Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle #3)

Chapter 33

33

FOUR MONTHS AND ONE WEEK

AFTER brIANA MATTHEWS DISAPPEARED

Bree

“brEE?”

My name is wrenched from the thief’s mouth, a question and a declaration. A sound that is mine, but also his.

“Bree.”

This time when he says it, my name is something holy.

“I…” What did I ask him again? The weight of him makes me forget.

Oh. Who are you?

Behind his mask, the blond thief’s eyes dart between mine. “You don’t know who I am?”

How can I be shivering when everything about me—the entire line of my body where it’s pressed beneath his, my cheeks, my throat, my hands—feels searingly hot? I swallow, the sound loud between us, before I whisper, “No.”

For a split second, the thief’s expression fractures. Breaks open.

I don’t know him, but he knows me. He knows me.

He could be anyone . Friend or foe. But… he doesn’t seem like a foe, even as I can feel the bruises from our fight settle into my skin. His face is so close that I could breathe fire into it and burn him away—but I don’t.

Instead, my heart quietly unfurls inside my chest like it knows him, even if my mind can’t put the pieces together. Is he the boy I longed for? And if he is, why did I feel like I couldn’t have him? Why did I run?

My plan, my mission, rises in the back of my mind. “I have to go—”

“No, wait,” he protests, eyes bright. “I can’t believe you’re here. It’s been—are you all right? Are you safe? Where have you—”

Distantly, down the hall, the elevator dings. “Someone’s coming,” I whisper.

He hears it too. “Shit.”

The thief’s demeanor shifts in a split second. He scrambles off me, pulling me up by my elbows as he goes. I don’t register that he has us both moving until we reach the door. That his hand is warm against my back, guiding me forward. That I’m letting him touch me even though I have no idea who this boy is. Why am I—

“Those your shoes?” he asks, head halfway out into the first storage room.

I blink, uncertain what he means until I spot my heels tucked into the corner. He’d seen them in the fraction of a second before he started checking our exit.

Apparently, his mind works fast too.

Mine not so much at the moment. “Y-yes…,” I stammer. “Yeah—”

He ducks down and grabs my shoes, looping the straps in his gloved fingers, and pulls me past the thick metal door, through the dusty storage room, and down the long hall toward the elevator. He slips into a jog, and I follow, wordless.

“Good thing Mikael’s aether sense is dull. Otherwise, he might have sensed your power by now. Still, let’s hope it fades fast.”

How does he know Mikael’s aether sense is dull? I close my furnace up extra tightly anyway. “Yeah.”

His head tips up to the security cameras, still wrapped in my purple root. “The cameras. That’s you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you undo it? Quickly?”

I wave my free hand at the ceiling until the root dissipates into sparkling dust.

He whistles, watching the dust fall as he tugs me forward, admiration briefly flashing across his features as he moves. “That’s new.”

I startle. “How would you know?”

He brings us to the elevator and punches the button for the first level. I frown. “The ballroom is on the second floor—”

“We should get caught elsewhere.” He releases my hand to drive his fingers through his hair, back and forth, until it’s sticking up in several directions.

“I don’t want to get caught!” I hiss. “And what are you—”

“It’s better if we get caught, believe me.” He tugs his gloves off with his teeth, shoving them into his inner suit pocket.

“Caught doing what?”

“Forgive me.” He tosses my shoes behind him. They land haphazardly—like they’d been kicked off. He turns into me, one hand firm at my waist, pressing me against the elevator wall with a rough thud.

“What—”

“Sorry.” His other hand captures my jaw and cheek in a gentle claim, tipping my chin up and back—and my skin responds immediately. Turns bright, shivering-hot. My own body, shocking me into silence before I can ask why he apologized.

“No time.” The only warning before he presses his mouth to mine—then, there is nothing to know, nothing to remember, nothing to earn or fight for. Only this.

The thief’s lips are warm and soft, a whisper against my mouth. Another apology. Then, his head tilts, his mouth slots against mine—and I don’t want his apology.

I want to chase myself through his lips. Climb into the knowledge of us that I’m suddenly, inexplicably certain he possesses. I want to burrow into his memories of me. Map my history using the heat of his hands against my skin.

I fall and fall.

I’m kissing a strange thief in a strange elevator, and I have no idea why except I have every idea why. Because he tastes like comfort and safety. Like fresh laundry from the dryer. A soft couch before a fireplace.

A knowing type of exposure that feels like falling, falling.

When the stranger tugs at my chin, it’s a question.

I let him pull my lower lip down, an answer. In response, his mouth turns burning—

“Excuse me!” A woman’s voice, inches from my face. The voice is sharp and pointed, but I barely hear it over the blood rushing in my ears.

The thief recovers before I do, coughing. Meanwhile, I have to blink the elevator, the world, my physical body, and my actual brain back into reality.

“Oh! Hey…” The thief’s voice is rough and raspy, his mouth red and ripe with a smear of my lipstick. His smile spreads slow like molasses. He looks every bit a young man who was just making out with a girl in an elevator. Even his hair is still tugged up in half a dozen directions above the fabric of his mask… just like he’d planned. “Are we cool to go back to the auction now, or…?”

“No. You are not ‘cool’ to go back to the auction.” I recognize who that sharp voice belongs to before I see her: it’s Bianca, Mikael’s second-in-command and captain of his security.

She’s staring at us both with suspicious eyes. Behind her stand two warlocks, both of whom are actively avoiding eye contact with me. A short, stocky man and a taller man with a buzzcut. Behind them , flashing emergency lights flicker overhead. There are voices milling in the foyer and Collectors crammed against the door in what looks like a mass attempt to leave the estate.

“We got a little carried away.…” The thief rubs his thumb at the corner of his bottom lip in a gesture that’s way too obvious to be accidental, wiping away my Ruby Red Extra. He moves to extract himself from my orbit—but stops.

His megawatt smile turns on me, and I feel a tap against my thigh. I blink down at the slit in my dress and exposed leg… and wonder when I hooked it up and around his hip.

I flush and drop my bare foot to the floor. “Sorry.”

I don’t even know who I’m apologizing to. To the thief? To the elevator? Jesus Christ, Bree, to anyone in earshot?

“We’ll just be on our way, if that’s cool,” the thief murmurs, tugging at his jacket.

“No, you won’t,” Bianca states. She thrusts a hand out, palm up. “Invitation?”

My stomach sinks like a stone, and every flicker of heat I just experienced fades away beneath the cold realization that I don’t have my invite on me.

I’d left it in the ballroom—with Zoe.

But the thief doesn’t hesitate. “Sure, no problem.” He produces a black envelope.

Bianca snatches the envelope from his hand and pulls the heavy paper invite out to review it. “Lawson?” she asks. The shorter warlock moves in close to evaluate the seal. Lawson’s eyes flash green, and he nods to her. His pact magic, bitter and acrid in my nose, must have granted him Sight.

Bianca presses her lips into a thin line and reads the printed text on the card herself. Then her eyes widen as she recognizes the names.

“You’re Benedict Pierce?” She looks up. “The heir to the global hotel company Pierce Resorts?”

The thief—Benedict—grins. “Guilty as charged.”

Bianca’s eyes drop back to the invitation, then slide to me. “And you’re Iris Bauer, his—”

“Yes, this is Iris,” the thief says, and then, to my absolute shock, “my fiancée.”