So on some levels, I understood loss, and on others, I didn’t, because I’d never had a family around to really lose.
But this being wore his pain as a shield, the lines of his past etched into his hard features and crystalizing the sapphire edges of his eyes.
“Well,” he continued, his voice hushed. “No blade for me?”
“All out, I’m afraid,” I told him, waking up to my situation once more. “But I can give you something else?” I phrased it as a question, an offering, curious to see what he would say.
His lips curled, revealing a subtle scar over the bottom left curve of his mouth. “I do love gifts.”
“Then you’re really going to enjoy this one,” I replied, my voice deceptively sweet.
I brought my knee up between his legs in the next breath, only to find my thigh trapped between his as he arched a brow.
“Do you always go for the jewels on a man?” he asked conversationally. “Or is that just your natural response to fae males? Because I do think that might help you in the trials. Hell Fae men like their females feisty and ready to fondle.”
“Trials?” I repeated, trying futilely to yank my knee out from between his legs. Aside from a minor wince, he seemed to hold me with ease, his strength dwarfing mine and forcing me to remain balanced on a single foot.
“Hmm, yes. Bride trials.” His gaze dropped to my lips, then he cocked his head. “I think they’ll quite like taming you, Camillia.”
I gaped at him. “Bride trials?” He had to be joking. “What the fuck are you talking about? And how the hell do you know my name?”
“Had you accepted the previous invitations, you would already know. But you chose to stab them all instead.”
“Invitations?” Apparently, I’d turned into a parrot who could only repeat words. “You mean the salivating Hellhounds who wanted to eat me for dinner?”
“Oh, they absolutely wanted to eat you, darling,” he agreed. “But not in the way you’re insinuating.”
My nose scrunched. “Gross.” Because I’d caught that connotation and no fucking thank you.
I gave up trying to free my leg and opted to throat-punch him instead.
Which resulted in him catching my wrist with a tsk and whirling me in his arms until my back met his chest. It knocked the air from my lungs but also released my knee. I drove my heel into his hefty boot, earning a hiss from my captor.
He muttered a spell under his breath, the words foreign to me.
Snakelike ropes of dark magic slithered around us, the bands suffocating and blinding my view of the campus grounds.
Shit!
I tried to fight him in earnest, to force him to release me, only to freeze as a blistering heat met my senses.
Hell.
Flames erupted around us, the sable rocks glowing with streaks of red and orange.
The Midnight Fae released me with a little shove. “I’ll be inside waiting to see if you can make it across.” He stepped in front of me with a cocky little grin. “Good luck, Camillia.”
He flicked a coin at my feet, then disappeared into a shadow, leaving me in the middle of what appeared to be a lava land mine.
CHAPTERTWO
AJAX
“Now, was that really so difficult?”I asked as I shadowed into the other side of the paradigm walls.
Payan snarled, lunging toward me.
I hit him with a defensive spell that put the dog on his ass with a whine that had me rolling my eyes.
