Chapter Six
Legend
“Legend.” I whip around at the sound of his voice, glaring at the bastard who finally shows up after days of silence.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I charge at Creed. “I went to the school. No one there has seen you—so where the fuck were you?”
His eyes sweep the room—hardening when they land on Arabella—before he finally allows himself to meet my gaze. “Come with me. Now.”
I’d tell him to go fuck himself if it weren’t for his wrinkled clothes and the dark circles beneath his eyes.
I follow, sweeping a hand to shut the door behind me before Arabella can pursue us, and muffling her protest.
Creed snickers ahead of me, but it’s a low, exhausted sound.
He leads me straight through the side corridor that spits us outside at the head of Mother’s garden, where the stone paths still look like they’ve been scrubbed clean every night since the first Deveraux carved them out.
This place is the soul of the Royal grounds, both literally and figuratively. The very grounds are fertilized with the ash of our ancestors, fathers included, making the grounds as sacred as the realm itself. To disrespect it, to delude it, is an act of war.
You do not fuck with the sacred grounds of our ancestors.
Yet as we push deeper into the gardens and the view opens up, there’s a patch of rot that doesn’t belong.
“What is that?”
Creed doesn’t answer, but the rot does.
The moment we step onto the grass, a smear of ink black spreads along the base of the roses, petal edges turning wet and gray as if the flowers are melting from the inside out. The air around it tastes sweet in the most nauseating way, like fruit left too long in the sun.
What would it taste like?
Creed’s arm shoots out, hitting me in the chest and bringing me to a stop.
I hadn’t even realized I’d moved closer.
“You knew this was here,” I realize.
“I may not have been seen but I’ve been watching.” His arm lowers, and he shuffles forward, stopping at the edge.
I drag in a slow breath, forcing my pulse to level even as something in my chest hooks in deeper.
“What the fuck is happening?” I ask, my voice rough. “Is this some twisted lesson of fate, demanding we prove we’re worthy of a throne we were born for? Why did you call me down here and not the others?”
Creed’s expression doesn’t shift the way it normally would when I’m pressing. His attention remains on the ground face pinched in focus.
He looks…tortured.
Slowly, his gaze slides to me. “How is your magic?”
“It’s going fucking wild, thanks for asking.” The admission doesn’t draw a reaction from him. He knows something. Then again, fucker always does. “What are you hiding?”
He evades the question with a frown. “Tell me you’re okay.”
I let out a low scoff, stepping closer until the wet sweetness curls deeper into my lungs only for the stench of rot to follow.
“What’s the matter, brother,” I murmur, feigning amusement because the alternative is fear. “Can’t find the answer for yourself?”
“Legend.” The crease between his brows deepens, his stare turning focused in the way it does only when he’s in my head, sorting through the mess that is me.
Father had once told him it was his job to know what lived inside each of us.
The ultimate form of protection, he’d called it.
The perfect gift for the eldest son, and admittedly, a heavier weight for him to carry than the rest of us.
Except now, he looks frustrated as his blue eyes zero in on mine.
Something shifts at the base of my skull. It’s subtle at first, then sharper—the familiar pressure of Creed’s gift brushing against my mind. It’s not violent or uncomfortable, just there the way it has always been, pressing lightly at my temples.
“I understand why you’re blocking me out. I do, Legend. But I need to know.” His tone is low, almost guilty, which makes no sense, but it’s the desperation in his next word that has me frowning. “Please.”
Please.
Creed Deveraux doesn’t say please.
My smirk dies slowly as something cold slides under my ribs. “I’m not blocking you out,” I admit.
Creed’s eyes narrow, scanning my face as if he expects to find the lie sitting right behind my pupils. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I bite, and the irritation flares hot, because the idea of keeping Creed out of my head is so unnatural it’s almost insulting.
He has been there my whole life. He knows the shape of my mind the way he knows the layout of this castle. He knows where I hide the worst parts, where I bury the things I don’t want to admit, even to myself.
After everything, after he saved me from the biggest fucking mistake of my life, why would I push him out?
My magic sits under my skin, restless.
Every time I think I have a finger on what it is I’m feeling, every time I’m at the edge of an answer I don’t even know I’m looking for, it’s like my thoughts are pushed out.
My gaze flicks to the rot again.
“Brother…” I start, stepping closer to the black smear at the base of the roses, because something about it tugs at me. At first, it sounds like a warning, but the closer I get the clearer it becomes.
It sounds like a cry, one I can’t hear with my ears, which makes no fucking sense.
My hand lifts, fingers spreading as if I’m reaching for heat off a flame. When my skin gets close enough, that ache under my sternum gets worse, then burrows.
The rot stirs, a thin ripple running through the black as if it’s waking from my nearness, and then it hits me.
There’s no sound to be heard, but I swear to the fucking gods, it’s calling to me.
My knees give out, the grass damp under my palms as I drop, and my hand presses into the edge of the rot, thorns cutting into my flesh.
The second my skin makes contact, heat surges straight up my arm, through my shoulder, and into my chest, revealing an empty cavity I didn’t know was there. For one vicious second, it’s like something inside me recognizes this darkness.
My breath punches from my lungs, fingers flexing against the wet black, and the rot recoils.
It pulls back from my touch, the roses rising back to life.
Creed curses as he steadies me.
“What the fuck,” I rasp, staring down at my hand like it’s the problem. I press harder, spreading my palm, touching as much of the rot as I can reach. I need to understand what’s happening and my body is acting like it already does.
“It’s…angry.”
“What is?” Creed pushes.
“I don’t know.” My throat tightens so hard it hurts. “But I think I’m supposed to.”
I don’t have the words for the feeling clawing up my spine; it’s a million things braided together. A branding that belongs.
A bond trying to wake up in the wrong place.
“Creed…”
“Get your hand off it.”
I don’t because I can’t.
The moment I try, that invisible hook sinks deeper beneath my ribs and yanks. The image flashes through my mind—dark hair, a mouth twisted in defiance, and eyes so green they fucking glitter.
My stomach turns.
I push up to my feet fast, rage snapping back into place, and I welcome it. Anything is better than that. I stalk toward my brother until we’re chest to chest.
“I’m not blocking you out,” I say low, each word measured like a blade. “If you can’t get in, it’s not because I shut a door, Creed. It’s because something else is holding the fucking handle.”
Creed stiffens. For a heartbeat, I think he might tell me what he saw in that dragon’s head, but before he can get a word out, the garden answers instead.
A sound cracks through the air like thunder splitting stone. Dragons. It’s my first suspicion. Creed’s, too, judging by the way his attention darts to the sky. But it’s clear, the galaxy is steady.
The fucking ground vibrates under our boots, the iron gate rattling as if something massive just slammed into the realm from the other side.
Creed whips around, power flashing at his fingertips, and I spin with him just in time to witness a portal tear open in the middle of Mother’s garden.
It isn’t the clean, circular slice of magic we use. There’s no shimmer before a gateway appears. This shit bursts into existence.
Flame explodes outward first, a violent shove of heat and smoke that scorches the grass and curls the petals beneath, as if rot fertilizes the beauty of it.
The portal’s opening is jagged, unstable, its edges burning gold and black. But that’s not the oddest part. It’s the fucking flame behind it.
Something materialized in the center, a dark figure.
We brace for a fight, hands ready and power cracking between, the royal grounds unleashing demonic smoke surging toward us, desperate to protect its kings.
The portal spits out a body at our feet with a sickening thud and snaps closed.
I pause. Who the fuck is this? A dark metal mask covers his face, his hand covering his abdomen, where blood seeps through his fingers and stains the grass.
My gaze locks on the makeshift weapon sticking out of his gut. It’s a broken branch, and I reach forward, tearing the torn top from his chest.
The man coughs, gurgling, and the sound rips through the garden’s unnatural quiet.
“He’s alive!” I yell over my shoulder. “We need Silver!”
“We don’t even know—”
“And we won’t if we can’t integrate him!” I snap. “For once, Creed, stop trying to make the decisions and fucking listen!”
The masked man’s head tilts a fraction in our direction.
“Stay fucking still or I’ll finish you off,” I growl.
“Ha—” he tries, but chokes on the word.
“What?” Creed pushes, gripping the man’s mask to keep his focus. “What are you trying to say?!”
“Ha—” he tries again.
Creed yanks the mask off, revealing the face beneath.
Dark hair and tan skin are all I see. No one familiar.
At least not to me.
“You,” Creed breathes, dropping beside us.
“You recognize him?”
Creed turns toward me, mouth wide. “Legend…”
“Who—” I start to ask, but every fucking frame of rational thinking is erased from my mind as the demonic smoke whirls past us, sending a wave of fresh air in its wake.
My pupils blow wide, teeth aching with the urge to bite, to claim, as a scent all too familiar seeps through my nostrils, through my body, and into my gods damned soul.