“Don’t dare try to control me,” she warns, suddenly angry and cautious. That aura around her turns darker and more dangerous. “Why. Are you. Here? And do not play riddles with me.”
“Jealousy, mostly,” I admit as I brush dust from my shoulder and morph into myself once again. She appears shocked yet untrusting of my answer. “I have known Kaius for his entire life, both as a human and a vampire, and I’ve never seen someone so quickly unravel him. Not even Yekaterina. And the other part of it? Well, I’ll just say you’ll be seeing more of me in the coming weeks. There’s a shift in the air. The Coven is angry, and Kaius alone cannot protect you from their wrath.”
I let my wings draw in, slowly. Her eyes track their path even though I can tell she’s fighting to look away, and then she meets my gaze.
“I do not need nor want your protection. I do not know you and I do not trust you. Whatever your history is with Kaius has nothing to do with me.”
I tsk. “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. It has everything to do with me, because Kaius and I vowed to protect you with our lives.” I lift up the sleeve of my shirt to show her the golden line decorating my forearm.
She takes a deep breath and then a cautious step backward, as if she’s ready to run. “If what you’re saying is true, then prove it.”
I smirk and hold up my hand. She gives me a look of panic, because she knows what it means. She knows I’m willing to make my own vow with her. After a long breath, she begins to raise her arm to take my hand.
Just as her fingers graze my palm, the temperature around us shifts.
Steel fingers clamp around my neck with enough force to crack a mortal spine. I’m shoved to my knees, made to face the one man in this cursed world who still knows how to make me beg.
He’s still full of rage and cold, calculated restraint. He’s still my Kaius. Still beautiful. His eyes are full of crimson fire and as his fingers begin to clamp even tighter around my throat, I smile and choke out:
“Miss me?”
Three
Kaius
I could end him with one quick twist. I could crush his windpipe and watch those silken feathers fall limp with the rest of him.
But he smiles. Of course he smiles. His breath is staggered from the force of my grip and he still smiles.
“Now is this any way to greet an old—”
I cut off the end of his sentence with another squeeze.
Adelasia is here, watching with confused eyes as I struggle internally with the want to end Rowan’s life and finally be rid of him after all these years. I can feel her new magic curling around my own throat. Not so tight that it’s a threat, but tight enough to serve as a warning.
“Let go, Kaius,” she says softly. Her voice is steady, but beneath the calm, a storm of confusion and concern brews. But her concern is not for me.
It’s forhim.
And that only makes me want to break his neck more. I narrow my eyes and release him with a shove that sends his back into the dirt of the courtyard. He inhales a sharp breath but comes out of our interaction looking pleased and ready to agitate me.
His wings lift him from the ground and he dusts himself clean of the wilted leaves and dry mud on his shirt while looking to my Adelasia. “Still so affectionate.”
With a quick step, I place myself between her and his wandering eyes. “As I’ve told you before, you are not welcome here. Leave, Rowan, before I lose my patience.”
“Ah, yes, because you’re so known for that.” He tilts his head and cracks his neck, then sighs as if the conversation has already begun to bore him. “I simply came to meet your lovely new flame.”
“He said you made a vow to protect me,” Adelasia says from behind me, causing me to look over my shoulder to face her.
“I made that vow to Cassius.”
“Oh, please, Kaius. You mean to tell me you didn’t suspect even for a moment he was mine? Sweet Adelasia picked up on it the moment she laid eyes on me.”
“Keep her name out of your filthy mouth,” I warn.
“Or what? You’ll rip out my wings? You’ll burn me alive? You’ll kill me? All these centuries and you haven’t changed a bit. Your threats were always false.” Rowan begins walking in circles around me and Adelasia. “And now here you are, with the fury of the entire Coven on your shoulders and a half-mortal girl kissed by magic.”
“You know nothing of her, do not speak otherwise,” I spit.
