“Who?”
“I don’t know.” I tore my gaze from the shadows where she vanished, heart pounding hard enough to crack bone. “But she is the key.”
Kassio looked between me and the crowd, something tightening in his expression. “Devin?—”
“I felt it. Saw her magic. You did not?”
“No. I felt you. Your magic just spiked. So did your pulse.”
“She’s mine.” The farther she moved from me, the more I struggled to speak. To be rational. To explain. How could I tell my friend what the was happening when I did not understand myself?
Kassio’s jaw clenched. “We came here for the fae sorceress. We came here to save your soul, not chase some stranger because she made your cock hard?—”
“No,” I snapped. “I can’t explain. I must find her.”
I didn’t wait for permission from my prince. I strode down the ramparts and into the flood of celebration. The moment I crossed the boundary into the light, the people around me shrank back instinctively—no one saw me for what I was, not truly, but they felt it. The presence of Death clinging to my aura like frost.
She had disappeared.
But I could stillfeelher.
The bond had awakened. Her magic called to mine like a song, and I would follow it. Through fire. Through war. Through The Veil itself.
“She’s the answer,” I muttered.
“To what?” To my surprise, Kassio walked beside me. I’d been so preoccupied, I had failed to notice when he followed me. Dangerous, this level of distraction. Especially with the number of vampires in the city. They either worshipped or hated my kind, and some weren’t shy about killing one of us if the chance presented itself.
“To all of it. The curse. The hunger. The breaking of the Revenant bond.”
Kassio caught up beside me, moving like liquid shadow. “You think a girl?—”
“She’s not just a girl. Her magic is cold. It glitters like diamonds.”
Kassio went still. “That’s impossible.” We both knew what I implied. The Starborn clans were dead and gone, hunted to extinction more than fifty years ago.
We paused near a fountain, hidden in a spray of light and sound. I turned slowly, closing my eyes, letting the bond between us pull tight again.
“I’m going after her,” I said.
“And the High Sorceress? We traveled all this way.”
I opened my eyes. “Lady Myrienna is irrelevant now. I either find the girl, or you keep your promise to me.”
Kassio didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. He knew me. He knew what it meant when my voice went quiet, when my resolve turned to stone.
I would have her.
I would find her, bind her, drag her back to The Tower if I had to. Because if I didn’t, Kassio would have to kill me. Within afew days, I would fall. I would become the very thing I had sworn to destroy.
“I’ll watch your back,” Kassio said finally. “But if you’re wrong…”
“I’m not.”
He offered a rare smile. “Then may The Void have mercy, because you won’t.”
3
~Devin ~
