They drift away, back to the bodies. I stay, staring at the symbol.
My palm still burns from the vial. Her ash. Her past. Her ghost. Her home.
…
Thirty minutes later, there’s still nothing else we can find.
We call in a trainee mage to clean the scene. Knight’s fingers fly over his phone as he mutters orders to Silver and Vicente about everyone meeting in the war room at eight to announce the curfew. Creed took off a while ago for some school bullshit—I think he secretly likes playing the sophisticated man in charge.
I’m fucking sick of whoever this bastard is already. My muscles ache with fatigue, as if demanding her touch.
Fucking moody bastard. I get the bond and my mate, but damn. I’ll at least string her out for as long as I can take it. So, when I get to her, she’s going to be desperate for me. Exactly the way I want her.
A tiny little tendril of her emotions bleeds into mine, but my mind is too slow to catch onto what it is.
I turn to leave.
“Legend,” Knight warns. “You good?”
But I’m already throwing up a portal, the air splitting in a burst of black light. I step through without another word.
Chapter Twelve
Legend
The corridor splits open around me, shadow peeling back from stone, and the first thing I see is her. She’s got blood on her throat like a necklace, jacket hacked off and riding the top of her ribs, eyes full of knives, and Creed beside her looking like the world’s most exhausted executioner.
The bond slams into me the second I’m through, vicious and greedy, a hot hook under the breastbone yanking me forward like I belong in her orbit and nowhere else. I hate it. I love it. And I’m already smiling.
“Who did this?” I ask, voice low enough to rattle the floors.
She doesn’t flinch, just tips her chin like she’s daring me to step closer. “Relax, Your Majesty. Warcraft just keeps getting more interesting.”
Creed’s gaze cuts to me, a warning so sharp it could gut a god. “You should not be here.”
“Go take attendance somewhere else,” I snap.
I step in and she doesn’t step back.
Good girl.
There’s a smear of red at the corner of her mouth that isn’t hers or mine, and something feral slides through my chest like a blade unsheathed. I lift my thumb, slow, and drag it across her lower lip. She watches me the whole time, eyes bright andunbothered, like I’m a knife trick at a street fair.
The growl crawls up my throat before I let it die in my teeth. “Say it.”
She blinks. “Say what?”
“That you’re mine.”
She smiles, sweet as poison. “Buy me dinner first.”
Creed exhales in that very special way that says he’s actively choosing not to murder either of us. “Mastery of SpellChemy at dawn,” he says, like we’re not vibrating the mortar out of the walls. “She bails or is even a moment late, I will personally see to what follows. I expect both of you to pretend to understand what consequences means.”
“Consequences?” she echoes, eyes never leaving mine. “I don’t know if you even understand the meaning of the word, big king.”
“Don’t call him king.Iam your only king, little monster.” I lean in so the edge of her breath is in my mouth and my ribs ache from being this close without breaking something. The bond is a storm under my skin. Static clawing at bone, heat licking vertebrae. That black lace thrum that says take, mark, bite, keep. And I know she has to feel some of it. How could she not?
The gods didn’t wire me to burn alone. There’s a fire in me and it’s alive and thriving—stealing my energy and demanding I bind it to hers.
