Chapter 9
Gerard
Gerard had been on the mainland for four damn days when he began to hate the fucking ring.
Not because it failed him. Failures got fixed. Broken shit got replaced. What pissed him off was the waiting, the silence, the way Thorn had handed him a weapon and expected him to sit on his ass instead of getting blood on his hands.
Ravenpoint came and went behind them, its narrow streets and rotting docks offering nothing but half-assed rumors and soft-eyed bastards who kept their mouths shut. Gerard had dragged men north as instructed, cutting through places where nobody would remember jack shit afterward.
The ring had done fuck-all.
It lay heavy against his finger, inert gold that neither burned nor pulled.
No heat. No direction. None of the power Thorn had promised with his high-and-mighty bullshit.
Gerard flexed his hand, eyeing the soldiers behind him.
They knew better than to open their traps, but their unease leaked through—twitchy feet, hands hovering near blades like they might piss themselves any second.
Good. Discomfort kept men sharp.
Thorn had explained the ring once, with the same detached precision he applied to everything else. It would react when she used what he had put inside her. Heat first. Direction second. Follow it when it burned. Wait when it did not.
Gerard understood the damn instructions well enough. What he questioned was Thorn’s smug-ass certainty that the bitch would oblige them by fucking up.
The ring remained cold.
He could have laughed, if he were still the man he’d been before The Institute corridors were painted with his guts.
Before that cunt Elora.
Once, she’d been nothing. A pathetic little mouse.
Soft as shit. When he’d cornered her in the woods outside The Institute, she hadn’t fought worth a damn.
Hell—she’d put herself down in the grass, and just fucking taken it, like a goddamn doll with limbs he could bend and fuck however he wanted.
No screams. No tears. No begging. It was actually a bit disappointing.
She could have at least attempted to fight him off.
That was how those moments were supposed to go—him shoving her face in the dirt, taking what he wanted, her learning her fucking place beneath his boot.
Then Thorn had remade her.
Half creature. Half girl. All teeth and instinct. The next time Gerard had tried to put her in her place, she’d torn him open for the effort. Slashed him deep enough that he’d felt the warmth of his own blood before the pain caught up. She could have killed him. He knew that now.
She hadn’t.
That was the part that still burned.
She had left him alive. Left him bleeding. Left him just enough life to understand she’d castrated him without touching his cock. His ego screamed for blood. His need to dominate demanded she learn who owned her worthless ass.
Instead, the cunt escaped.
Thorn had watched him bleed out and decided the eye would stay gone. “A reminder,” he’ d said, smug bastard. Gerard took it without bitching, because he understood Thorn’s fucked-up language perfectly. Punishment wasn’t about justice. It was about who had their boot on whose neck.
Kilfaire had been a different shit-show entirely.
Gerard hadn’t fucked up there. He’d done exactly what was asked of him, held her in place while Thorn put on his goddamn magic show.
None of them saw the fire coming. That elemental crap.
The way she had reached out and taken control of something that should have devoured her.
That escape wasn’t earned. Some asshole had helped her.
Gerard didn’t give two shits who’d done it. What pissed him off was Thorn still thinking she was some scared little mouse. Still thinking she’d piss herself when cornered.
Gerard knew better.
When he found her, there’d be no bullshit. No speech. No chance for her to finish what she’d started. He wouldn’t get close enough for her to try that shit again. Wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing his face before he ended her.
Thorn wanted her back. Alive, if possible.
Dead worked too.
Gerard had already decided he’d bring back a fucking corpse.
He looked north again, jaw tightening, fingers curling slowly into a fist.
The ring lay silent.
Fine.
Let her hide. Let her believe she had slipped the leash again. When the ring finally spoke—when it burned and pulled and pointed—he would make sure she understood what she had spared him.
And why mercy had been her last mistake.
The ring burned.
Not warm. Not sharp.
Burned.
Gerard sucked in a breath through his teeth and clenched his fist, the leather of his glove smoking faintly as the heat punched through it. Pain flared fast and ugly, crawling up his hand like something alive.
“Fucking bitch,” he spat.
The gold flared, veins of light tearing across the ring as it began to vibrate hard enough to rattle his bones. It twisted on his finger, wrenching his hand sideways like it was trying to tear his damn finger off, dragging him around before he’d fully registered what was happening.
North.
The pull was vicious. Demanding as hell. The more he turned with it, the hotter it got, the metal biting deeper, punishing him for resisting like some sadistic piece of crap. Gerard let it have its way, jaw tight, eyes narrowed, letting the pain settle somewhere cold and useful.
This wasn’t what that prick Thorn had described.
This wasn’t a flicker. This wasn’t a signal.
She’d hit it. Hard.
Whatever shit she’d pulled, it wasn’t small.
Then it stopped.
The heat dropped off all at once, leaving his skin throbbing and raw beneath the glove. The glow died. The ring went dead again, innocent as a piece of junk metal, as if it hadn’t just tried to burn him to the bone.
Gerard flexed his fingers slowly. Pain answered.
Fucking good.
“She thinks that was clever,” he said quietly. “Hurting me from wherever she’s hiding.”
He looked north again; the direction burned into his mind deeper than the skin on his hand. She hadn’t slipped. She hadn’t brushed against her power by accident.
She’d done something deliberate.
Something big.
Gerard lowered his hand and smiled without humor.
“Now I know where you are,” he murmured. “And you won’t stop doing whatever the hell that was.”
He turned back to the men, voice hard as a prison yard beating. “We keep heading north, assholes.”
Weapons shifted. Boots adjusted. The column fell into line.
Gerard pulled his glove tighter over the forming blister and started walking.
Let her keep reaching.
Every goddamn time she did, she’d be pointing the way.