He stumbled back, running a shaking hand through his hair, eyes wild, bright with hunger and disbelief. Lightning still clung to him, whispering in the air, faint crackles echoing through my thoughts. He looked lost, as though unsure what to do with his own body, his own power.
When his gaze met mine, I saw it in his ice-cold glare for the first time since I had known Kael Forloren. Fear.
He backed toward the door, never breaking eye contact.
I didn’t want him to leave. Not after this.
“Kael!” I called again.
He stopped only long enough to say, “You need to stay away from me.” Then he turned, wrenched open the door, and was gone,leaving me alone in the stale, charged silence of the lavatorium. Darkness settled around me like a shroud.
I turned toward the wall mirror to peer at my reflection. All I could see was the faint glow of silvery veins, Kael’s power still moving beneath my skin, until they faded into darkness.
And I understood.
The storm within him, the one whispered of whenever someone spoke of the Court Wizard, was barely contained at all. I had never imagined it could be so close to breaking. That someone like Kael Forloren could possess such fragile control.
I sank against the cold stone, shaking, not from pain alone, but from what I’d seen behind his eyes. The fear. The storm that had broken free. And the part of me that still ached for him in spite of it.
You need to stay away from me.
As if I could.
I should have fled, buried the memory before dawn. Instead, I touched the mark again and felt it hum beneath my skin, a secret heartbeat.
“I won’t stay away,” I whispered to the empty room. Then I rose, heart pounding, ready to chase after him.
Because for the first time in my life, I had felt something I’d never known before. Echoes, raw and unbound, had surged through me like a second pulse. It wasn’t only his magic that had marked me. It was mine, waking at last, answering him.
Chapter 15
Kael
The first time I’d met Evangelina Corvo, in the academy courtyards after the riots, a seed had been planted. I had tended it in secret, following her, watching from the shadows when I could, never daring to come too close. I was drawn to her even then, yet I already knew I must keep my distance. Evie threatened every wall I had built, every inch of discipline I had carved through years of practice and, to name it rightly, torment. One glance from her, and my layers of control splintered like eggshells. I was not one to lay blame on the divine, yet it felt as if she had been fashioned to undo me, to call the storm from its cage, lightning answering her presence as if she were the metal itself.
As if fate meant to mock me, she had found her way to the Court. I’d known from the moment I’d seen her in her magister robes that nothing good would come of it. I’d told myself that if she listened to me and stayed away, the world would remain intact. But who was I fooling?
Of all the flings, all the women I’ve had in my life, none of them broke my walls like Evie did. None of them moaned with that sweet, crystalline vibration that melted my bones.
I wasn’t one for kissing. Not because I disliked it, but because it served no purpose for me. I got off on making women scream my name then fucking them until their minds touched the heavens. It was the only way I could find release, though most often, I finished the act alone, once they were finally gone. I didn’t need their affection, their fragile admiration, and certainly not their loyalty. But Evie…
Evie needed only to breathe by my ear and the ache for that release rose fierce within me, a yearning to spill into her, upon her, across her skin, until she wore the mark of my seed.
The gown she wore tonight transformed her into something divine. My own little Sud goddess, her curls soft as silk, her dark eyes glimmering with tears that caught the fairy lights like stars, her lips begging to be bitten.
And for a moment, against the wall, my mouth tracing her neck, teeth grazing her skin, I’d deceived myself into believing I could keep the storm leashed. When I’d drawn her into the darkness of that cursed lavatorium, I had willed it to stay within. But then she’d come apart by my hand, and control had fled like breath from my lungs.
The way she said my name, her lyrical Sud accent turning it into a vow.
Ka-el.
I never wanted to hear it spoken any other way.
She had lost control too. I’d seen her eyes turn white, her power flaring through her like light breaking from stone the moment she’d shattered.
I’d felt the air shift around her, spiraling inward as she had drawn it into herself.
Evie was a seerling, and a very powerful one.
