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There wasn’t a particle in my body my spark wasn’t scorching. If any more magic lit me up, I was pretty sure I’dexplode.
“No,” I said, pulling all of my guys closer. “You’ve already given me everything I need. Everything I could ever have wanted.” My boys. Myconsorts.
That last thought sent a heady rush of possessiveness through me. Jin nuzzled my cheek. Damon looped his arm over my belly. Kyler pressed one last kiss to the inside of my elbow. Seth brushed his lips against the top of myhead.
It wasn’t just magic that flowed between us. I could feel the love that shone from all of them and from me in return, a giddy tingling everywhere wetouched.
I’d returned to the only house I’d ever really thought of as mine a month ago, but now… Now I was trulyhome.
Chapter Thirty-One
Rose
The tick of the grandfather clock carried through the otherwise silent house. I pulled my duvet higher over my head, my eyes open in the darkness underneath. Not that it was any less dark in the room aroundme.
Celestine needed to think I was asleep. Magic was still rushing through my veins, my spark ignited enough to fill my whole body. The twined bonds of my consorting held it steady in mychest.
This power wouldn’t fade. But I didn’t know yet how much my stepmother might hold. If I was going to get through tonight, I needed to use every possible advantage, includingsurprise.
Alongside the thrum of the magic, a dull throbbing ran through me, sharpest low in my belly. I was pretty sure certain parts of me were going to be physically sore tomorrow, but that didn’t dull my longing. My pain at being apart from the guys I’d only just partneredwith.
Normally consorts didn’t leave each other’s presence for at least a week after the original ceremony. Both to solidify the emotional and physical bond, when often they hadn’t been that intimate beforehand, and to avoid this discomfort as the strands of magic that joined us were so newly formed and unused to stretching. Could the guys feel it too, this twang calling out for us to come backtogether?
The rush of our first coming together, all five of us, had been so explosive… Heat rose in my cheeks as I remembered it. The magic of the ceremony had unleashed all our passions. I hadn’t expected to come quite this far in just a few weeks from the knowledgeable-but-virginal Rose I’d been when I arrived here. But I definitely wasn’tcomplaining.
My lips curled with a brief grin. Actually, I was very much looking forward to more moments like that one. Maybe with a little more time to savor the experience when we didn’t have the ceremony’s urgency whirling aroundus.
Fulfilling my longings would have to wait until tomorrow, at least. After my father and I had finished dealing with Celestine and Derek… What was Dad going to think of the choice I’d made? He’d agreed with Celestine that it was best for me not to get too close to the boys all those yearsago.
But he couldn’t have been worried we’d dothis. He wouldn’t have thought this was possible. He’d wanted to spare me the broken heart of falling for them and not being able to havethem.
The consort bonds couldn’t be severed, not so early. He’d just have to find a way to accept it. As strange and unexpected as it would seem, he’d at least be able to appreciate that I was happy. I was still his daughter. I was still aHallowell.
And I’d be the lady of this estatenow.
It’d been just shy of eleven o’clock when I’d scrambled back through my window. It had to be almost midnight now. I repressed the urge to squirm with impatience. Chatting with Philomena might have helped pass the time, but I didn’t want to be distractedeither.
The noise reached my ears so faintly at first I didn’t quite notice. A soft rasp from the direction of the door. My pulsehiccupped.
My lock was turning over. I’d set it before I went to bed both to make sure no one without magic came barging in and found me gone, and because that was what Celestine would have expected. Now with her magic she must be releasingit.
The door whispered open. The air shifted against the top of my head, the only part of me not covered by the duvet. Footsteps padded across the floor to the bed. If I’d had any doubt about who had entered, it would have vanished at the sound of my stepmother drawing in her breath. That was enough to recognizeher.
With a rustle of her clothes, she bent and rested her hand on my shoulder to shake meawake.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears. I whipped out my arm, tossing aside the duvet and whipping magic through the air in the samemovement.
I caught just a glimpse of Celestine’s pale face contorting with shock before the magic I’d hurled at her struck her across the calves. She stumbled backward, thrown off-balance. I swept my hands toward her again, summoning enough power to smack her right onto thefloor.
She hit the floorboards on her back with a thump. I twisted my fingers, and coils of magic formed around my stepmother’s wrists and ankles to hold her in place. Holding her from throwing any magic back atme.
She jerked her head, directing some spell at me that way. I clapped my hands together and itdissolved.
“No more,” I said, the glow of my spark radiating into my words. I traced a sheet in the air and cast it toward her. No tutor had ever taught me to sculpt magic to this specific purpose, but the energy inside me sang out so clearly I saw exactly how to move with it, exactly what to say to it. “Your power will stay in yourbody.”
The barrier closed around Celestine’s form. I stepped closer, poised overher.
My stepmother stared up me in the dim moonlight from the window, her blond bob askew, her pale eyes glossy with shock and alarm. As she stared at me, a flicker of a deeper horror darkened herexpression.
