“Tea, please,” I say, grabbing her hand and escaping into the kitchen.
Chapter
Sixteen
KAEL
Iwatch from a distance, rage coursing through me.
Usually the mountains hum to people with blood like mine. But today they echo the storm behind my sternum. I watch dark clouds blacken and curdle over the Starborn.
My emotions. My influence.
The younger ones—like Ash and even Mags—can’t do this.
I can’t help it, and I don’t want to.
Because this—this ceremony shouldn’t be happening. My tattoos burn and ache to the bone. Dark thoughts climb with the thunderheads.
I squeeze Tempest’s sides, nearly riding down into the mix to put an end to the travesty.
But something presses back against me. Something that feels like peace—calm and stable.
It radiates from Ash and his woman. Almost like the antidote to the chaos of resonance.
But could it be possible?
My mind wanders back to what my grandmother told me about my mother—a human woman—and my father, an exiled Sentinel. Me, the offspring of their accursed union.
That temptation got them both killed… and my brothers and I cast out as rejects, monsters. Even by our family.
My uncle’s words still pierce me. “Don’t ever come back. I can’t stand to look at you—a reminder ofhim. The monster who stole my sister.”
Memories that once seared barely sting now. An ancient ache I can’t forget, but almost too distant to feel.
And the Wakefield boys, the good people of Raven’s Ridge… who ambushed Clemson and Ruby. Who didn’t stop till they thought I was dead, too.
The last mistake most of them ever made.
My thoughts go to the thin band of alien alloy around Eliza’s wrist. Forged from ancient Sentinel tech brought to humans by my father. Transformed into something delicate and beautiful, a deadly reminder of past transgressions.
Like what I watch below—a wedding no one should bless.
I pat Tempest’s neck, the same storm behind my chest that climbs the sky. The wind picks up, swirling around me like my thoughts. Like the tension that keeps me suspended between destruction and inaction.
I could stop this now. Ishould.
My hand tightens on my leather holster, ready to make good on my promise to Ash. He, Mags, Clay, Wilton. The rest of the council couldn’t stop me if they tried.
A dust devil gathers in the distance. Dark and menacing. It’s me. Always has been. Too dangerous to be human. Too human to want anything less.
The glyphs on my flesh pulse and ache, incinerating to bone and marrow.
I glimpse purple chiffon and hazelnut curls. My chest tightens, distant thunder reflecting my desperate need.
Eliza.
I can never go back. Not now. Not after knowing how her soft body feels pressed against mine. Not after tasting her breath and feeling the steadiness of the heartbeat that regulated mine. Eased my pain, burned through me like purification.
