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Fourteen
Knight
My fist lands on Creed’s cheek with a crack, and I watch as his skin splits open and blood sprays on me.
“I don’t know,” I say, swiping the sweat from my face. I don’t like to train with magic or use it as a way to release energy. The energy I need to dump is the kind that involves human fucking feelings. Sometimes, I just need to punch shit. That’s probably the main reason I joined the hockey team here at Rathe U last year.
Back home, we play with magic, all four of us have since we were old enough to lace up our own skates. Our kind of hockey—the right kind—is a fucking blood bath. Perfection.
Here, I’m lucky if I clock someone hard enough to send them after me for a quick couple punches of fun. But practices? Coach knows we need that relief and lets us beat the fuck out of each other when necessary.
And for me, that shit’s always necessary.
Creed blocks my neck hook with a simple step, spinning around to put me in a sleeper hold, only I dip under his arm and shove him away, bouncing on my toes. “You know what the fuck I’m talking about. Attack aside—”
“—what do you mean, attack aside?” I raise a brow, jabbing him in the chin. It’s light, meant as a warning.
“Motherfucker, you’re the one that dipped out.”
I stop bouncing, swiping the sweat from my hands down my basketball shorts. “Yeah.”
“What’s up with you?” he asks carefully. “I need to get you a pixie to feed off of or something?”
Feed on. My brows pinch, my nerve endings bursting in my chest at the memory of London’s blood on my tongue, but it doesn’t feel like a memory. I can literally taste her now, as if her blood is fresh, dripping and dancing across my tongue, awakening taste buds that never existed.
Human blood is bitter. It’s basic and a means to an end, an artless misfortune that helps when it has to or to dip into when you’re bored.
London’s blood is not like that.
It’s like a mature wine that sat barreled in a dark cellar for decades, growing sweeter with time. It’s thick and savory, like melted maple and a bit of chestnut. It’s sweet and spicy… and mine.
Heat explodes inside me the moment I think that last word, a deep growl trapped at the back of my throat, begging to be freed.
The monster inside me is waking. I can feel him simmering beneath the surface, just … waiting.
“Your eyes are glowing.”
I snap my lids closed, and when they open again, I focus on Creed. I didn’t even realize my gift came to the surface, but then I feel his pressing against mine, and my lip curls. “Stay out of my head.”
He eyes me for a long moment, still attempting to get a read on me, but I keep him out.
“Mom and Dad asked if anything has changed.” His prying eyes pierce mine. “Has it?”
I don’t know…has it?
I still don’t want to be here, but I had resigned myself to the fact that I have no choice pretty quickly into my first semester last year, so why did the start of this one feel so fucking taxing?
I’m in a constant state of fucked up, angry, then normal and irritated every second of the fucking day. Mix those with a heavy sense of lacking something you can’t put a name to, and yeah. It’s no wonder the only people willing to spar with me now are my brothers and Silver. I’ve been beating everyone’s face in, to the point the Healers have had to cart them out of the training room for nearly two months now.
It started a couple weeks before the school year began when we portaled back to campus to check on things, see what we wanted to add or change before it became our everyday home again, and it hasn’t fucking left. Instead, it’s grown, but that sense of lacking has simmered to a low boil now, and in its place is a sharp needle of need. A needle that pricks deeper when a certain white-haired doll crosses my mind, and lately, the little thing has lived in it. The moment I tasted her blood on the trail that day, something happened.
My veins inflamed, stretching and throbbing. I had to get the fuck away from her. Poison. That was my first thought, but then I felt this shadow roll over my shoulders at the party. It dug deep into my bones, tugging until I was standing before her. I’ve never been conflicted and confused in my fucking life, and that only pissed me off.
I tore her away, claimed what I wanted, and I had to know if I was going crazy or not, so I bit her ass.
