21. Hale
Hale
The bond drops out. One second, it’s there, hot and vicious and impossible to ignore. The next, it cuts clean off and leaves a hollow punch through my chest that stops me dead in the middle of my room.
I’m on my feet before I’ve even decided to move.
“No.”
I wrench my door open hard enough that it slams into the wall. The corridor is empty except for ward-light crawling over the stone in weak silver veins. Blackridge took her ages ago. Too fucking long. I knew it. I knew leaving her with him was a bad call.
My pulse kicks into overdrive. Heat surges under my skin, hellfire pressing at the edges, begging for release. I stalk straight to her door first out of instinct, then turn and head for the stairwell because her room’s empty and I’m not an idiot.
Mostly.
The bond should not vanish. Not like that, not unless she’s unconscious, dead, or behind something powerful enough to sever the line.
I reject the second possibility so hard it feels like violence.
I hit the stairs at speed, two at a time and take them fast enough that the moving staircase doesn’t get clever.
By the first landing, my skin is running too hot.
On the ground floor, I’m done pretending I’ll follow protocol.
I shove out of the door and stride across the courtyard, the cold night air doing nothing to cool down the raging fever that is burning through my body.
The wards at the admin entrance flare as I approach, silver lines cutting across the archway in a grid that tells me to fuck off.
I don’t.
I slam both palms into the barrier, and hellfire surges out of me in a hard burst. Pain bites deep into my hands. The wards shriek and spit sparks into my face. I hit them again, harder, muscles locked, heat roaring through my veins.
“Open.”
Nothing.
My three-headed bastard wants out. I let a fraction of him rise, enough to put force behind the next strike. Fire rolls through my arms and punches into the lattice of spell work. One line blacks out. Then another.
When I hit the door again, the wards snap, and the doors fly open, but not by my hand. Blackridge stands there with a grim expression, which makes my insides coil.
“What?” I growl. “What happened to her?”
“She passed out. She’s fine. Come, Mr Hale. This territorial bond you have with her might actually be useful.” He swishes around and marches off, expecting me to follow.
I lurch forward, panic hitting my blood. “What did you do to her?”
Blackridge doesn’t break stride. “I stopped her body from tearing itself apart.”
For half a second, that empties my head.
Then rage slams back in harder.
“Explain that properly before I decide you’re the next problem.”
His black eyes pin me where I stand. Cold and unimpressed. “Watch yourself, Mr Hale.”
Power snaps in the air between us. His magic presses against mine, sharp and brutal. He wins. He always wins.
Blackridge’s expression hardens by a degree. “She interacted with an artefact that keyed to her native resonance. The resulting feedback destabilised her vessel. I contained it. She lost consciousness. That is the short version.”
Every word out of his mouth makes my temper worse.
“You did something to her.”
“Yes,” he says flatly. “I kept her alive.”
“Where is she?”
“In the infirmary.”
I’m already moving before he finishes.
He catches me with a savage spell that stops me for one second. “You will not go in there snarling and setting fire to my staff because your control is poor.”
“My control is fucking excellent.”
“It is not,” he says. “At present, it is hanging by a thread.”
I try to wrench free. “Then get out of my way.”
Blackridge studies me for half a beat, then releases me, turns and carries on down the corridor. “Try to behave like a creature with a functioning brain.”
“Try to speak like someone I don’t want to throw through a wall.”
He ignores that. Bastard.
I follow him through the admin corridors with my blood still running too hot.
The hollow where the bond should be makes everything feel wrong, distant, buried deep enough that I can’t reach it properly.
That’s worse in a different way. It means she’s alive, but whatever happened put her somewhere I can’t get to.
We cut left, then down a narrow passage lined with silver ward-lines and old portraits. One ancient witch in green watches me pass.
I stare at her, but she doesn’t look away.
Blackridge doesn’t even glance back. “Do stop glaring at the paintings, Mr Hale. They are in a very bad mood tonight.”
“Join the club,” I mutter, but avert my eyes anyway.
The infirmary doors open before we reach them.
Warm light spills across the stone. Two healers look up at once, take one look at Blackridge and me, and decide silence is the better option.
I find her immediately.
She’s on the far bed, lying too still under a dark blanket, blonde hair spread over the pillow, one hand resting palm-up at her side like she dropped it there by accident.
Rage drains out of me so fast it leaves something worse behind.
I cross the room in three strides and stop at the edge of the bed because touching her while I’m this worked up feels dangerous in ways I don’t like.
I ignore Blackridge at my side and look at her. There’s colour in her face. Her chest rises and falls, slow and even. No blood or obvious injury.
The pressure in my soul eases by a fraction.
“Stay with her until she wakes up,” Blackridge says and steps back and vanishes.
“Well, that’s helpful,” I mutter but pull up a chair.
No sooner have I sat down than her eyes snap open. She turns her head to look at me. “You.”
“Me.”
“Where did you come from?”
“My room,” I say with a smirk. “What happened to you?”
She blinks once, then winces like even that costs her. “Pain.”
“You passed out.”
“So I gathered.” Her gaze drifts over the room, taking in the infirmary, the curtains, the healers pretending not to listen. Then it comes back to me, sharp and annoyed. “Did Blackridge send for you?”
“No. I felt the bond snap. It’s back now.” The relief that floods through me is embarrassing, and I’ll deny it to my grave. “You scared the shit out of me.”
Her expression shifts by a fraction to one less cutting. “That sounds like a you problem.”
“It is. Still counts.”
I take her hand and lace our fingers together.
She goes still.
I do too.
“Is this the hand-holding portion of whatever the fuck we’re doing?” she asks, pulling her hand back.
“Guess so.”
“I don’t do sweet.”
“I know,” I say with a slow smile. “You do hard, fast and brutal.”
One of the nurses chokes back a noise and drifts off.
Wise decision.
“Does he know?” I ask carefully.
“Know what? Who I am?”
“That and anything else.”
“Sort of. I said some things. He wanted to test me to see if I was dangerous.”
“And?”
“Pretty much dangerous. If only to myself.”
“Not just yourself,” I murmur.
“Aww,” she says, blue eyes flashing with amusement. “You scared of me, hellhound?”
“Of fucking course I am,” I say. “Only a dickhead wouldn’t be.”
Her mouth curves, pleased with herself despite the blanket and the fact that she looks wrung out. The bond is back, thin but present.
I look her over again, slower this time. “How bad?”
She glances at the healer across the room as if debating whether to lie for sport. “This body objected to being flooded with my own power.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It was inconvenient.”
I snort. “You passed out hard enough to scare Blackridge. That’s beyond inconvenient.”
“Blackridge doesn’t scare.”
I shift my chair closer and plant my forearms on my thighs. “Tell me what happened.”
Her eyes narrow. “So you can do what?”
“Understand what the fuck I’m dealing with.”
“You’re dealing with me. You know what I am.”
“In theory.”
That gets a flicker of heat in her eyes, I recognise too well. Good. She’s still got enough fight to be difficult. “It doesn’t matter. He knows enough, and he will either help me or hinder me.”
“Help you do what, exactly? Go home?”
“Yes,” she states bluntly, and it’s like a knife through my heart, but I don’t let her see it. “I don’t belong here.”
“Says who?” I ask lightly.
“Me. I’m a ruler, Hale. I am beyond your wildest imagination. Not a twenty-one-year-old witch with zero power.”
“How old are you?”
Her eyes light up. “You don’t want to know. It will make you feel inferior and possibly a little icky.”
“Icky?”
“I’m old; let’s just leave it at that.”
“Are you a crone in your real body?” I smirk, but the worry is real. I don’t know what that says about me.
Or her.
Or us.
This entire situation is fucked up.
She snorts. “Gods, no. I’m gorgeous.”
“We don’t have a problem then.”
“So we would’ve if I’d been old and ugly?” It’s a genuine question, and it’s about the most honest conversation we’ve had since she arrived here.
“Probably,” I say. “I’m very shallow.”
Asha stares at me for a second, then gives a tired little huff that somehow still manages to sound superior. “Good. I’d have been offended if your standards were too broad.”
“I’m selective,” I say. “You should feel honoured.”
“I don’t.”
“Liar.”
Her eyes sharpen, but the edge in her face is dulled by exhaustion. I don’t like that either. She’s too still, too pale under the infirmary lights, too wrapped up in a blanket like something breakable. It pisses me off.
I look towards the healer hovering at the far side of the room. “How long is she stuck in here?”
The woman startles like she hoped I’d forgotten she existed. “Until morning at least.”
Asha’s head turns. “No.”
The healer lifts her chin. “You collapsed after magical backlash. Your channels are inflamed, your body is under severe strain, and Headmaster Blackridge made it very clear that if you attempt to leave, we are to notify him immediately.”
“That sounds like imprisonment with extra steps,” Asha says.
“That sounds like healing,” the woman replies, and then gets smart enough to move away before Asha can start biting.
I look back at Asha. “Morning.”
“I’m not staying until morning.”
“You are, and I’m staying with you.”
“This bed is uncomfortable.”
“Tough. You need to be able to stand without wobbling when we make our plan to find whatever it is that can send you home.”
Her gaze bores into mine. “You’re really going to help me? After everything?”
“Because of everything,” I say.
“And what will you do when I’m gone?”
“Pine for you.”
“Is that it?” She looks offended. “You wouldn’t try to come with me?”
I blink, dumbfounded.
She blinks, shocked to her core at the words that came out of her mouth.
“Is that what you—”
“Forget I said that,” she interrupts and turns on her side, her back facing me. “I’m tired.”
I stare at the back of her head for a full second, then another, because my brain has decided to stop functioning at the most inconvenient possible moment.
She asked if I’d come with her, and it wasn’t in some abstract, strategic, useful way or a let’s all survive this mess way.
A rough laugh almost gets out of me, but I kill it before it turns into something that’ll make the healers start hovering again. “You don’t get to drop shit like that on me and then pretend you’re asleep.”
“I can do whatever I want,” she mutters into the pillow. “That is sort of the point of me.”
“Right.” I drag my chair around to the other side of the bed so I can see her face again. “So we’re clear, if you think I’m just going to wave goodbye while you disappear into another realm, you haven’t been paying attention.”
She goes quiet.
The bond hums again, present, strong.
After a moment, she says, “You can’t survive in my realm.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” Her voice comes out tired, flatter now, more honest than usual. “I know exactly why you can’t, and that’s because I rule there, and you are nothing.”
“Ouch. You weren’t exactly complaining I was nothing when you were coming all over my dick.”
“Don’t do that,” she says, sitting up suddenly. “Don’t hide behind the smirk and dirty words.”
“I can do what I like. That’s kind of the point of me.”
“Fuck right off,” she growls. “I am not benevolent. There, you have it in black and white.”
“So? You think being malevolent will, what? Put me off wanting to be with you? It does the opposite, sweetheart. I’m from a hell dimension. I don’t do benevolent.”
Her eyes darken with a deep lust that kicks my cock into gear.
She looks wrecked and vicious and turned on, all at once, and I’m only so fucking strong.
I get up and close the distance between us. “Tell me again.”
“That I’m not kind?” she asks, chin lifted. “That I’m cruel? That if I get home, I won’t suddenly become soft and grateful and start rewarding loyalty with smiles?”
I put one hand on the mattress by her hip and look down at her. “You really think that’s what I’m after?”
“I think you don’t understand what you’re offering.
” Her voice drops. “StormGate doesn’t run on your realm’s neat little rules.
It runs on power, fear and obedience. It eats weakness.
It honours victory. It remembers insults.
If you walked in there with that cocky grin and this absurd conviction that you can keep up, it would break you. ”
I grin anyway. “You say the hottest shit when you’re trying to warn me off. StormGate, huh? We are getting somewhere.”
She curses under her breath, and I sit back down. “You think it’s connected because of the name?”
She shrugs and turns her back to me again. This time I leave her to stew on everything we’ve just said. But the smile tugs at my lips as I settle back and close my eyes.