Page 125 of The Witch They Fear

He studies me, unhurried. "I make it my business to know the dangerous things on this campus. And whatever the assessments say, you're the most dangerous thing on it." His eyes don't leave mine. "Right down to the door you lock every night, like the lock means something."

The cold goes all the way through me. I narrow my eyes, searching for the truth in his face. Is he the one who put that rune on my door?

Or is he just that much of an asshole?

He watches me put it together, and he enjoys it. "It's a small campus, Calypso. Doors get noticed." A beat. "Especially yours."

Something in me snaps clean through. "What the fuck is your problem with me?" It comes out low and furious, weeks of his speeches and his watching and his endless patience all giving way at once. "What do you actually want?"

The polish drops.

He's in my space before I can track it—vampire-fast, the courtly stillness gone—close enough that the candlelight around us catches on the points of his fangs where his lip's pulled back, and there's nothing warm left anywhere on his face.

"My problem," he says, soft and arctic, "is that they let things like you walk these halls and call it progress. A witch with a body count, handed a clean uniform and a second chance, seated among us like she's earned the air." His gaze drags down me like I'm something scraped off a shoe. "Better creatures than you have been put down for less. You're not a student. You're a mess nobody's finished cleaning up."

And there it is. The real thing, under all the manners.

My heart is slamming but my voice goes flat. "So you just hate witches, then. All of this, and it's that simple." I tilt my head. "Then explain something. If I'm so far beneath you—a mess you can't stand the sight of—why did you offer me your witch slot? Why open your own vein over my bag so you'd always know where I was?" I step into him, into the cold and the fangs, done giving ground. "Is that what this is, Leopold? You hate me so much you want to keep me close?"

Something shifts at the back of his eyes—pleased, almost, that I got there on my own. "Enemies closer," he murmurs. "You've heard the saying."

The rage drags my magic up with it—heat flooding behind my sternum, my fingertips lighting under the skin, sparks snapping off the ends of them into the dark between us.

So I open my hand and let the candle drop. It bounces off the toe of one very expensive shoe and rolls into the wet grass. I don't wait to see whether he bothers to look down.

I walk away first. Fingers sparking, heart a war drum, because if I have to look at Leopold’s face for one more fucking second I’m going to lose my mind.

I don't stop walking until I'm clear of the iron gate at the back of the cemetery, where the grounds go wild and dark and the vigil shrinks to a glow through the trees and the air finally stops tasting like wax and other people's grief.

My hands won't stop shaking. The heat under my ribs is still climbing—Leopold lit it and it hasn't come back down—rib by rib, pressing up under my sternum, looking for a way out. I drag in a breath and it comes back warm and useless. The grass is going brown in a ring around my boots. I need air, I need space, I need to be nowhere near a living thing when this thing building inside me goes off.

Breathe, the voice says, soft, from the warm low place where it lives. He wants you to come apart out here where he can watch. Don't give it to him.

And it helps. Of course it helps. Emric being sweet to me like always—that he probably felt the whole night curdle from wherever he is and reached across the dark to find me. The way he always seems to. I've got you. The voice doesn't say that part. I hear it anyway. My breathing drops. The heat banks to a simmer.

It's the only comfort I've had all night. I take it with both hands.

"Talking to yourself, Hex. Never a great sign."

I don't have to turn. My magic already turned for me—that sick, involuntary lurch, the current reversing, the whole compass of me swinging toward him the way it has since the night he made sure it would.

The simmer ramps back up.

Kage steps out of the dark like he's part of it. Storm-colored eyes, scar pulling one side of his mouth into something that isn't a smile, the smell of him reaching me first—cedar and iron and sweat—and under it is the wrongness of the bond, the part of me that lights up at his nearness whether I want it to or not.

"Don't," I say. "Whatever you came out here to do, don't. I'm not in the mood to be a thing you poke for fun."

"Wasn't going to poke you." He studies me. "You look like hell, though. Pretty hell. But hell."

"You forced this." It's out before I can stop it, low and shaking. "This." I press a fist to my chest, where the pull lives. "You put your blood in me and you tied me to you and you never asked. I feel you all the time. I feel you walk into a room before I see you. I never agreed to any of it."

Something flickers across his face, there and gone. "No," he says. "You didn't."

"That's it? You didn't? That’s all you’re going to say?"

"What do you want, an apology?" The not-smile drops. "I'm not going to lie to you, Hex. You've got enough people doing that." He steps closer and my magic leaps to meet him and I hate it. "I did what I did. You're still standing. Most people I get close to aren't."

"That's not an apology."