And Callum. Fucking. Did.
Shackles rattled as I sprang for him, but a vicious yank snapped me back, iron biting, my elbow slamming against stone, white-hot pain tearing up my arm. “Callum,” I gasped. “Don’t—”
But he drank. Every drop. Silence swallowed the room while we waited—but nothing happened. No poison. No collapse. Thank the fates.
“No,” Callum declared, “I am not the leader of a rebel group aiming to take down the Luamis throne.”
Truth. Or close enough to feel like it. The ease in his voice, the confidence, it set my skin crawling.
Apparently, that was all the confirmation Obrann needed because his hand slashed toward Gemma as he groaned, “Her next.”
I heard the struggle first, the chain’s drag, her strangled fight. Then the guard kicked her, right in the ribs. She whimpered as she hit the ground, her body limp as cloth.
My shadow moved before I did, darkness humming low in my blood, but muted, muffled. I even struggled to hear it.
With a newly filled goblet in hand, Obrann eased back, one leg draped, a maiden massaged his free hand. “Forget that one,” he drawled, swirling his wine. His stare cut to me. “Do the girl instead.”
Ah fuck.
Killian shifted his focus, the chains clanging as the guard yanked me upright. My legs shook from fury, from the effort of holding every secret in its cage.
If Killian Ramsay got in, if he saw what I’d done, what I’d planned, he’d rip it all apart. He’d ripmeapart.
I forced everything down. Behind steel. Behind venom. Behind dark iron gates that no Angel should be able to pry.
And then I kicked. My leg snapped back, cracking into the guard’s knee. He howled, losing his grip, the shackles slipping from his fingers.
I spun, then froze. Not just still…taken.
My fingers refused to curl. My heart stuttered in its cage. My body, my will, none of it my own. Killian’s magic twisted through me, rooting deep, making me a marionette before I could even draw breath.
Relax, little vixen.
The thought wasn’t mine either. It moved across my shields like mist seeping under a door.
Don’t make this worse than it already is.
My skull pulsed, my shields straining like glass about to crack. His magic slipped through the smallest gaps, cool and invasive, curling into every hidden place I’d bricked over.
I shoved back, tried to at least, clamping more than steel around my thoughts. Tried to bury them deeper, anywhere he couldn’t reach.
We all have secrets, don’t we?
My stomach dropped. Fuck. He heard that.
I heardthattoo.A smile curled through his tone.You’re going to tell me everything you don’t want to. And you’re going to enjoy it.
Panic reached up my throat, choking me on nothing until my body was yanked hard from behind. Sensation returned in a flood of needles across my skin, my lashes fluttering violently until the burn eased.
Everyone really underestimated blinking.
Just relax.His mental fingers combed through hidden drawers.Let the truth float up, I’ll find it.
Exactly what I feared. I didn’t need some smug Angel with ocean eyes and a god complex rifling through what wasn’t his.
He already knew what Callum carried, had tasted his truth. So why hadn’t he spoken up?
When my vision cleared fully, I could see the guard still hunched over his knee, both hands clutching it as he cried out. I spat, and by some divine stroke of luck, it landed square on his cheek, sliding with gravity’s grace right into the corner of his mouth.
