Chapter Seventeen
Legend
I hit the floor on a half-bent knee and bite back the sway.
Portals are clean when I’m sharp. Surgical. Now they punch like a cheap uppercut and leave the room bending at the edges, walls rolling before they snap into place.
My royal room at Rathe U drags itself out of the blur, and the first thing that comes into view is the black bed with ironhead posts.
The walls are racked with weapons like art, and there’s a nasty little window view of the inner quad where all the hopefuls parade their new coats and masks.
It’s a sad little place that can’t hold a candle to the Royal House at the edge of campus that I should be staying in alongside my brothers and London.
Can’t bring myself to be that far from my little mate, though, so meager living quarters it is.
Haide steps out of the ripple like she’s walking off a stage. No stumble. No tell. Like the world moves to make room for her. As it fucking should for a future queen of Rathe.
Her gaze flicks to the Leviathan tooth mounted over my desk, the knives lined spine-out above the hearth, and finally to the couch nobody sits on because I don’t invite people here. Her chin tilts toward me. That look can strip paint.
“That was a nice power nap.” She crosses her arms, her eyes rolling over me. “So why do you still look like shit?”
“You’re adorable when you’re concerned.” I shrug off the throb behind my left eye and the iced-iron drag in my limbs. “Just need more sleep.” I knock my knuckles against my thigh. Stay upright. Stay present. “You survived and got out of the maze.”
“You set me up to drown.” She glares. “Literally.”
“You set yourself up to fight back.” I let the grin slip out. “You did.”
Her mouth wants to smile. She doesn’t let it. “You’re full of shit.”
“Consistently.”
The door swings without a knock and I know who it is without looking or using my damn senses.
Sinner never knocks because manners bore him. He leans on the jamb with one hand, black shirt open at the throat, an unlit cigarette teasing his lip, eyes bright with the kind of humor that usually ends with someone bleeding.
“Family meeting,” he says, like it’s a joke. “Creed and Knight in the bone room. Bring your crown and the stick up your ass.”
Haide lifts a brow at him. “You let your pets talk to you like that?”
“The ones with teeth,” I say. “Wait here.”
She snorts. “Make me.”
I take two steps like I’ll indulge the argument. I don’t. I don’t have the time to burn my temper down into something soft and warm and useless.
“Stay.” I meet her stare. My voice drops. “I’m not asking.”
She bares her teeth. Pretty. Dangerous. “Go fuck yourself, Royal.”
“Charming,” Sinner murmurs, amused.
I shoulder past him and, when my mouth is near his ear, pitch the words low. “Bind the room.”
He does so discreetly as he follows me out, flashing his teeth in a grin. “You sure you want me to collar your little monster? As you said, she bites.”
“She’ll try.”
“What’s the matter?” He laughs against his cig. “You forgetting your knots? Bind it yourself.”
I keep walking, voice level. “Something’s wrong with my magic.”
The humor tilts, curiosity sliding in. “Since when?”
“Since it started fucking choking on me.”
“The calm not hitting?”
“Among other things…” I grumble, picturing Haide’s protests already as she tries to break out of the royal room.
We move through the hall. Old stone eats sound.
It’s almost quiet, but really, it’s just the sound of everyone listening.
Banners crawl with their own faint magic, old colors and older grudges stitched into them in gold, black, and purple.
Students watch us from doorways yet pretend they aren’t.
They’re amusing, to say the least. Every year, we have a new load dropped, but this is the first year that the school is entirely run by us Deveraux Brothers.
I’m certain that’s the single most terrifying thing to them. As it should be.
Sinner whistles under his breath. “You look like death fucked you. How was the wild animal with her first train?”
“Fine,” I mutter, cracking my neck. “She doesn’t hold the same gift, though, if that’s what you’re asking.” It would be. Nosy bastard.
His laugh cackles through the air. “You really had to test that? That girl is fucking chaos. Ain’t nothing calm about that.” He taps ash from a cigarette that isn’t lit. Habit. Tell.
“She’s not a girl.”
He nods in agreement. “She’s a bomb.”
“Then we can all watch her explode.” My eyes flicker with something I’d assume looks like mania. “Because she’s going nowhere.”
He shakes his head, grin deepening. “You know you’re gonna need to send her to Arabella. With whatever magic manifests within her, and if she really is your mate—
“She is.”
“Her Ethos will start to rise within her at some point, and she’s gonna need Arabella to”—his hands wave around the place—“control all that chaos.”
I know he’s right, but the thought of Haide being anywhere near Arabella has the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
Not because I give a fuck about the soft little lamb, but because Arabella is basically the fucking princess of the Argents.
Since we’ve eradicated the council, I’m gonna go ahead and assume that if we bring any more heat by harming yet another Argent, it’ll just give their people more of a reason to stir.
Bone Room doors swing open with a shove. Without everyone in here, its emptiness feels…just that.
Empty.
Knight sits slouched in his chair, lazy on purpose, all coiled lines and deadpan eyes, but it’s Creed who concerns me.
For whatever reason, which I’m no doubt about to hear right now, he hates Haide.
His finger taps against the table but his eyes follow me.
I love our big brother, but he’s the most like Father.
I used to think all his good parts…but recently, I’ve seen a lot of the bad, too.
Knight’s nose scrunches an inch. “Shit, Lege. You smell like burnout.”
“Nice to see you too.”
Creed is going through a mixture of emotions with his eyes alone. First, assessment. The second is annoyance. The third is something like worry, which I hate on him because it means it’s real.
“Sit.”
“I’ll stand.”
He ignores it.
Sinner sprawls into a chair, boots kicking up like he can’t wait for the family drama to spill out of everyone’s mouths. Like we don’t have whole fucking murders happening on our streets.
Sinner points with the cigarette. “Legend’s magic’s acting like a drunk trying to pick up a girl way out of his league.”
Traitor. He winks like he just lit the fuse for fun.
Creed’s mouth flattens. “How long?”
“I don’t know. Recent enough.” I finally take the chair, knowing that I won’t be able to escape this conversation. Brothers. They’re basically extensions of your parents. We can’t escape one another ever.
Knight’s gaze is steady. “Define ‘recent.’”
I roll my shoulders to shift the ache. “Since the Island, I think. Since I got back.”
Creed leans forward. “Your principal powers don’t ‘slip’ unless something knocks it out of you.”
“Thanks for the primer,” I say. The laugh chokes in my throat and comes out a rasp. “I didn’t study.”
Knight’s eyes cut to my face. He inhales, that little flare that means he’s not just smelling with his nose. Bonds. Oaths. The weft we all carry. “You smell wrong.”
“Appreciate it. I’ll take a shower later.”
“Like you’ve been hollowed,” he continues, ignoring my hiss. “Like something is picking bits away.”
Sinner makes a low noise. “Sexy.”
Creed’s gaze slices like he wants to cut what he sees out of me with a knife. “We need to name the cause if we’re going to cauterize the wound.”
The word cauterize makes me twitch. “We?”
“We.” He gestures a hand at the table. “And, since you’re already lying to yourself, I’ll do the knife work.” He holds my gaze. “She isn’t your mate.”
My hands curl on nothing. The room drops a degree. Even Sinner doesn’t crack a joke.
“I know what bonds feel like,” Knight goes on. Calm. Reasonable. Hammer to the skull. “I know what they do, what they give.” He studies me with critical eyes. “They fuel, stabilize. They don’t drain. That girl, she is emptying your reserves.”
Sinner shifts, attempting to save some of the argument. “It isn’t a normal bond we’re familiar with, I’ll give you that,” he says to Knight.
“Shut up,” I snap.
Knight’s words land heavy in my chest, but only because I want to knock him out for trying to make sense of Creed’s bullshit. There is no sense to be made.
She is mine, period.
Knight leans an inch into the table, and the bone doesn’t dare creak.
“London binds sanity to me, not madness. She doesn’t leave me a cracked vessel.
She is not a leak. She doesn’t take. Haide”—He lets the name hang.
My jaw tightens—“does. You want to pretend that isn’t true because she makes you feel things you didn’t before, something about her demands your attention and loyalty.
But it isn’t love. It’s compulsion; and compulsion feels like drowning when it’s not fed. ”
“You done?” I say, brows raised, unfazed.
“No. You’re off. You’re dangerous when you’re off. Not just to you. To everyone who depends on your calm—”
“I am not off.” I step into the words. “And don’t you dare put London in your mouth when you’re trying to teach me what a mate is. We all know the bond isn’t one size fits all. It arrives exactly as it should depending on the people who are connected.”
Knight’s brows lift. Sinner snorts a laugh that almost goes ugly.
Creed’s eyes flatten. “She is not your mate, Legend.”
“How do you know, Creed, hm?” I press. “Because her head isn’t just a pretty little buffet for you to feed on the way you wish, but instead a god damn maze you can’t see your way out of?”