Wrong question. My teeth ground together against the urge to ask it. To demand to know what just happened between them. Instead, I settled for, “What happened to Frank?”
She shrugged, pushing herself upright to stand. Deslen darted after her, fussing like an overzealous mother hen, murmuring warnings to be careful and let the magic fully heal her leg.
Magic? Heal her?My brow shot up, and my pulse ticked faster. What the hell had happened to her leg?
“Oh, it’s fine now,” she said, waving off his concern. “We just need to know if they caught the runaway guy since we killed this lead.” She tossed the words out carelessly, rolling her eyes as shenodded toward Frank. Her fingers were locked on Deslen’s arm, and her right leg stayed bent, trembling slightly.
I caught it. The weakness. The way she was pretending. She was seriously hurt and didn't want us to know. Then it hit me.
I wasn’t there. Not when it happened. Not when she needed someone to stop it. That was supposed to beme.My job. My goddamn reason for existing. The hole inside me, the one that had been shrinking since we last talked, ripped open again, dragging everything I had into its pool of despair.
Half-mad with guilt, I almost stepped forward and grabbed her, ready to demand answers, but Conrad brushed past all of us, slow and calm, as if he hadn’t just walked into a shit storm. He grabbed a towel from the bathroom, returned to her side, and pressed a kiss against her hairline before wiping at her stomach.
She flinched, though it was more out of surprise, before her cheeks burned. What was he cleaning?
“Why don’t we start,” he said softly, his eyes flicking to Deslen accusingly, “with why you were sitting in a pool of your own blood. I think I need to know that first.”
Her brows knitted, eyes cold, lips pressed into a thin line. I knew that look, the one that made people stop talking and fall in line. The one that always mademeback down, but not this time. Not with this black hole of despair clawing through my ribs, begging for the truth before it swallowed me whole.
My eyes slipped shut, and I drew in a slow breath, letting my power unfurl like smoke under a door. Soft, silent, invisible. Making sure not to go too fast, not to probe, I coaxed it to seep in like it was as natural as air.
Nick was closest, so I brushed against him first.
The first spark was anger, hot and metallic, snapping against my fingertips, but beneath it pulsed something else, something warm and electric—the tug of admiration, the ache of wanting. For Nova. Buried even deeper was a twisted knot of fear. Not fear ofherbut more of what she might see if she looked too close.
Before I could follow that thread, a flash of molten fury burned through my senses. Conrad. Surprising.I didn’t know the bloody bastard could feel something deeper than a spoonful.
The air around him felt charged, dangerous, yet his face was calm, perfectly controlled. He smiled at Nova even as his eyes darted toward the dark pool of her blood on the floor. The wrath surged again, hidden behind that steady pulse and practiced restraint. Our resident turned vampire had a tighter leash on his emotions than the rest of us right now, and I was almost impressed.
My magic reached for Deslen next, my lip curled up in annoyance. He was exactly what he looked like: sunlight and laughter, radiating joy so bright it almost stung. Anger flickered when his gaze caught the body on the floor, but the moment he looked at Nova, that melted into something blinding, pure unfiltered bliss. Pride and gratefulness settled over him as he looked at her hand on his arm, and I immediately wanted to gut punch him.
As my power reached Nova, I let it hover instead of touch, just close enough to sense the emotions she didn't keep locked up. If I brushed against her directly, she’d know.
Frustration hit first. No surprise there. She hated losing control, but then, underneath the irritation, something colder peeked out. Something quieter… something kind of like… fear.
Such an emotion was so foreign to her that I almost didn't believe it.
It wasn’t the kind that came from enemies, expectations, or the weight of her family name. This was personal. Her eyes darted between us, her body tight with tension like she was waiting for something to happen.
I jerked in realization and snapped my power back inside me, breaking the connection.
The woman who could stare down a horde of enemies with claws and a smile was terrified of losing people, even the people that were meant for her. She was terrified of being rejected again.
And every ounce of that fear was my fault.
“A knife?!” Nick’s voice cracked through the air, dragging me out of my thoughts. His eyes were wild, jaw set. “Afucking knife? I thought your body regenerated! I thought it was like… basically indestructible?”
She shrugged away his panicked tone, casually blowing it off in a way that ticked me off. “It was magicked… somehow.”
The word hung there—magicked—like that explained anything.
We all glanced around the floor again, looking for anything that resembled a knife, but nothing was here. Nothing but the heavy scent of iron and the residue of active magic.
“It was cursed,” Deslen murmured, eyes distant. “Ancient fae magic.” His brows knitted together, confusion bleeding into hisvoice. “But that kind of magic was sealed away before I was born. It shouldn’t even exist in this realm.”
Conrad’s tone was all business. “To recap. He stabbed you, and your body didn’t heal—fine. So how are you standing here now without an open, bloody wound?”
A flush crept up Nova’s neck, staining her skin pink. She shifted her weight, eyes darting to the floor.
