Felix stumbled backward, clutching his shoulder, blood seeping from his sleeve.
“You’re hurt,” Avery said, going to the bars that separated their cells.
“It’s just a flesh wound.”
“Let me look at it.”
“It’s kind of sexy when you order me around.” A smirk pulled at his lips, but she could still see the hurt he was masking. The breaths he took were shallow and pained, and he gripped his arm like he was holding the very thing together.
“Shut up and come here.”
“Reoww,” he purred.
Avery only rolled her eyes as he moved closer to the bars so that she could reach between them to touch her hand to his shoulder. He winced at the contact as she touched it and tried to draw on the well of power like she had practiced. She searched deep inside herself, but nothing came when she called upon it. It was like she was empty. Even her mating marks had faded. Like she had been a few weeks ago.
Again, she reached for that dark current inside her—nothing. Nada. Fuck all. Frustration bloomed through her.
“Try using your magic,” she bit out.
Lifting up his hand, he tried to summon a shadow. Again, nothing happened. “There must be some kind of ward against magic down here,” he said. Felix looked around, sensing something she couldn’t.
Avery’s chest crumbled inward like loose rocks as she took stock of the situation. In the plainest of terms, they were utterly fucked.
A smile curved across his face, slightly obscured by the bars. On what seemed like instinct alone, his hand reached out for hers like he could sense the panic that was threatening to overtake her once again. Even though the bond seemed to be suppressed, he still knew her.
This time, she swallowed her own anxiety down, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath through her nose, smelling the fresh pine of Felix, mixed with pungent damp stone, until the churning sea inside of her calmed.
“Good girl,” Felix said.
The words sent her mind into a frenzy. How was she so easily affected by him? She loved the praise.No.She loved him. Shefuckingloved him. It had been that way for longer than she wanted to admit.
Felix winced as he pulled her gently into the bars and wrapped his arms around her. A warmth spread through her despite the cool metal keeping them apart. He planted a soft kiss on her forehead. She wanted to laugh at the irony. In her whole life, she had never felt safer than she did now.
“I’m sorry,” Avery said, choked.
“Why?” Felix said, only holding her tighter.
A tremor worked through her bottom lip as she tried to hold back the burning tears threatening to fall. “If you’d never met me, you would have been safe.”
“Avery.” The sound rumbled through his chest as his hand stroked her hair. “Did you know, before you, I was lost, so completely fucking lost. If I had never met you, I would have lived every life searching for you. Thank you for putting me out of my eternal misery.”
If her heart were a garden, a thousand roses would have bloomed. At first, she thought he was a weed, a thorn in her side; now she would do anything to be suffocated by those vines.
The clacking of boots had Felix’s ears swiveling in their direction. Avery shifted closer to the bars, her spine straightening as if pulled taut by an invisible thread, her body recognizing the footsteps before her mind could place them.
And when she saw who rounded the corner, she understood why. Her mother, dressed in full decorated enforcer attire, with medals that shone in the low light.
A feral growl ripped from Felix’s throat, the sound echoing through the stone walls and vibrating through her bones.
Her mother let out a cold laugh.
She felt an icy fury come down the bond as if it were her own, rushing through her veins. Felix slammed himself against the bars so hard that dust fell from the stone ceiling, falling on the high councilor.
Her mother only raised her eyebrows as if he were some unruly kitten and brushed the dust off her shoulders. Unbothered, she walked with her hands behind her back, stopping at Avery’s cell. “Now, what should I do with you, mydaughter?”
“Let us go?” Avery suggested almost hopefully. Worth a shot. Maybe somewhere in her mother’s heart, she might hold some love still for her own daughter. Doubtful. Very, very doubtful.
“Your dearfamiliarjust killed twenty enforcers back there, plus the chancellor’s son.”
