And Max’s eyes flashed to mine.
I searched for an explanation. A sign of remorse. A hint of regret. A cry for fucking help.Anything.
But there was nothing.
Nothing but the cruel glint I’d seen every time I’d doubted him most. Right before his lips curled into his trademark smirk. “So, what do you say we get The Quest over with, huh?”
He asked the question jovially.Jovially. A word that didn’t belong in the same sentence as Max-fucking-Dread. He asked it like this was all a silly game keeping him from his real prize.
“The sooner my girl wins, the sooner I take what’s mine.”
Then, the motherfucker winked.
Right at me.
What the actual fuck?
Landon
I’d relived the Knights’ Quorum over and over again after it ended.
Her reaction.
Her strength.
Her fury.
It had haunted me. It still haunted me. But now, with the threat of losing her behind me, I saw how it had changed things.
Changed her.
If I could go back and do it all differently, I would…and yet, sometimes, I wasn’t sure Ishould.
By all accounts, she was stronger for it.
She trusted herself, owned her voice, and it fueled her to fight where there’d been little fight left in her after her father’s death.
To me, she’d always been light and free.
That day, she’d been steel forged by fire.
And now, in the face of Max Dread’s engagement, she was the fire itself.
He brought that out in her. In everyone, really. Even me.
But where I fought to smother that flare of heat that sparked my anger, Quinn was fueled by it.
It was why she needed him, too.
Together, they could be…
Incendiary.
I hadn’t wanted to admit it.
So hellbent on hating him for too many reasons to name.
Because he hated me for failing to save Desi, not realizing he thought I’d never even tried until too late.
