“Shut it, shifter.”
She recovered herself, dusting the dirt off her prison clothes as a means of soothing the sting of embarrassment.
Turning on her heels, she saw the shimmer of a ward on Felix’s side still active. Couldn’t the bunnies have eaten throughhis, too? Why did the goddess seem to half-ass everything? Half-assed riddles, half-assed truths, half-assed bunny ward eating.
“Have you ever broken a ward?” Felix asked her.
She shook her head, the anxiety crawling back up her spine.
“Listen to me carefully. Using your magic, concentrate on a single fine point, and send everything you have through it.”
“What if I hit you?”
“You won’t,” he reassured her.
Closing her eyes, she formed her shadow into a needle, the tip thinning and placing itself right next to the ward. The sound of Felix’s feet hitting the stone told her he had moved out of the way. So he was afraid of her hitting him. She swallowed the lump in her throat, wishing desperately for the tightness in her chest to go the fuck away. It always came at the worst times.
“Little witch, it’s okay, I believe in you.”
That stopped her for a moment. He believed inher? Tears welled behind her eyes, threatening to fall. The last person who said that was her dad, over a year ago. She knew she should believe in herself. That she shouldn’t need the validation from others to know that she was worthy. That she was capable. But was it so horrible to have someone start the process for you? When life had beaten you to a pulp, to have someone believe in you until you could believe in yourself? Sometimes that was all we needed.
Power laced through her fingertips, blood rushing downward towards the shadow. And when they touched? Avery sent everything she had into the ward.
It was silent. Then black shadows spidered through the ward’s magic faster than her eyes could keep up with. Felix took a step back, pressing himself into the corner of the cell as if he knew what was about to happen.
Avery yelped as everything shattered. The wards, the bars. Splinters of magic and iron and stone went flying aroundthem. She only saw it for a second before a cloak of darkness surrounded her. Shadows, she realized—a barrier made out of them.
Clamoring footsteps echoed down the hall. Enforcers drawn by the noise. But when the shadows dropped, she didn’t see the enforcers. She saw Felix. He rushed up to her, gripped her face between his hands, and kissed her until she couldn’t fucking breathe.
The footsteps got closer. But they didn’t care. Felix pushed her against the wall as their tongues danced around each other. It had been mere hours since they touched, but it felt like a lifetime. The bond flared between them, shadows curling around them as they devoured each other.
“Oi!” A voice rang out.
It didn’t last long.
Felix never broke the kiss, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow wrap around an enforcer’s throat and take his head clean off. It tumbled to the ground, spurting blood across the floor. Part of felt awful. Did that enforcer have to die? The other part only cared about who was touching her right now.
Goddess. Was he going to take her right here?
The sound of another set of footsteps had their heads turning.
Callum stood there, fury raging in his eyes as he looked between them and the head on the ground. Before Felix could send a shadow out, Callum had already taken off.
“We need to go,” Felix said breathlessly, but he didn’t let go of her. Didn’t stop gazing into her eyes. The green and brown of his eyes were blazing so intensely she thought they might burst into flames.
She nodded, pushing him away because she knew he wouldn’t be able to do it.
“He’s going to send for backup,” Avery said.
Felix smirked, lacing his fingers through hers. “Then we’d better go home.”
The council towerbell clanged through the forest, each peal drilling into Avery’s skull as trees blurred past. Her boots slipped on wet moss, bark scraping her palms when she caught herself against a trunk. They had made it out of the dungeon with little interference. Avery’s calves burned, but she didn’t stop. Didn’t slow.Fuck,she hated running though. Behind her, Felix’s footfalls matched her rhythm, his breathing nowhere has haggard as hers. She could feel his attention darting to every shadow, every crack of a branch, waiting for the enforcers to close in. For better or for worse, nothing had stopped them. But Callum had rung that bell. Callum knew they were gone.
What was the plan here? Sprint until her heart exploded? Until they hit ocean or ran out of island? She shoved the thought down. One crisis at a time.
The trees gave way to the clearing—moonlight puddling across the wolf’s milk meadow. Rain hung in the air like sullen mist, dampening her face, and soaking through her prison shirt. The frigid wind sliced her cheeks as each step carried Avery moved closer to the place that had started it all. Once again. She had ended up right back here. How poetic.
They slowed next to the statue of Cerituen, the cut-away plinth beside it now more obvious than ever. It was Arawn, the shifter god. How many centuries had the witches spent erasing the island of its history, literally carving away every trace that witches and shifters had once stood side by side?
