Silas’s grip slackened. His restless hips stilled. A moment before the bond claimed him completely, he muttered, “Good girl.” As soon as the final syllable stumbled past his lips, he went limp.
Her magic made a current between them, an elemental cycle of push and pull and rejuvenation. She shuddered under the onslaught as the bond scorched a path between them.
The bond was a link that could never be broken. It could never be tampered with. Only death could separate them, and even then, Petra had her doubts.
Blackness, familiar and comforting in its wildness, beckoned. She didn’t fight it. With her mate’s arms around her, there was nothing for her to fear.
Chapter Fifty
Silas woketo his mate sprawled on top of him, his head throbbing like someone had taken an ax between his horns, and blanketed in a contentment he hadn’t felt in his entire existence.
They were also laying the wrong way on the bed.
He breathed deep, taking in the lingering scent of sex in the air and the perfume of his mate’s skin. Magic was a tinny note at the tail-end of each breath. It tasted like blood and sunshine on his tongue. Likeher.
Bonding with Petra was a bit like being struck by lightning, he discovered. Her power had blinded him as it coursed through his veins, leaving tracks of pure fire in its wake. When it was over, he was left remade, transformed like ordinary sand to crystalline glass.
He’d always possessed magic, but this was different. What was once a spark was now a roaring furnace inside him.
Staring at the ceiling and listening to her even breathing, it occurred to him that he could do anything with it. With his expert control, he could bend any sigils to suit his will. His options were limitless and his hunger for discovery immense. Nothing could stand in his way now.
But as he sifted his claws through his mate’s long blonde hair and stared at the dark ceiling, there was a curious lack of desire to do more than that.
He felt no urge to run to his lab. He considered his many, many schematics and the ideas he’d been forced to set aside due to lack of power but felt no enthusiasm to revisit them. He didn’t feel the victorious rush he often did when he got what he wanted from someone who’d initially refused him.
Silas felt… good. Satisfied. Like he’d been hungry for something his whole life and finally, finally had his fill.
It was an odd thing to feel no itch, no need to find the next rush. Silas’s lips twisted into a wry smile.There’s no rush that compares to my witch. If I’d known what a thrill it’d be to have her… Well, Petra’s lucky I found her when I did.
He figured he’d always be drawn to creation, to puzzle-solving and tinkering, but he couldn’t imagine running off to take outright illegal jobs now. Not because he’d discovered a sense of morality between Petra’s perfect thighs, but because it just didn’t interest him anymore. The risk of getting caught or putting his mate in danger wasn’t worth it.
She didn’t know it yet, but his services had become exclusive to her and her alone.
He was her one-demon army and he wouldn’t rest until every one of her enemies was dead.
“What are you thinking about?” Petra’s groggy voice drew his attention back where it belonged — her.
“Destroying the Temple for you,” he answered, rubbing a strand of her hair between his fingers. He loved her hair. It was captured sunlight — like her magic, like how she made him feel, likeher.
“Okay, I think the bond hangover is scrambling my brain. What’d you say?”
Silas frowned and switched to gently massaging her forehead. “I’m going to destroy the Temple for you.”
Petra sounded adorably confused when she grunted, “Huh?”
“Because they’re a threat to you,” he explained, amused by her sleepy befuddlement. He loved this new version of her: well-fucked, safe, and drowsy.
When Petra continued to stare at him, he went on, “We’ve been in here for almost…” He finally thought to check his watch. “…two weeks. My programs should have cracked the encryption on the files by now. It’ll be a bitch to figure out where to start going through all the data, but as soon as I don’t feel like I was hit by a truck, I’m going to track down everyone involved with Vanderpoel. Then I’ll kill them.”
“But what if that’s the entire Gloriae?”
“Might be,” he replied, recalling Rasmus’s mutterings about soldiers. “Antonin probably acted relatively independently, and I can’t rule out that he didn’t have leverage over the High Gloriae, but I think it’s more likely that whatever he was up to, it was being done with the permission of the Temple’s ruling body.”
Maybe not all of them. Maybe not even most of them. But enough.Someonegave that man the power and money to do what he’d done.Someoneset everything in motion, and Silas had a gut feeling it wasn’t Antonin. Tyrants couldn’t exist without enablers, andtheytended to be far more dangerous.
A tyrant couldn’t resist making himself known, but an enabler was a snake in the grass, hidden and waiting for an opportunity to strike.
“Silas, you can’t kill the Gloriae,” Petra protested.
