“Ew. No. Like I said, he was just an accomplice.”
Kenzie snickers. “Well, youraccomplicehad never even kissed a girl before he met me, let alone seen one naked. Who knew it would be so hard to seduce someone who gets turned on so easily? Getting that gorgeous caster into bed for our first time was?—”
“Stop.”
“—like trying to crack areallyshy, really tough nut, but once I finally gothimto nut, that man got super kinky super fast. Seriously, the first time Felix whipped out magic in the bedroom, he?—”
Oh, my fucking gods.
“Shut up before I find a way to smite you,” I warn.
She bursts into laughter. I shake my head, stubbornly fighting a smile. Finally, she stops cackling and wraps me in a surprise hug, still careful not to touch any of my skin.
“Gods, I amsohappy you’re back. You have no idea.”
I blow at one of her wild curls so it will stop tickling my cheek. “The gods themselves couldn’t keep me from coming back to watch the next season of your favorite sappy forbidden romance show with you.”
“Actually, that show is super canceled,” she sighs. “I think every single TV show is. Now it’s all just news and livestreams of the shit going on. A lot of places don’t get electricity or wifi anymore, anyway. What’s left of the internet is so terrified and dismal that all I do with my cell phone right now is take filthy pictures of my quintet. They’ve gotten the hang of posing naked so I’ll have all these hot pictures to use as inspiration for painting. Felix in particular?—”
“Kenzie,”I warn.
She laughs and then gets solemn quickly. “Seriously, though, the world has been going through a lot.”
She recaps some things, like the fact that some of the Garnet Wizard’s former acolytes, a prophet, and Felix figured out how to harness the Immortal Quintet’s life forces using the etherium pieces I contained them in. They created three shielding spells that require regular magical upkeep, but otherwise function like an invisible dome that keeps most shadow fiends out. One is stationed here at the Everbound stronghold, one is used for asafe haven in Europe where children and older people were sent from all over to be safeguarded, and the third went missing months ago.
Humans and legacies are fighting at the front lines of the expanding Nether, trying to stave off the worst of Amadeus’s forces. They’re led mainly by the Reformists now, since the Legacy Council fled like cowards as soon as the Divide fell and the anti-legacy Remitters have all but fizzled out. Some wealthy humans and legacies have created their own safe places, hiring others to protect them from the fiends on the loose.
“Things aren’t great, but they would be less dire if it weren’t so damn cold all the time,” Kenzie adds, grimacing. “Even with magic, growing plants or sustaining animals for food is harder during a never-ending winter. I don’t think Everett is making people suffer on purpose, but then again…gods, May. With how much he’s changed, I’m not actually sure. He’s a Reformist commander now, but he’s fucking brutal.”
So far, she’s mentioned Everett, Baelfire, and Crypt. But…
“Where is Silas?” I manage to ask through the sudden panic trying to climb out of my stomach.
She grimaces like that’s exactly the question she didn’t want me to ask. “The last time I saw him was on that battlefield six months ago, when he went kind of…well,supercrazy. Crazy enough to try raising a bunch of people from the dead. I saw Everett freeze him so he couldn’t do that, but I haven’t seen or heard anything about him since then. Sorry, May.”
He’s fine. He has to be fine.
When repeatedly reassuring myself doesn’t help, I reach up to run my fingers over Baelfire’s mating mark, shifting aside the scarf. Feeling his trace on me is a small form of comfort.
Kenzie notices. “Oh my gods, that poor dragon. That must have been recent when everything happened, right? No wonder he went feral.”
My throat constricts as I remember Baelfire’s bright smile and his intense pride in the mark I left on his neck. He was over the moon about being bound together, but we were still in the fresh, newlybound stage when the bond was ripped away.
If his curse returned with a vengeance, and his dragon took over…
Nausea churns in my gut as that strange burning returns to my chest.
I’m going after my feral dragon soon. I’m going after all of them with everything I’ve got. Cursed or not, they’re always going to bemine.
“You were right,” I murmur, looking at Kenzie. “I shouldn’t have held back telling my quintet how I felt about them. They deserved to hear at least that much from me before everything went wrong.”
Kenzie smiles softly. “Well…now you have a second chance.”
Someone unzips the tent. I tense, but it’s just Felix, who steps inside with a solemn expression.
“What’s wrong?” Kenzie asks, brow furrowed.
He peers at me. “You did want to see Everett Frost, right?”
