Page 120 of Revenant

“That was an accident.”

“You put half this pack of wolves on their knees in the woods.”

“For like a second! That was—”

“Tesoro.” His thumb brushes across my bottom lip and my whole argument dies in my throat. “You are a Calder. Do you understand what this means, what it has always meant? This is what you were made for, whether you wanted to be or not. You are preeminent.”

I want to say something brave or clever, something that would make them all proud. Instead, I just nod against his palms because if I try to speak, I’m going to cry, and I refuse to cry right now, not with Moriah bleeding out somewhere in that courtyard below us.

He turns me back toward the railing, and the quad has gone from bad to apocalyptic in the thirty seconds I wasn’t looking. Bastian is fighting off multiple wolves, and of course he’s laughing—an unhinged sound that carries up the stones like he’s having the night of his life. Koen is cutting through the east side of the quad with the kind of precision that makes me wonder what he did before he was turned, and Sage is three steps behind him with her hands already red past the wrists and her eyes so huge I can see the whites from here.

Elias and Eryx stalk the treelines together, two dark shapes moving in perfect sync.

Zara is leading The Hollowed down the spiral staircase from Ashcroft Tower. Azalea is on her right shoulder, and Ophelia is on her left. Della and Sloane are behind them, and all five are moving with a purpose that tells me they knew this was coming before I did.

“Five points,” he says, drawing my attention back to him. “Zara is taking the south. The others are taking the cardinals. You close it, tesoro. You need to bleed for the binding, and we’ll do the rest.”

I open my mouth to ask how much and then close it again, because I already know the answer… a lot, and we’re wasting time. He lifts me off the stone as if I weigh nothing and vaults the railing.

The drop is not a fall, though my stomach doesn’t know the difference and tries to crawl up into my mouth anyway. He lands in a crouch that rattles my teeth and sets me down in one swift motion, steadying me with one hand at my waist for the half-second it takes my knees to remember what they’re for.

“Zara!” he shouts, and she doesn’t turn, doesn’t so much as glance, but I feel the pull the second her hands reach out. Five witches humming in a pattern I can feel at the base of my skull, a net of power strung between each point with the center waiting for me to step into place and close it.

Something moves in my peripheral and Eryx is there, between me and a wolf that was two seconds from taking my legs out from under me. He drops the body and his eyes find mine. For the first time since the night he fed on me in my dorm room, I don’t flinch away from him.

“Go,” he snarls, and I listen without hesitation.

The center of the quad has a cursive C carved into the central paving stone that I have walked over a hundred times without noticing. I drop to my knees on top of it and the vibrating in my bones crescendos into something that feels like my teeth are about to vibrate out of my skull.

Bastian drops down beside me, grinning, blood coating his fangs, and pupils blown wide. He holds out his palm, offering me a long, ragged stone.

It takes a moment to understand, but considering the sharpness of the edge, I’m meant to cut myself with it—allow the blood to flow harmoniously throughout the spell.

My hand shakes so hard I nearly drop it. Bastian catches my wrist between two fingers and holds it steady, the way you’d brace a kid learning to hold a pencil. I drag the edge across my palm, and the cut splits the skin in a clean red line that somehow doesn’t hurt more than an inconvenient sting. I switch hands and slice the other.

The first point of the circle locks the second my blood hits the C beneath me, and for one long second, I’m not in my body anymore.

Something behind my sternum unlatches. A hinge I didn’t know was there swinging open, and whatever’s been living inside thrashes out as I watch the blood on my hands roll the wrong way up my arm for a half a second before I lose track of whose skin I’m wearing.

Zara says something at the south point, and I don’t hear it so much as I feel it—a hum in the back of my teeth, behind my eyes, in the soft spot under my jaw. The second point locks. Third. Fourth. Fifth.

I feel it before I see it, the way you can feel a thunderstorm in your knees before the rain starts. The dome is forming.

The air above the quad ripples, and a sheet of light catches as the barrier goes up. A light silver wolf twice the size of the others lunges for Moriah, but luckily, she senses Tristan coming and moves with lightning precision, sending him hurtling through the barrier and sealing him out, stripping him of whatever advantage he may have had.

I push more of my power into it, letting the crimson river running up my arms fuel the fire burning in the pit of my stomach. The structure ripples like waves in a disturbed ocean, and I’m shocked it survived the impact. Tristan’s lip pulls up in a snarl, the same eyes that tracked me over the dance floor in the Mooncut Lounge, now locked on mine. He slams into the dome over and over, again and again, attempting to weaken my hold and create a hole that will allow him passage.

He won’t find one.

Apparently, he’s not a fast learner. On the fourth try, the force causes me to stagger back a step, but still, I keep my hold. My body shakes from exhaustion, but I push through, knowing right now this is my best chance for survival.

I’m not good to anyone dead.

Tristan’s face splits open, a gash running down the length of his face. Blood smears across the barrier in long, wet streaks that vanish the second he pulls back. There’s something oddly satisfying about watching a man rip his own face apart. Especially when the one thing standing between us is a magical wall that I built with nothing but my blood and sheer fucking luck.

It’s strangely doing wonders for my mood.

Is it fucked up that I’m feeling a sense of…amusement during this kind of carnage? Maybe. But that’s something I can dissect later.