AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Everyone, just remain calm. Okay?” I say, holding out my hands. “I don’t want to have another panic attack, and I don’t want all that black to come back. So everyone just, please, don’t fight.”
I wait until Fielder nods grudgingly, then twist my head to look at Cohen, shoulder propped against the entrance to the living room, arms crossed, grinning like an idiot. When he sees me looking at him, his grin grows. “Oh, don’t worry about me, Ro. You know why I’m here, and it’s not to kick their asses.”
I let out a breath. “Okay, okay, good. Now, can we please have a conversation like adults?”
Ezra offers me a hand to help me down from the couch. His thumb strokes over my knuckles as I come back to the floor, feeling all kinds of wobbly again.
He braces me when I sway, and Cohen takes a step forward. But draws up short when Hardin snarls at him. I don’t blame him either. That sound was pure animalistic fury. Cohen’s icy eyes meet mine. “Was that your first time calling shadows?”
I blink at him, remembering the inky black that had surrounded me. “I did that?”
His smile breaks his face. “Yeah, wildcard. You did. But you called too much. They take a lot out of you, more than normal magic, which is why you feel all shaky now.” He looks at Ezra, still standing by me. “Do you have anything sweet? Candy? Soda? The sugar will help to stabilize her.”
“Like chocolate and the dementors?” I ask, voice wobbly with exhaustion.
“Something like that,” Cohen says, still smiling at me. Then he flicks his gaze back to Ezra. “You wanna go get it? Or should I rifle through all the cabinets to find it?”
Ezra tightens his fingers around mine, then releases me, and heads toward the kitchen. Hardin is by my side in an instant, keeping me steady. I let him do it, but I’m still stung by what he said earlier.Her safety is more important than her trust.How can that be true? Especially when I wasn’t in any danger from Cohen.
“Are we just going to ignore the fact that he somehow got out of a room locked with magic?” Gideon growls, moving until he’s between me and Cohen. I try not to roll my eyes at him. If Cohen has proved anything, it’s that he’s a helluva lot stronger than them.
Cohen laughs. “It took me all of three minutes to undo that spell. I gave you the other twenty because I figured I owed you some time to have a chat with Rosalind.”
Ezra comes back into the room, his arms laden with candy and sodas. He drops them all on the coffee table near me, and then pulls me to sit on his lap on the couch. Hardin takes up the spot next to us, while Gideon and Fielder move closer too. It’s only when I’m surrounded by all of them that Cohen moves farther into the room, skirting around the couch to fling himself into an armchair across from us, legs spread wide.
He’s still in those same jeans he was wearing before.
Asshole.
He grins like he knows what I’m thinking, then nudges the table with one booted foot. “Eat something, wildcard. You’ll feel better.”
Sighing, I lean forward, snag a bag of peach gummies, and settle back against Ezra’s chest. The room is silent as I rip open the bag and pop a ring in my mouth. Holy penguins, he’s right. The sugary sour coating dissolves. I swallow, and almost immediately I feel better.
I blink up at him as I finish chewing the candy. “How did you know that would help?”
He looks smug as hell as he says, “I did the same thing you did the first time I called a shadow. Knocked me on my ass for four hours. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out that sugar after calling one helps.”
My eyes widen. “Four hours? So you aren’t just naturally good at everything, then?”
He laughs. “Hardly. Calling a shadow is still magic I don’t have an affinity with. Recovering takes longer for me than it likely will for you. But it’s a lot faster now, since I have more control.”
Gideon scoffs. “You can’t possibly summon a shadow. No one has done that for years.” He glances at me. “Not even Theresa can do that.”
Theresa. The Elder of the Shadow and Veil sect in their coven. Interesting that they hadn’t thought to tell me this before, instead they’d made it seem like it was just a matter of time before I managed it.
Maybe they just had that much faith in me, or maybe they were trying to not limit me in their own way. Ezra’s arm tightens around my waist and I shift so I’m more comfortable on his lap.
Cohen’s eyes spark with jealousy that I pointedly ignore, and he buries before he grins at Gideon. He stays lounging in his chair as he rolls up the sleeve of his shirt, revealing the head of a large black snake tattoo on his forearm. If the size of the head is any sign, the tattoo itself must be huge.
I’ve seen Cohen without shirtsleeves before, when he ‘kidnapped’ me, but I’d been more focused on the runes he has more than anything else, so I hadn’t really noticed the snake. Seeing it now, I realize I must have been blinded by fear or, more likely,anger, because it’s big.
Cohen just keeps looking at us as the snake lifts off his skin and slithers to the floor. I resist the urge to shriek and cower away from it. Snakes have never been my favorite animals, but I know on some level this isn’t actually a snake. No. Its scales are the deep inky black that had surrounded me outside, and it seems almost ephemeral, like smoke or… “Shadow,” I breathe. “That’s a shadow?”
I don’t look away from the snake that’s slithering along the floor, heading right toward me. The guys around me all tense, but they don’t move and they don’t try to fight it. Maybe they know something about shadows that I don’t. Maybe, since no one has called one in years, they have no clue how to actually fight it.
That thought sends a shiver over me that Ezra feels. His lips press into the back of my head, and he murmurs something I can’t make out to soothe me.
“It is,” Cohen says, as the snake reaches me and slides its sinuous body up my leg to rest its head on my knee. “And it likes you.”
