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His eyes pop wide as his metal rings blister my flesh. “What’re you doing?” He attempts to yank his hand away, but I wiggle a ring off his index finger.
“I’m tired of the smell of burnt flesh.” I toss the ring into the trees and pry another ring off his thumb. “And I’m tired of you hurting yourself.” I chuck that ring, as well, then remove the remaining rings on his fingers. “I may not know you very well, but that doesn’t mean I’m just going to stand here and let you hurt yourself. It’s not right.” I hurl the rings into the trees and wipe my healing palm against the side of my leg. “And don’t try to feed me that bullshit about you wearing them to gain respect. I know there’s more to it than that.”
Jules smashes his lips together forcefully as his eyes illuminate violet. “I think I need to talk to you alone.”
“And that’s our cue to go.” Shade nods his head at Legend and Rune, jogging backward down the path. “We’ll be at the pit,” he tells Jules. “Try not to take too long.” A smirk quirks at the edges of his lips. “And yell if you need anything.” The last part is directed at me. Then he spins on his heels and runs up the path.
Rune follows, whizzing by us, his long legs taking hurried strides. Legends starts after them, as well, hurrying past me.
“Wait. Where are you going?” I snag his sleeve.
Jules lets out a deep growl, but I ignore him, focusing on Legend, waiting for him to answer.
Legend pats my arm. “I’m pretty sure Jules is about to answer one of your many questions.”
“Why can’t you stay here with me?” I sound pathetically weak, but I’m afraid. Afraid of what Jules is going to say. Afraid of what I might do when we’re alone.
“You’ll be okay by yourself with Jules,” Legend assures me. “You don’t need to be afraid of him.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” I insist. “I just don’t want you to go.”
“I won’t be very far away.” He casts a glance at Jules, then wiggles his arm from my grip and backs away from me. “Like Shade said, just yell if you need anything.”
I glare at him as he turns his back to me and hikes farther down the path and into the shadows of the trees.
My heart thunders in my chest as he vanishes entirely out of sight, along with Rune and Shade, leaving Jules and I alone.
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” Jules speaks softly from behind me.
I twist around and meet his now cautious gaze. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m just confused why everyone thinks we need some alone time.”
He studies me for an unsettling handful of seconds before his gaze descends to his bare hand. “You know, you’ve done that to me before.” He flexes his hand. “Taken off my rings.”
My lips part in shock. “I did?”
He nods, his gaze colliding with mine. “It was a few months before you die—went to the Common Realm. You were bugging me about why I wore them, always getting irritated when I burned myself, kind of like you just did now.” His sad smile makes me want to cry. “Finally, after you wouldn’t let it drop, I told you the reason.” He stares off in the direction I threw the rings. “After I did, you pinned me down, pried the rings off me, and chucked them into the trees.”
“I pinned you down?”What?
He nods, his focus returning to me. “You were very strong for how young you were. A lot of the trainers said you had great potential.”
“I’m not very strong anymore.” I fold my arm over my waist where my scars are hidden, proof of how weak I’ve become.
“That’s because you’ve been out of touch with the Midnight Realm for so long. Not to mention, you haven’t been training in over a decade.” His brows furrow. “Unless you were training in the Common Realm to fight? I’m not sure if they train fighters there.”
“They don’t train fighters in the same sense. But there are classes that you can take to teach you how to defend yourself.”
“Defend yourself from what?” He notes my arm wrapped protectively around my waist.
I struggle to remain composed. “Other humans and the few imprisoned paranormals who manage to break through their binding spells that keeps them from attacking humans.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“No, but it happens enough that people do sometimes get hurt by the hand of a paranormal.”
Again, his attention zeroes in on my abdomen, question marks filling his eyes.
“You said you told me why you wore those rings,” I try to distract him. “Will you tell me again? I want to know why you think you need to hurt yourself.”
