That was it. Nothing about my magic, training to harness my skills, or anything else.
“What about the deal? You gave the demon a hundred years of your life, and you’re just sending me home?”
Ah, from the astonishment on everyone’s faces, it seemed they didn’t know aboutthe bargain.
And Wolfe didn’t seem to care one way or the other that I’d spilled his secret.
“Yes. I’m sending you home.” With the wave of his hand, he summoned my satchel. He opened it and showed me that my journal was inside, along with a few other things I’d brought from the mortal realm. “Here are your things.”
He came forward and handed the bag to me. I pushed to my feet and took it.
I looked up at him, standing before his tall, beautiful, foreboding frame.
This was goodbye, and all he could do was stand there, stone-faced and immovable.
But could I blame him?
Even in my own head, I sounded fucking confused. Floating from one emotion to the next. Not knowing what I truly wanted.
He waved his hand once more, fingers wriggling as if drawing invisible threads through the air.
The skin around my wrist prickled in response. A thin line of light surfaced beneath it, faint at first, then brightening until the shape of the shackle emerged beneath my skin.
It wastheshackle.
I sucked in a breath and lifted my arm.
The band shimmered into full form, slipping through flesh as though my skin were nothing more than water. For a moment it hummed. Then it opened.
The clasp uncoiled soundlessly and the shackle drifted free, lifting from my skin and gliding through the air toward Wolfe’s outstretched hand.
He caught it easily, his fingers closing around the band as the faint glow dimmed in his palm.
The instant the light faded, something inside my chest loosened.
No. Not my chest. My heart.
Instantly I thought of the Seer’s magic and the tether she’d placed on the shackle.
The faint hum that had lingered beneath my skin, pulsing in my heart, was suddenly…gone.
And the pull that had tethered me to Wolfe vanished with it.
The silence left behind felt… wrong.
“It’s broken,” he husked. “The time spell disconnected the magic that tethered it. All of it.”
Gods it was true. The Seer’s magicwasgone.
Wolfe tore his gaze away from me and looked at Bastian and Arielle. He nodded, and they stepped forward.
"Safe travels," Wolfe said to thethreeof us. Nothing special for me.
He stepped backward, and I glanced at Alaric, Garrick, and Sirril, who all bowed with their hands placed on their hearts.
With my own heart heavy, I bowed, too. Then I met Arielle’s troubled eyes.
“It’ll be the same process as before. But quicker,” she explained, glancing from me to Bastian. “We’re entering from the magical realm. You’ll be home within… the blink of an eye.”
