Chapter Thirty-Eight
Vallynn
I was hunched over the coffee table in my dorm, meticulously decoding the message that arrived from Linoran only an hour before, when Shadrie Nightshade stormed into the room.
The door slammed against the wall, bouncing under the force of her rage as the petite ice mage stalked toward me, crystals forming under her feet as all the heat was sucked from the room.
“You,” she hissed, a finger jabbed in my direction.
Repositioning myself upright on the couch, I adopted my usual relaxed posture. “Hello, Shadrie. How nice to see you again.”
“Oh, fuck all the way off, Vallynn.” She snarled. “This isn’t a social call.”
“What is it then?” I asked, arching a brow at her.
“Your fucking fiancé is meddling with people’s mate bonds.” Her words were practically a growl as she stood in front of me. Her eyes promised violence, something I’d never seen in the mage in all the years I’d known her.
My lips tilted into a frown. “I find that unlikely,” I drawled. “Daena knows the consequences of meddling with mating bonds.”
Shadrie slammed her fists against her hips and scowled. “Tell that to Bechora and Zypher.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I forced myself to appear unaffected. “Explain,” I managed to grit out, waving my hand toward the recliner to indicate she take a seat.
Shadrie didn’t budge, staring at me with a glare that promised my death before she spoke. “Your betrothed,” she spat the word like poison. “Cornered Bechora with her gang of harpies, and one of them muted her bond to Zypher so he wouldn’t know they were attacking her.”
For the briefest flicker, my vision tunneled.
The image of my mate cornered, hurt, stripped of the protection her demon mate provided, seared through my chest like a blade.
My fists curled tight against my thighs, nails biting into my palms until the sting became sharp enough to anchor me.
I wanted to storm across campus, tear Daena and her vapid entourage limb from limb, and remind them why my shadows were to be feared.
But I couldn’t. Not without revealing what Bechora was to me and painting my father’s target firmly on her back.
I forced my lips into the arrogant, lazy smirk I’d perfected in my father’s court, the kind that hid everything I was truly feeling. “Muted?” I drawled, as though the thought didn’t make my stomach churn. “Sounds like a clever trick. Hardly anything to worry over.”
Shadrie’s ice magic spread, turning the condensation in the air into sharp crystals of ice. “You know it’s more than that, Vallynn. Zypher and Bechora have the right to take their revenge. It’s the way of our realm.”
I shrugged, deliberately slow, though I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. “It’s not that serious. They couldn’t actually break a mating bond, and reversing the magic that muted it is simple enough. I’m sure Zypher has already taken care of that.”
Her eyes narrowed into icy slits, the pale blue glow of her magic refracting off the walls like daggers.
“Not that serious?” Her voice cracked like a whip.
“You’ve changed, Vallynn. The boy I grew up with would never have brushed off something like this.
Muting a bond is an egregious slight—it’s blood for blood, life for life. You know that.”
I leaned back further into the couch, feigning indifference though my heart thundered against my ribs.
“You always were so dramatic, Shadrie. Couldn’t handle the jokes we played on you as children, so you cried to your uncle and made them out to be worse than they were.
If I lost my temper over every slight in this academy, I’d have no energy left for anything else.
Daena’s little game doesn’t matter.” I paused, steeling myself for the next words.
“Someone had to put the dud in her place—who better than her future queen?”
Shadrie’s scowl deepened, and frost cracked across the floor and over my shoes.
“So, you’re not going to rescind your protection for the bitch, then?
I should have known. The second that females started to notice you, you lost any hint of the honorable male you’d been. You’re as bad as your father.”
The words felt like a strike to the gut, bile threatening to climb up my throat.
I swallowed down my instinct to prove Shadrie wrong, keeping my expression carved into my usual mask of bored detachment.
“Honor is overrated,” I said smoothly. “Strength, however, is worth cultivating. My betrothed is simply doing her duty to the kingdom by culling the weakness here in the academy.”
Shadrie clenched her jaw, her teeth grinding until I thought they might crack.
The air grew colder until my breath came out in white puffs.
“You fucking disgust me,” she spat, her own breath fogging between us.
“Even when I hated you and Dante for what you did to gain the attention of your fawning females, I thought you’d turn out better than your father.
I should have known you’d let him twist you into a reflection of himself. ”
Shadrie’s magic receded in a woosh as she spun on her heel and stormed toward the door.
She slammed it behind her, shaking loose shards of ice from the ceiling.
They scattered across my half-decoded message.
The smirk melted from my face in the silence that followed, and my hands trembled faintly against my thighs.
My shadows curled hungrily at my wrists, begging for release from the loose hold of the mental leash I kept them in check with.
My eyes flicked to the coded message, a stark reminder of why I had to act against my own desires and play the role my father had cast me in.
As much as I hated protecting Daena from the retaliation she deserved, I knew I needed to use her actions to keep myself separate from Bechora.
I couldn’t give in to the mate bond, not as long as my father sat on the throne.
And definitely not before I stopped whatever wicked plot he was playing out against our people.
I drew a slow breath, forcing my shadows away, and lowered myself back into the rhythm of translating the coded message. I’d just finished decoding it when the door creaked open again, quieter this time, followed by the familiar cadence of Dante’s footsteps.
“Selir, the temperature in here is like a crypt,” he muttered. “What did you do, brood yourself into frostbite?”
“Shadrie paid me a little visit,” I replied. “Daena was meddling with Bechora’s bond to Zypher, but I decided it was better to use her actions to keep Bechora away from me. As much as I loathe the female, she practically handed me a new tool to keep my mate safe on a silver platter.”
Dante arched a brow at me and frowned. “If you say so.”
“I do,” I drawled, tilting my head toward the decoded message as he plopped into the recliner. “Linoran’s message. Coordinates with today’s date and a time.”
Dante leaned forward and scanned the page. “Some seriously short fucking notice.”
“I agree, but we raised my father’s suspicions when we helped the sphinx. Linoran likely couldn’t get this message to us any sooner.”
“Good thing I found the fucking dragon. It would take us hours to get there without him. As it is, I’m already losing out on my beauty rest with the time being after midnight.”
“You found Thrackborne?” I asked, turning my gaze toward my friend.
“Yeah, the grumpy lizard was holed up in some secret archive. I had to bribe a few brownies to tell me where he was. No clue what he was doing down there. I didn’t even know the place existed.”
“Make sure he knows when to meet us. Whatever is going down at this location is important.”
It was a quarter to midnight when Dante and I arrived at the clearing in the woods on campus. Caulder was already waiting, his arms crossed over his chest, scowl etched on his face.
“Dante tell you where we’re heading?” I asked.
Thrackborne nodded before stepping back and undressing so he could shift into his dragon.
Once his shift was complete, I climbed onto his back.
Dante shifted into his gargoyle form, his stone wings beating against the night air as he rose to settle behind me.
Caulder growled low, a puff of smoke leaving his nostrils as he snapped at Dante.
“Really? You’re going to make me fly the whole fucking way?” Dante grumbled. “Aren’t professors supposed to care about the well-being of students?”
Caulder blew out another puff of smoke with a grumble. His wings snapped wide, and he launched us into the air. Dante followed, complaining about favoritism and threatening to file a formal complaint with the dean. The dragon ignored him as he angled his wings toward our destination.
Worry coiled in my gut as we flew across the realm.
When he angled his body toward the ground and I spotted the nearly empty desert below, I let myself relax a fraction.
A small shack stood in stark contrast to the sand stretching beneath us.
There wasn’t the shimmer of magic to indicate illusion.
Another strong sign this wasn’t a trap laid by my father.
Caulder landed with a thump that made the shack tremble.
I eased myself to the ground so he could shift back to his human form.
Dante, for all his grumbling, was silent as he stalked forward to meet us, hand outstretched with Thrackborne’s clothing.
“I don’t sense anything amiss, but be on your guard,” I clipped before knocking on the door of the rickety building.
It creaked open to reveal a slim, dark-haired fae male. His irises were shot through with lines of white, the mark of a strong seer. He motioned for us to come inside, shutting the door quickly behind us.
“I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but I’m not sure it is.” He grinned.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“Geordalis Caelthir Fenrithiel,” he said with a slight bow. “I believe you three are familiar with my half-sister from the academy, and since you are, I shall allow you to call me Geordie, as all my friends do.”
“There are no Fenrithiels enrolled at the academy,” Thrackborne’s gravelly voice rumbled.
The fae smirked and shrugged. “Never said there was.”
Dante chuckled, causing Caulder to scowl over his shoulder.
“Why are we here?” I demanded.
“You’re here to receive a warning. War is coming, and you will be forced to openly choose a side. I believe your gargoyle friend and dragon companion already received such a warning from the sphinx. And yet none of you are moving as fast as you should.”
“Damnable seers, always speaking in riddles,” Caulder growled.
The fae, Geordie as he’d asked to be called, simply grinned.
“You know if we spoke in direct terms, the future would shift.” The smile fell, and he turned to me.
“You won’t be strong enough on your own, Princeling.
Not even with these two. You need to accept this is her fight too.
Stop fighting what you know to be true.”
My heart plummeted to my stomach. He hadn’t needed to say it aloud—his vague references were enough to tell me he was talking about my mating bond. “I can’t. You know what will happen if I do.” The words left me in a breathless whisper.
Sadness crept across his face, and his shoulders curved inward as if the weight of what he foresaw was too heavy to bear.
“Old, forgotten magic is rising. The king gathers his generals in secret, teaching them the whispered spells of the elves. Your future, my prince, is splintered into too many paths and will remain so until you choose for good. There is still time, but it is quickly running out.”
“So just tell him the path to take, fucking hell,” Dante snapped.
Geordie gave him his full attention. “You play a dangerous game, gargoyle. Your fate is tied to his, yet you keep your secrets. So shall I keep mine.”
“Is that all you have for us?” Caulder demanded, smoke pouring from his nose.
“For now.” Geordie shrugged.
“Then we don’t have any reason to linger,” Caulder snapped, storming from the shack.
The fae lifted a hand and waggled his fingers at the dragon’s back, tilting his head for us to follow.
“Fucking useless seers,” the dragon grumbled as he stripped off his clothes. “Their visions rarely ever matter because they’re always meddling, steering things the way they want them to go.”
I didn’t speak as he shifted into his dragon form and flew us back to the academy. Caulder wasn’t wrong. Seers meddled and altered the future in ways even they couldn’t foresee. That knowledge didn’t stop the dread that started simmering in my gut the moment the seer mentioned my mate.