Chapter 45 Lindsay
FORTY-FIVE
LINDSAY
I wake before he does.
For a moment, I stay still, tucked against his side, listening to the slow, even rhythm of Kael’s breathing.
In sleep, he looks younger somehow. Less guarded.
His wings are tucked close, shadows resting instead of watching, and for the first time since I’ve known him, nothing about him feels dangerous.
Careful not to wake him, I slip from the bed and pad toward the bathroom.
When I come back, the room is washed in early morning light, pale and cool against the stone. Kael hasn’t moved. One arm is flung where I was, fingers curled like he expects to find me there when he wakes.
My chest tightens.
I stand there longer than necessary, just… looking. Memorizing the slope of his shoulders, the faint furrow between his brows even in sleep. The demon prince, laid bare in the quiet of dawn.
Eventually, I force myself to move.
Our clothes are scattered across the room—mine in careless pieces, his discarded with less urgency, more intention. I gather them up, folding my things first, then his. It feels oddly domestic.
When I pick up his jacket, something slips free. It hits the floor with a soft clink and rolls across the stone, stopping near the edge of the bed.
I freeze.
The object is small—smooth, dark, etched with faint markings that seem to shift when I look too closely. But it’s not the shape that makes my breath catch.
It’s the feeling.
Magic pulses from it, low and steady, a heartbeat I can feel more than hear. The air around it hums, and something deep in my chest answers back, immediate and insistent. Calling me.
I take a step closer before I even realize I’m moving.
I don’t know what it is or what it does. I only know that every instinct in me is leaning toward it, drawn in a way that feels uncomfortably familiar.
Like it recognizes me.
The same way that book did—the one Tamsin and I found hidden away in the Forbidden area. The same low hum. The same pull, like magic reaching out and curling its fingers around something already inside me.
What is it? Is it like the book? Is it going to set off some sort of magical explosion if I touch it?
On the bed, Kael shifts in his sleep, shadows stirring faintly along the wall, stretching and moving like they’re aware something has changed. He groans softly and moves his arm over his sheets, but I can’t focus on him right now, all I can see is the thing that rolled out of his jacket pocket.
My fingers hover over the object, hesitation buzzing through me. My heart is in my throat now, a high-pitched ringing filling my ears, like pressure building too fast.
I should leave it alone.
I don’t because I’ve never been good at that. The moment my skin makes contact, the world tilts.
A sharp inhale tears out of me as the magic flares against my skin. The object warms beneath my fingers, pulsing once, twice, in time with my heartbeat. Light flickers across its surface, the markings shifting and rearranging themselves as though they’re… focusing.
On me.
The air tightens. The ringing in my ears deepens until it feels like it’s inside my skull, and suddenly I know—with bone-deep certainty—this was used by Kael to watch me.
A connection snaps into place, invisible but undeniable, like a line drawn straight from the object to my chest. My breath catches painfully, magic pressing back in response, answering the call before I can stop it.
No. No, no, no—we really need to learn to not touch things that call to us.
I jerk my hand back, the connection severing just as abruptly as it formed. The object dims, going inert on the floor, but the feeling doesn’t disappear. It lingers, a phantom awareness crawling along my skin urging me to pick it back up.
My pulse races.
Questions crash in all at once, sharp and unwelcome.
How long has he had this?
Did he use it to track me?
Is this how he’s always found me all those times?
I glance back at the bed, and his eyes are still closed. More questions start to form, one after another, and I know—deep down—that if I’m still here when he wakes, I won’t leave at all.
I need space and distance. I need to think without having him right in front of me with the ability to distract me.
I move fast but carefully, pulling on my clothes with hands that won’t quite steady. I shove my legs into my pants, don’t bother with my panties, then tug my shirt over my head. It lands twisted and wrong across my ribs. I leave it that way.
Figures.
My boots follow, laces loose, everything quiet and frantic all at once. My heart won’t slow, a strange awareness still crawling under my skin as if the object is calling to me even from the floor. I’m halfway bent over, tugging my second boot on, when the bed shifts.
The shadows move first—restless, as though they’ve sensed movement before he has.
“Lindsay.” His voice washes over me, sleep-filled and confused. When I straighten, he’s sitting up, eyes still closed as he rubs a hand over his face.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
I swallow and force myself to keep moving, reaching for my jacket. “Getting dressed.”
His eyes open then, the blue of them dark, taking me in from head to toe. The boots. The crooked shirt. The tension I’m not hiding nearly as well as I think I am.
“Why?” he asks.
“I need some air.”
His brow furrows, concern cutting through the haze of sleep. “I’ll get dressed and come with you.”
I shake my head before the no even fully forms. “No.” The word comes out sharper than I intend.
He pauses, studying me more closely now. “Lindsay—”
“I just need a minute,” I say, already crouching to swipe the object from the floor. If I stop moving, I’ll hesitate or worse, stay.
Before I can hand it back to him, the magic hums. Almost making it feel like it doesn’t want me to leave it here, as though it wants to show me something.
Okay, now I’m going crazy. But my fingers tighten around the ball anyway, and I covertly tuck it into my pocket, hiding the movement as I grab my jacket.
Of course, Kael is the most observant person I know, and he tracks me before he looks past me, scanning the room, and I see the moment he notices his jacket neatly placed on the chair. His shadows still around him, and his gaze snaps back to mine.
“Did you find something?”
I swallow. “Your jacket dropped something.”
A pause. Silence stretching, the ringing in my ears coming back as I wait for his reply.
Kael swings his legs over the side of the bed, running a hand over his face as if he’s already thinking of what to say. “You shouldn’t have touched it.”
That’s…not reassuring.
“What is it?” I ask, my fingers curling over the place where it hums in my pocket.
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” he says quickly. “Just something I keep for—”
When he goes quiet again, his words escaping him, I press, “For what?”
He hesitates, his mouth opening and closing, a swipe of his tongue over his lips.
“It helps me keep track of things,” he says finally.
Things like me? I want to ask, but the question sticks in my throat.
“Magical fluctuations. Situations that need watching.”
Situations.
I almost laugh. It bubbles up cold and brittle in my chest, but I swallow it down. “And I fall under situations now?”
His jaw tightens, and I know I hit a nerve. “That’s not what I meant.”
“But it’s what you said.”
He exhales slowly. “Lindsay, you’re new to this world. To your magic. There are things you don’t fully understand yet. Things you need to be protected from.”
Ah. There it is. The careful tone, measured patience, the I know better wrapped up as concern. It pisses me off, honestly. After everything, it feels like he doesn’t trust me to be strong enough.
I cross my arms over my chest, a futile attempt at protecting my heart. “Did you know it would call to me?”
Another pause. Shorter this time. “I knew it was like the book. That you touching it wasn’t smart, until you were ready.”
Something hot flares in my chest. “So you did know,” I say. “You knew it could react to me, and you didn’t think to mention you had something like that? I thought we were a team.”
His jaw tightens. “I was trying to keep you safe.”
“No,” I say immediately. “You were deciding what I was allowed to know.”
He stiffens. “We can talk about this, calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. There’s a difference, Kael,” I continue, my voice steady but with an edge now. “And you don’t get to pretend there isn’t. You don’t get to watch me—track me—then act like I’m unreasonable for being upset about it.”
“I never—”
“You withheld information,” I snap. “Important information. Information that directly involves me. And you did it because you thought you knew better.”
Something dangerous flickers behind his eyes, and I suck in a breath. “I was protecting you.”
“From what?” I demand, my voice rising slightly. “From making my own choices?”
Silence slams down between us. My hands curl into fists at my sides.
“You don’t get to touch my life, my magic, my autonomy, and then hide behind good intentions,” I say. “That isn’t protection. That’s control dressed up as concern.”
His mouth opens and then closes.
“Kael,” I say quietly now, and that somehow makes it all feel worse, “a lie by omission is still a lie. And right now, you don’t get credit for meaning well.”
Silence stretches between us, and it makes me feel heavy. After last night, this morning is the last thing I expected to wake up to.
“I need some air,” I add. “Some space from this. From you.”
“Fine,” he says after a beat. Then firmer, he adds, “Leave the artifact, though, you’re not safe with it.”
My fingers curl into my pocket. I shake my head. “No.”
“Lindsay,” he says my name almost like a plea, shadows shifting toward me.
I jerk back, out of their reach. “Don’t.”
He stills. I spin for the door again, before he can move again.
He doesn’t stop me, and somehow that hurts worse than if he had. My heart feels heavy in my chest. I just need to get away—from all of it.
The school. The magical disaster my life has become. These stupid bonds I never asked for, the ones that make me feel like I’m losing my grip on what’s real.
For the first time since coming here, I wish for the crappy life I used to have.
Sure, it was complete trash. I wanted out of that town so badly that when this place landed in front of me, I didn’t even question it. How insane is that? I just put my head in the sand and pretended I was some kind of female Harry Potter—special, chosen, destined for something bigger.
But I can’t do that anymore.
Pretending led me here.
To a cold hallway with the lingering feel of a demon prince's hands and lips all over me and my heart hurting as if someone stabbed me.
I press my hand over my pocket, over the object pulsing faintly against my palm to remind myself that he hid this from me. I can’t help my spiraling thoughts, they just keep coming. He probably didn’t even mean to get bonded to me. I bet that took him by surprise.
What if Kael is the villain of my story? And I’ve just given him my heart. It makes me feel sick, and I quicken my pace.
But villains never look like villains at first. They look like saviors or answers to your deepest desires. Like the thing you’ve been waiting for. A place to belong.
I slow at the end of the corridor, leaning against the stone wall as my breathing turns shallow. My reflection stares back at me from a hung mirror—rumpled clothes, haunted eyes, a girl who stepped into a story without reading the content warnings.