My fingers curl into my palms, nails biting into skin. The warmth of the ale morphs into something suffocating. My breath quickens. Images I’ve spent years trying to bury claw at the surface, cold nights, hiding in shadows, not belonging anywhere, not feeling safe with anyone until Locke found us.
Theo senses the shift in silence and tenses slightly beside Liam, but the damage is done.
I force the lie past the lump in my throat. “Of course I have.”
The words scrape out fragile and brittle, and the moment they leave my lips, the walls of the tavern feel as if they inch closer, suffocating the air around me. The table seems too small. The room too loud. The lights too bright.
“I… excuse me,” I manage, my voice trembling as I push to my feet.
The boys call after me, but their voices fall away as the tavern’s doorway swings shut behind me and I stumble out into the chill air.
The cold hits me with startling force. It rushes into my lungs like ice water, steadying and painful all at once. The lantern light outside flickers faint blue, haloed in enchantment. A few patrons mill about, their chatter rising and falling like waves against stone. The crisp air should calm me, but it only makes me more aware of the tight coil of panic winding itself up in my stomach.
I press a hand to the wall, grounding myself with the roughness of the wood.
“You alright there, honey?”
The voice is coarse, close, too close. Before I can turn fully, a pair of rough hands clamp around my waist. They are not gentle. They grip as if they have claim to me, fingers digging through cloth and into skin.
My breath catches painfully in my throat.
I lift my gaze to find a man who smells of stale ale and sweat, his beard matted, his face smeared with dirt. His yellowed teeth show through a crooked smirk, and nothing resembling kindness exists in his expression. His eyes roam over me in a way that makes bile rise in the back of my throat.
“I’m fine,” I say, struggling to slip free. The attempt only tightens his hold.
“You don’t look fine,” he mutters, dragging me closer. The smell on him is foul.
Before I can protest further, he slams me back against the tavern wall. Pain explodes across my spine as wood splinters against my skin, catching on old scars and tearing new marks across my back. The wand beneath my clothing digs sharply into my side, its presence a jolt of pressure against my ribs.
“You don’t want to do this,” I warn, voice shaking despite my attempt at steel.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he rasps, leaning in, his breath sour against my cheek, “I think I do.”
His hand slides lower, toward the hem of my shirt.
The panic swells, heavy and suffocating.
And then something else rises inside me.
A heat.
A pulse.
A deep, ancient thrum that coils in my blood.
The man freezes mid-movement.
Because the eyes staring back at him are no longer violet.
They burn, unearthly, a color I do not recognize but feel somehow connected to, as if my very bones remember it.
He recoils, stumbling away, muttering something incoherent.
But he doesn’t get far.
A shadow moves behind him, fast and violent.
The next sound splits the air.
