bow!” she huffed.
She came at the dummy with full force, blades flying, slashing against the matted straw chest. Sweat beaded at her hairline when she finally stopped moving.
Much as she wanted it to, waling on the dummy wouldn’t exorcise the ghost of the kiss from her body. She wasn’t cleansed. She wascursed. The more she tried to force the new knowledge from her mind, the deeper it rooted.
They’d solidified the bond. Now she was stuck with him.Forever.
If someone had told her months earlier that she would have this kind of connection, she would have been thrilled. It wasn’t the same as what her parents had, but it was the modern world’s closest estimation. She’d thought having someone who was always there—always connected to her—would feel comforting, but now she felt unnerved and entirely on edge. Of course, she would have also assumed the person would be Arden and that the bond would be requested instead of thrust upon her.
She huffed in frustration and went through one last sequence of footwork and advances until she felt her energy waning. She stilled and took three deep breaths.
It wasn’t the time to lose her composure. Everything was fine. She would adapt to this new normal. Teddy was a good kisser, but it didn’t have to mean anything more.
Still, she couldn’t stop seeing the look on his face when she’d asked him if he should have to change. A few honest words from him had tipped the balance between them. For years she’d wanted to know how to put him on his heels, but now she wished she didn’t know the constant pressure of perfection he felt. His coldness toward her had ensured that he’d always stayed at a comfortable distance. Suddenly he seemed too human.
A bell sounded from the direction of the competitors’ tent. The fifteen-minute warning.
Stella shook her head and forced herself through her pre-fight routine to settle her mind. She checked the laces on her breastplate and tightened her armguards. She’d struggled in the first event, but this challenge was all about memory and that was something she had well in hand.
However, her confidence didn’t settle her nerves as she walked toward the competitors’ tent for the second challenge. They’d been told nothing about the event except that they should pack to travel for seven days. The thought of being away for so long made Stellavery nervous. She was already exhausted from fighting with Teddy, fighting for her life, and fighting with Kate.
Stella was so angry that her friend hadn’t left word for her, knowing she was walking back into the arena again.
It was a relief, at least, that Arden had sent more roses to wish her luck. They’d arrived with a note that simply said, “Be safe.” He was clearly respecting her request for secrecy.
The sun beat down on her as she walked through the bustling temporary market set up by the arena. The scent of candied nuts and spun sugar filled the air, and children screamed in delight as they handed coins over and snatched their sweets.
Stella’s mind wouldn’t settle as she rounded the back of a refreshment tent.
As the competitors’ tent came into view, a hand clamped over her mouth and yanked her backward. She tried to bite the fingers covering her mouth, but her captor just tightened his grip.
Something cold and metal clamped around her wrist. She recognized Dixon’s voice as he whispered a spell before Stella managed to wiggle an arm loose and punch him in the throat. He stumbled back, gasping.
It felt like she’d been plunged underwater, the whole world dulled, bled of color and sound. She stared at the bracelet on her wrist and the recognition snapped into place. An Unsummoner bracelet, an item spelled to block a witch’s elemental magic until it was removed by the person who put it on.
Stella didn’t know how he’d acquired such an artifact. Though they were once barbarically used in training for witches pursuing the Gauntlet when her parents were young, their use had been outlawed except in extreme cases. In Olney, they were only used for dangerous criminals awaiting trial for using their magic to hurt others. They weren’t the kind of items freely available.
Stella yanked on the cuff. She hadn’t been cut off from her magic since her childhood, and she was bereft by the loss of it.
A shadow fell over her and Stella looked up as Rett stepped out from behind the tent beside them.
“No burns for us today,” Rett said. “It’s temporary. We just want to test something and we can’t do it if you’re boiling our skin off.”
Irritating that they’d learned their lesson from their previous scuffle.
“Hold her hand out,” he said.
Dixon restrained her and clamped his hand over her mouth again as Drew grabbed Stella’s arm and wrenched it to the side, petting it tenderly.
Stella’s blood ran cold, but she didn’t have time to worry about what he had in mind. He bent her finger back, and she gasped in agony. He waited. Then, he did it again a moment later with another finger. Stella’s stomach turned over, the pain so bright and sudden that her body seemed poised to get it out by any means necessary.
She swallowed the bile and bit the hand covering her mouth, trying to yell for help. She wasn’t a damsel, but even she knew that she couldn’t fight off four elite warriors without her magic or a weapon. Not when they’d had the element of surprise, at least.
