Chapter 12
My magic pulses around the room; every single breath Theodora Wilson takes is mine to grant or deny.
Her entire damn existence hangs on my whim, and Gods, it’s an exquisite feeling.
Wrapping tendrils of pure Cosmo Drakeward power around her throat, I slowly draw them tighter and tighter, watching her big silver eyes grow wide with panic.
She can’t move a muscle. Her arms are pinned, useless, against her too-small frame, and I’ve cemented her feet to the floor.
After everything that has happened, she’s completely at my mercy.
Months. Months I’ve spent picturing this; every delicious way I could break this bitch, and now I have her, in my territory, mine to destroy however I please. A red flush is staining her pale cheeks, and I grant her the smallest sliver of air, just enough to keep her conscious.
I can taste the potent mix of terror and fury leaking through her pores, and I fucking love the way her eyes are focused on mine, showing fear and hatred in equal measures. My father, that psycho fuck, tries to squeeze that expression out of me; I give him the hatred but not the fear.
It’s intoxicating, this absolute control. Being the one inflicting the pain. Theodora’s face is darkening, her pupils blown wide, and those tell-tale little red dots are blooming in the whites of her eyes.
Enough. For now.
A flick of my wrist, a mental release, and she drops like a puppet with its strings cut, becoming a broken doll on my floor. I stalk around her limp form, savoring the sight of her ruin from every angle. Delicious.
While she gasps for air, I make her kneel, forcing her chin up, her head tilted back at an uncomfortable angle, her gaze pinned on mine.
“Where. Are. They?” The Elite intonation gets me a truthful answer every time.
The flush on her face is receding, leaving behind her usual pallor, but my question whips the remaining color away. “I-I-I don’t know.”
That’s not what I’m expecting to hear. Donovan and Wes followed her to England, leaving me behind—the fucks.
If their little ménage à trois had gone to shit, why haven’t they come crawling back to the Academy?
To me? We always fight, yeah, like any damn brothers, but that last battle—that wasn’t something we couldn’t come back from.
Was it?
I weigh my next words carefully. The petty drama of their love-sick bullshit doesn’t interest me. I just want my brothers back. “If you don’t know where the Harts are now, where were they the last time you had contact?”
Like a slack-jawed idiot, she opens and closes her mouth several times.
Oh, right. “Speak,” I command, releasing the invisible grip on her vocal cords.
“I-I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she whimpers.
I narrow my gaze upon her, trying to detect any lies, but find none.
She truly doesn’t understand my question.
Have I brain-damaged her? To quote Pride and Prejudice, ‘I am not a man to be trifled with’.
And yes, I may identify with Darcy for the first half of the book, but not the latter.
“It’s quite simple. When was the last time you saw the Hart Twins, and when was the last time you had contact with them?” I can’t be more straightforward than that.
“November 1st, last year,” she replies instantly. “At the airport here—Havengard International. That’s the last time I saw them, and the last time I heard from them,” she answers, her voice trembling.
My mind stutters to a halt. The day the little bitch went back to England? That doesn’t make sense.
Dono and Wes had dropped her at the airport, then came back here fucking moping around like idiots. For twenty-four hours, they’d paced back and forth until the supposed ‘agony’ of being away from her had become too much.
I’d told them to get over a piece of mediocre ass. Wes had seethed, but Dono just looked at me with this wounded puppy-dog expression. “We don’t want to hear from you until you can accept that Theo is ours and will always be so.”
Then, much to my disgust, they’d chucked their belongings into storage and hopped across the ocean like a pair of pussy-addled idiots.
I won’t lie, there have been moments when the urge to reach out and drag them back has been a sharp claw in my chest. But I was convinced they’d snap out of it once the novelty of her cunt wore off.
Now I’m unsure what to think. They’d left the academy, but not gone to their little English slut? That didn’t make sense.
“So where are they?” I say more to myself than to her. “What’s their deal?” I slide my cell phone out of my pocket, and my thumb hovers over Wes’s name.
Fuck it. I hit the call button.
The phone line rings, but no one answers. After a minute, the automated voicemail cuts in. I punch out a text to Donovan’s number that simply reads ‘SOS’.
Silence. No reply.
A cold finger of dread trails down my spine. The twins may have been furious with me, but if I called for help, I know, just know, they’d pick up. I’d bet my life on it. “What happened, dud?” I snarl at the trembling girl. “Tell me fucking everything.”
Wilson’s hair is a tangled mess across her tear-streaked face.
She pushes it back with a shaky hand. “I-I left to go home, right? The guys said they’d see me at winter break, but they never got in touch again.
I got back to England and called, emailed, texted—everything.
They just ghosted me.” Her voice is now a raw whisper.
“I thought… I thought they’d changed their minds, or it had just been a joke to them all along.
But is that not true? Are they really not here? Where are they?”
Fucking hell. Eleven months. Neither of us has heard from the twins in eleven months. So what the actual fuck? Did something happen to them when they stepped off that plane in London? Where else could they fucking be?
Could they be with family?
Nah. The twins loathed their parents. Wes and Donovan spent their childhood with tutors and nannies at the family estate in Southernhampton, while their doctor parents worked on unsavory eugenics research for the Havengard Department of Witches Registration.
The dud’s mouth keeps opening and closing, trying to form words, but I keep her cut off.
My brain is a frantic mess, trying to map out what to do next.
That’s when I remember Striker, the best investigator on this coast. Sure, she also works for The Conclave, but her loyalty lies with cold, hard cash, not them. And I can pay her exceedingly well.
Without a second thought, I fire off a message.
ME: PRIORITY JOB - NO $ LIMIT
Striker’s reply flashes back almost instantly.
STRIKER: machete - midnight - cash
ME: Tonight?
STRIKER: <:-|
Fucking Striker, she always plays this stupid emoticon game with me. I turn my phone on its side and still can’t make out what that's meant to mean.
ME: TONIGHT?
STRIKER: Y
Hmm, going to Machete tonight sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Machete is the only bar-slash-fight club in the area. I’ll be able to fill Striker in and work off a little steam.
“C-c-cosmo,” A garbled whisper comes from the dud’s lips.
My head snaps up. How the fuck can she speak? In a strangled voice that sounds like it’s being dragged across gravel, she tries to continue, “D-Dart…”
My interest piques. I release my hold on her vocal cords, granting her permission to speak. Her words tumble out in a rushed, disjointed mess.
“D-d-dean Dartmouth. None of this makes sense. The dean, he told me. The twins. I had to… stop pestering them. Said I was stalking. You see, I’d written to the school, trying to get in touch…”
Dartmouth?
“Slow down. What the fuck are you talking about, dud?” My voice is sharp.
I watch her try to calm down. It looks like she’s doing some kind of hippy breathing exercise. I leave her to it for a minute, then snap my fingers. “Speak.”
“Yes, O-o-K. What I meant was, the dean before Crankshawe, the one who retired…”
“Dartmouth,” I supply.
She nods. “Yeah, him. He told me I had to stop trying to contact the twins or the school would file a restraining order. You see, I emailed the school, a w-week or t-two after I g-got home,” she stutters, her breath catching in her throat.
“I just couldn’t believe they were ghosting me; it felt like something was wrong.
So I contacted the dean. But if Donovan and Wes weren’t even here at the time.
Cosmo, why would Dean Dartmouth say that? I don’t understand?”
I ignore both the dud and the tears running down her face and think about the ex-dean. What had he been covering up? What the fuck was going on? “Forward me the email you got from Dartmouth,” I command.
She takes her phone out and fiddles around until I hear the whoosh sound. “Cosmo…” she whispers. “Wh-wh-what about you? When was the last time you saw them? Heard from them?”
I decide to answer, just in case her little brain holds another piece of this fucked-up puzzle.
“It was the day after you left. They’d shoved all their crap into storage and were heading off to England.
I said they were weak, pussy-blinded idiots, not worthy of being Elites.
” I wince when I think of the bitter words I’d flung at my brothers.
“Then I told them not to bother contacting me until they’d got their shit together. That’s where we left it.”
Her brow furrows with visible effort, and she pushes out more words. “M-m-must… speak t-to p-p-police…”
“STOP,” I tighten my mental grip, silencing her again.
The police? Absolutely not. Involving the authorities is not part of my plan. I’m going to find Dean Dartmouth and drag the truth out of him myself, whatever it takes, and that could get messy as hell.
“C-c-cosmo?”
The dud is still stuttering. If she can withstand even a sliver of my control, there’s more to her than meets the eye, and that presents me with a problem.
Simply compelling her silence clearly isn’t enough; I can’t risk her running around, blabbing my business to anyone who’ll listen.
And if the twins are in trouble, this is one hundred percent my damn business.
A coil of darkness stirs in the pit of my stomach. I want to punish her, and what better way than making her bound to me? Until I have my brothers back, this little mouse is going to be at my beck and call.
She trembles at my feet, and I make the decision. “I’m binding you,” I tell her. “Show me your neck.”
Fear flares in her eyes, and Gods, I relish the sight.
With shaking fingers, she pushes aside that rat’s nest of hair, exposing a pale, vulnerable stretch of skin from her chin to her collarbone.
Bare and ready for my mark. I draw the darkness up through my hands, then send the swirl of power forward. I don’t bother trying to be gentle.
She cries out as the mark burns into her fragile skin.
It’s over in a moment. “Now stand,” I command, stepping forward to examine the black sigil etched into her.
I’ve only marked two others before, the ‘traitors’ my father gave me to practice the skill on.
Controlling them had been satisfying, a tangible extension of my will.
But this binding suddenly doesn’t feel exhilarating; it’s more like ashes in my mouth.
“I’m now your master,” I tell her, my voice flat. “And will be until I decide otherwise—understand?”
“I understand,” she whispers, her voice barely a breath.
“Good. Now fuck off. I’ll be in touch soon.”
She stands frozen for a beat, then whirls and bolts for the door. I hear the frantic echo of her footsteps receding down the corridor as she runs, like she’s trying to outrun the devil himself.
Good luck with that.
My hand moves to the invisible mark on my own skin, a mirror of the one I just branded onto her. Gods, I’m so fucking tired.
Tired and empty. I’ve never truly felt whole, but the closest I ever came was with them, my brothers. How the hell could they just walk away?
And why haven’t they come back?