Page 273 of House Ignis

I leaned over my knees, gasping, finally breathing air that didn't smell of old spells and rot.

Behind us, the massive doors groaned shut with a finality that made the ground beneath my feet tremble.

Runes surged across the stone in a frantic wave of red-gold light, sealing the entrance until the library looked as though it had been swallowed by the earth itself.

A sharp, metallic click echoed through the night—the wards resetting.

Then, silence. Absolute and suffocating.

I stayed hunched over, one hand white-knuckled around the book while the other braced against my knee. “Gods,” I rasped, my throat raw from the dust. “What the fuck just happened?”

Aether didn't answer with comfort. He stalked in a tight, agitated circle, his onyx tail lashing like a whip. “I am never doing that again. Never. You are a menace—a walking catastrophe. I loathe you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I love you too,” I muttered, my eyes dropping to my trembling palm.

“It’s gone. The mark—it was right here, I felt it burn—”

I stared at my empty palm for another heartbeat before the weight beneath my other arm registered.

The book.

Fuck.

I was still carrying it.

There was no way I was taking this thing back into the castle. Not with half the continent currently drinking beneath my father’s roof.

My gaze darted toward the old stone wall bordering the private gardens.

“Come on.”

I hurried across the grass and dropped beside an overgrown alcove, shoving aside a curtain of ivy. My fingers found the loose stone almost immediately.

Jax and I had discovered the hollow behind it years ago. We'd hidden everything from stolen sweets to bottles of wine there, convinced we'd found the greatest secret in Solkaris.

Apparently, we’d been thinking too small.

I pulled the stone free and shoved the book into the darkness behind it before replacing the stone and dragging the ivy back into place.

“There,” I breathed. “Safe.”

“Nothing about tonight has been safe,” Aether muttered.

I almost laughed.

And then the blood bond didn't just stir.

It screamed.

The connection stirred—not a nudge, but a frantic, living pulse that radiated from the center of my chest.

Beside me, Aether froze, his onyx fur bristling as we snapped our heads to the right in a single, jagged motion.

Then, a voice.

It was low and smooth, a familiar velvet that sent a glacial shiver sliding down my spine, turning my blood to ice and fire all at once.

“Darling.”