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“Why are you doing this?” she shouts. “If you don’t like me, why am I here? Why did you take me from my home?!”
“I am your fucking home!” I scream, feeling my gift rise to the surface. “That’s the fucking problem!”
Her head tugs back, confusion heavy in her gaze. “I don’t understand. You kidnapped me.”
“I didn’t take you. I was given you,” I force past clenched teeth. “Fate made you for me.”
“I am not yours.”
“You are!” I boom. “Why are you fighting me?!”
“What are you talking about, Knight?” she screams, tears in her eyes. “I’ve done my best not to freak out, and considering, I think I’ve done a good job. You’re being unfair.”
“Unfair is feeling like my insides are fucking bleeding out and the only person who can fucking fix them refuses to!”
“I don’t even know what that means because you keep talking in riddles and you tell me nothing!”
“Because you should know!” My body vibrates with anger, my eyes changing as my power takes over. As my monster hovers beneath my skin, his teeth sink deep into my flesh as he tries to eat himself free. To get to her.
He wants her, and he wants her now.
He’s tired of waiting.
London shakes before me, her tiny little body fragile and vulnerable as she looks up at me with pleading eyes, but she chooses the wrong words at the wrong moment. “I want to see Ben and—”
I snap. Taking her throat in my hand, I squeeze, pressing my body against hers when she starts to fight.
“My seed has been buried inside you. You’ve swallowed my blood.”
She claws at my hands, tears leaking down her cheeks, but I tighten my grip, my entire body shaking, my being demanding I stop this.
That I release her.
Protect her.
But it’s like I said.
I’m done waiting.
“I need to know, little doll. I need you to feel what I feel. To ache like I ache.” Her face turns purple, her hands falling to her sides. “I need to know it’s you I was created for.”
Focusing, I follow the shallow thump of her beating heart, closing my eyes and envisioning the arteries connected to it, waiting, watching as it stutters.
And finally…it stops.
Silence.
I release her, catching her lifeless body in my grip and carrying her back to…her room.
I lay her down on the bed, licking tears from her cheeks before running my lips along hers, jolting back when the touch shocks me.
I step away, staring, waiting for the moment her heart recharges.
For it to call out to mine and beat as one.
But she doesn’t stir.
She doesn’t wake.
Panic like I’ve never felt flares in my chest, and my hands fly out at my sides, palms facing forward as the claws I was just starting to get used to grow into talons, and before I know what’s happening, they’re dragging across my own chest.
Groaning, I drop to my knees and they dig deeper. They don’t stop until the razor ends scrape against my bone. A growl rattles from my lips as my teeth descend into sharp points and I pant, my back bowing when I feel the points digging beyond the tough tissue of my heart, forcing its way beyond it.
“Knight!” Sinner shouts from somewhere behind me. “Creed, get the fuck in here, he’s—he fucking stabbed himself!”
He drops to my side, Creed rushing in and falling before me.
“He’s…holy fuck, I think he’s changing. The bonding.” He looks closer. “I think his bonding is almost complete. Knight?” He grips my face, trying to look into my eyes, but all I see is London.
Dead in the center of the bed.
The Mage was wrong.
The fates were fucking wrong.
She’s not Gifted. She didn’t come back to life.
And now, my gift wants to claim mine.
Twenty-Eight
London
The nursery rhyme plays on a loop in the background. I once read that Ring Around the Rosie had a dark background. I don’t need to read more about it to feel it right now. It’s one of my favorites, next to London Bridge is Falling Down, of course. That’s the best one.
When no one’s watching, I like to walk the path between Argent and Stygian, the path from light to dark and pretend the bridge is crumbling beneath my feet. I laugh at the users of Light Magic when they scream and run. At least, that’s what they do when I picture them in my head.
My feet dangle back and forth to the tune as the teacher at the front of the class moves her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Words leave her mouth, but I can’t see past the girl in front of me. She isn’t just any girl. She is my best friend. I reach forward to touch her shoulder as her long, silky, ink-colored hair falls over her shoulder. She is lifting her hand above the small garden on her table, reciting a spell the teacher has had us working on all week.
