Ice-cold radiated across me, oddly calming the pain on my face while making my skin burn everywhere else. He fumbled the latching mechanism into place with a sharp click. The sound was small, but it changed my reality, cutting off the magical currents of the world.
Gone. Everything. It was silence in my veins. My body still moved, but the world no longer answered. Like the air had been ripped from my lungs. Rage filled me. I’d worked too goddamn hard to lose this.
I summoned my Majekah, targeting the collar at my throat. The collar around my neck flared with my rainbows and shook so violently I thought it was going to tear my head off.
Horax flinched, and I grinned behind the gag. They couldn’t do this to me. No one could.
A rush of cerulean blue slammed into my vision, ice water through open nerves.
A voice like ice scraping glass slid through my head:What is this?
The cold around my neck doubled, and pain shot through my skull. The trembling around my neck stopped as my Majekah, for the first time in my life, failed to destroy something. The cerulean turned into an imprint of textures, Horax’s short, fat frame and Matt’s tall build, with Brit’s body floating just behind him.
The color faded. The world drained to gray. My rage had nowhere to go.
Horax laughed and wiped sweat off his brow. “Stupid woman. You thought you were special. Only I can take that collar off you. You’re not even free.”
His voice barely pierced the raw ache, like someone had peeled back my brain and left the nerves exposed.
Horax ran a finger down my cheek. “Even a tether won’t find you now.”
Rowan, Cayden, Ezra, Xan… the names hit empty air
“The body snatchers have a mentalist.” He brushed my neck. “That collar is his creation. He took that precious tether magic and made it into what it was always meant to be—control, ultimate domination.”
Body snatchers. My fear cut through whatever shock paralyzed me. I started panting against my gag and thrashed. The ropes only tightened further, painfully pulling my shoulders and legs.
Horax leaned down so his face was inches from mine. “You are mine, girl, and I’ll take everything from the Architect, like he took everything from me.”
He spat on my face. I didn’t flinch. I wouldn’t give him that. It slid down my cheek, merging with tears I hadn’t meant to shed. With a laugh, he picked me up and slung me over his back like a sack of shit.
“Quick,” he said. “They won’t be able to track her, but they’ll know she’s missing.”
I was gagged, bound, humiliated, but my helplessness broke me. The absence of power. Of choice. Of hope. No escape. No delusion. Just pain, and the fact that I was utterly, terrifyingly alone.
Chapter 34
Ezra
Noroomforerror.Not tonight. Two years of planning locked into place like clockwork. I’d never loved Xan more than when his plans didn’t need fixing.
Unlike our miscalculation with Quinn, which still weighed on me, our plan to take The Royal Mile clicked into place.
I’d abandoned the Architect’s Mixer and stormed the empty streets connecting us to Holyrood Palace. Building after building fell under our control. With Xan’s monsters at my side, even our enemies endured us rather than lose everything.
The Whisky Hall resisted, but Logan McDonald, its owner, was busy at our Mixer. I left his guards tied in the shape of a whisky still—a gift and a warning.
It took my teams of enforcers less than an hour to secure the final building. Every person in Fight or Physically poured out of our castle to build the new gate system that would allow us complete control of our new territory.
Just outside the portcullis, I helped erect our command tent. No one could get by without physically moving my structure, which wouldn’t be happening. Moments after I covered a temporary table in maps, the first group exited. I didn’t recognize them, guests who either made camp or had allies in the city. They slowed as they walked through my tent with wide eyes. Valentino, my relations officer, greeted them by name before sending them off with an escort home.
One of our allies exited next. As surprised as our guests, he slowed. I left him to Valentino, who reminded him of our new agreement, focusing on the exchange of goods, the ban on slavery, and the community we were building.
“Took the Architect long enough.” He grinned and pressed his magic into the binding contract as if it were a love letter. “I sold out of Snog Gloves thirty minutes ago. I can see on your face that you don’t know what those are, good sir. Gloves that shock wandering hands. Think of chastity for your fingertips!”
I tuned out their chatter as another man slowed. For a moment, he looked ready to bolt, until he found my purple gaze boring into him, a vendor, not on our list of allies. Eventually, he came to the correct conclusion that the only way out was forward. When he still didn’t bend to Valentino’s smooth voice, I let him kneel and watch the parade of people exiting.
Some signed. Others joined my growing list of prisoners. My first gate reported as completed. The night could not be going better.
