?She rolls her eyes and she’s going to have to stop doing that if she wants us to all continue thinking clearly.
?“I do believe it is not forbidden to go into the society houses and my business with Darian is none of your business.”
?My fists clench tighter and her eyes dip to the hand holding her hat and music device. Her shoulders tense and she sends me a harsher glare.
?“If you break that,” she growls, “I will break your fucking hands.”
?I contemplate for a moment to just do it. She’s acted like a brat from the moment she got here and her secrets are – her secrets. . .
?Fuck.
?Her secrets aren’t even dangerous or harrowing. They’re simply personal and it’s only because she hasn’t shared them with me – with her fated – that is irking us. She is correct. We have no right knowing her business if she doesn’t wish to tell us.
?But she shouldwantto tell us.
?I peer at her and the lack of magic I feel from her. Loosening my hold on her things to placate her as I ask, “Why can’t we see your soul?”
?It had terrified me when she finished feeding from me, pulled back, and looked me in the eye. Technically she glared, but I know she had seen it. My soul appearing for a moment just for her. When I had seen her eyes – those rosy pink eyes that I now know are not her true color – I saw nothing behind them.
?Maybe I had been wrong. What I felt – fate. It could have been wrong, a side effect from her venom and the scent of her.
?Except I could feel it. That bond between us uncemented. A tie connecting us whether or not she wanted to admit it.
?I can feel it now.
?Yet I still cannot see her soul. Even on the battlefield I felt nothing. Only her aura and power and her death sentencing.
?Fated death blows are. . . not even I, with my primordial blood, could enact something like that.
?She shrugs as if brushing it off and that irritation sparking in my blood ignites.
?“Mavyn!”
?A crest of fire arcs towards me with blinding speed and I crash into a bookshelf behind me. Ropes of blue flame wrap around my wrists, ankles, and neck keeping me in place and splayed out as red eyes lock on mine. She hadn’t even moved.
?Heat doesn’t touch my skin and my flesh doesn’t burn, but I can feel the threat of it. If she wanted to, she could turn me to ashes like she did Thorne’s rooms.
?My own power comes to greet her on instinct. My lightning jumping over the bookshelves to the floor and ceiling before me. Before I can think my magic attacks her, but my blue lightning cracking at her turns red right before it touches her. Then the scent of sweet death fills the room.
?The ground trembles with my force as I use all my strength to try breaking her hold. Using the element of water to try and douse the flame.
?It works for a moment before my wrists are slammed back above my head and trapped. So much power filling the room to the max that it feels like it’s about to explode.
?I grit my teeth against the pain from how hard her flames are digging into my skin. “You can’t kill your fated, Mavyn.”
?That’s a fact.
?But her bloodred eyes are fuming and after the battles I’ve seen her fight my fact feels false.
?She takes a step towards me and her flames tighten more. Nearly choking me now as she approaches and despite the fear and terror I should be feeling at being trapped by a larger, more powerful predator, I can’t help but be enraptured.
?I pluck the bond between us hoping it’ll snap her out of it. Hoping to halt her just enough to overthink about ending my life. Even though fated should not be able to hurt one another.
?“Mavyn,” I breath once she’s close enough. The last of the air in my lungs the only thing I would want to use it for.
?Her chest is about to brush mine when she stops. That ring of darkness and light at the edge of her iris even more apparent.
?“You can’t see it,” she whispers, my sight going in and out and her words feeling muddy, “because I ripped it out right before he claimed me. Only with a soul can you be trapped, and I refuse to be caged.”
