Page 98 of The Witch They Fear

Pull.

Behind my sternum. Low. Magnetic. Compass-needle. Direction. My head turns before I authorize it. My eyes find the line of trees beyond the wall. The dark between the trunks.

He's in the shadow of the third elm.

Hands in his pockets. Shoulder against the trunk. Watching.

Kage.

I shouldn't go to him. God, I know I shouldn’t go to him.

I have a sling and a bandage and a noble vampire across the quad who has just informed me that I am unprotected, and going to the shadow at the edge of the trees with a man whose blood is in my veins is going to go on a list of decisions that are just too dumb to analyze.

But he… saved me. And my magic does that current-reversal thing and I can’t help but follow the pull.

Nellie sees me move and opens her mouth to ask. I shake my head. She closes her mouth. I love her so much for not trying to stop me my eyes sting.

I cross the wall—a single careful step over, my left hand braced after I set down my glass—and I walk into the shadow.

The grass is wet. Away from the fire, the smoke thins and the air goes quieter. He doesn't move as I approach. He's also in all-black like he dressed for the event, sleeves rolled, dark hair fallen forward across his face. His jaw hasn't loosened.

Perhaps it never does.

He's watching me with the storm-blue eyes that I swear I saw split open with terror over my body on a library floor.

I stop a pace away from him.

Nobody says anything for a long, long second.

"Hi," I say.

He doesn't answer. The firelight from the quad catches on the scar through his eyebrow. His mouth doesn't move.

"Hi, Kage."

"I heard you the first time, Hex."

I exhale. He’s not going to make this easy, is he? "I came over to say thank you."

"For?"

"For the—"

I gesture vaguely with my left hand. The library. The body. The tearing. For my life. I can't make my mouth say for saving me. The words don't fit.

His eyes drop to the sling. They come back up. Whatever's in them isn't kind.

"Don't thank me," he says.

"What?"

"Don't thank me, Hex. Don't make it a thing it wasn't."

"It wasn't—"

"It wasn't anything. I felt you scared and the floor went out from under me, and I came, because I would have come if I'd been on the moon and I would have come if you were a stranger." He shifts off the trunk one inch. "It wasn't personal. It was a body's response. My blood is in you and that puts things in motion that aren't about either of us."

"Okay."