He’d told me to go into my mind. So I had. And now he would experience the consequences of that suggestion.
Maybe I could knock him out andrun.
I had no idea where I was, but surely a portal existed nearby. Or maybe I could figure out how to shadow again, or whatever it was I’d done with Emelyn.
While Shade had blocked me from his mind, I could still feel his essence warming my blood. Zeph was there, too. Even Kols.
And also…Zakkai.
His presence was the strongest, perhaps because he sat beside me. But I suspected it went deeper than that. Our bond wasold. I could feel the roots of it in youth, the magic somehow married to my connection to the earth source.
He spoke again.
And I continued to ignore him, too busy trailing along the roots, searching for the beginning, seeking a way to destroy him.
No, not destroy.
Hurt.
Earth Fae weren’t violent. We created life.
His kind killed.
That was why I would never be a true Midnight Fae, no matter whom I mated or what powers roamed through me. My spirit was all Elemental Fae. His source inside me was foreign and wrong, had morphed me into an abomination against my will, and I still didn’t know how it had happened. Because he wouldn’t tell me.
I growled again, my ire mounting with each passing second.
This man played in my head without my permission.
He’dbondedme at some point.
Now he refused to explain any of it, instead choosing to kidnap me, strip me, and give me a solitary robe to wear.
And he wanted me to play in my head, to search for answers.
Instead, I found the source of my magic and balled it up into a focal point all aimed at him. He didn’t want to explain, and I was all out of patience for this game.
I opened my eyes to find him still seated beside me, his expression one underlined in amusement.
I hated that smile and those dimples. I loathed the crinkle at the sides of his silver-blue eyes. I despised his very presence and the chuckle shaking his chest.
He thought this was funny?
Then I’d give him something to really laugh about.
Flames shot out of my fingertips and directly at his chiseled chest.
Only, rather than burn him, they were absorbed by him, his grin morphing from amused to something else entirely.Heated. His irises smoldered with the power I’d just unleashed on him. And then he opened his hand.
I tried to duck out of the way, but he was too quick, the spiraling sphere of electricity nailing me in the chest and binding me in a web of intense power. My lungs halted, my heart stopped, and a puff of air escaped my lips.
“Figure out how to untangle yourself, Aflora,” he replied, the bed shifting as he slid from the sheets to his feet. “When you’re done, come find me and we’ll talk.”
A laugh threatened my frozen chest, one lacking humor.Talk, I repeated in my mind.All you do is unleash riddles!
Try solving them, little star,he shot back, his voice like liquid chocolate in my mind.Start with the cords around your chest before you suffocate yourself to death.
Zakkai!
