Chapter Six #2
Slowly, my eyes slide back to the man on the grass.
The man who smells of what he shouldn’t.
My pulse spikes violently because I know with the same cold certainty I felt when the dragon locked in on me that whoever this man is doesn’t fucking matter.
What matters is why in the fuck he smells like her.
…
“This black shit,” Knight says, tipping his head as he studies the gifted male bound to the table. “It’s the same consistency as the markings from the murder sites.”
Hellhound leashes burn bright around his wrists, ankles, and neck, red as a fresh flame, the royal weapon sunk into the stone table and wrapped tight across his chest. The magic hums low and constant, a warning vibration that sinks into bone.
If he so much as twitches, it will blister through skin and muscle alike.
Thankfully for him, he hasn’t moved since Silver tore the branch from his gut and sealed the bleeding enough to keep him breathing.
Now, our healer is working on him from the inside out.
Sinner clears his throat. “You mean the murders that haven’t happened since we sent H—”
“Don’t say her fucking name.” I can hardly breathe, this—male reeks so bad of the scent I once swore belonged to me. The scent of a person part of me still wants to claim.
Every breath I drag in is full of her, and each one guts me a little more than the last.
Sinner must sense my turmoil. For once, he doesn’t smirk or make some dark joke to soften his shit. He only lifts both hands in mock surrender.
“Worth noting, though, ain’t it?” he says, and there’s no humor under it. “We remove a single gifted and suddenly the deaths stop. Either convenient, or suspicious.”
Silence folds over us.
The scenes run back like I’m mind mirroring, seeing myself from the other side, and it’s visceral.
I am there, watching.
I see her treacherous ass standing at the edge of every crime—always with a convenient excuse. The way she’d tilt her head as if she could hear something the rest of us couldn’t: a call that was meant just for her.
I believed her.
Gods help me, I believed her with every bone in my damn body. So much so I fought back at my own blood, my brothers, for her.
That thing between us, it gave off no warning. There wasn’t a lick of deceit in those irritatingly irresistible eyes of hers.
When she looked at me, my magic sharpened. It fucking sparked like a live wire. The complete opposite of what I now know should happen.
When Arabella looks at me, my magic doesn’t grow talons eager to kill. It settles, gliding through me like something serene—instead of a damn inferno that burns and consumes everything in its path.
My gaze drops back to the man strapped to the table.
The tar-like blood that bled from him has dried in dark streaks along his side, nearly black against the pale of his skin. The mask we tore from his face sits discarded on the floor, and without it he looks younger than I expected.
His dark hair is uneven, clearly cut with a blade that wasn’t meant for grooming. The clothes are stitched from mismatched fabrics, reinforced at the shoulders and knees with crude but careful repair.
Exile craftsmanship.
He should feel like an enemy.
So why is there something in me that’s refusing to mark him as a threat?
There’s an instinct coiled low in my gut screaming he isn’t dangerous, that I should know this without question, but I’ve trusted my instincts before and got it wrong.
I cannot be fooled again.
What kind of King would that make me?
Still, every time the hellhound leashes flicker, I have to hold myself back from demanding they be removed.
Creed steps closer to the table, hands braced on the edge. “Silver…”
Silver stands at the gifted’s side, palms hovering inches above the wound he sealed.
Under his healing magic, the air usually shifts into something pale and luminous, a wash of cool silver-blue that threads clean through torn muscle and knits it from the inside out.
I’ve seen him rebuild shattered ribs, mend ruptured lungs, coax life back into flesh that had nearly given up.
What we’re witnessing now is different.
It’s brighter, a molten silver veined with something else—small lighting-like blasts snapping in the space between Silver’s palms and the gifted’s body every few seconds.
Instead of diving into the wound and stitching from within, the magic spreads over the gifted’s body in thin, searching tendrils. It wraps around his torso, traces the numerous scars that map his skin.
Silver’s jaw tightens.
The hellhound leashes flare as the gifted’s back arches instinctively, faint burn marks appearing on his skin when he settles. Silver heals them immediately.
“My magic,” he says, his voice no longer as steady as it was before. “It…it knows him.”
Knight’s head snaps toward him. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know exactly.” Silver examines the body with an intensity that suggests he sees something invisible to the rest of us. “But something tells me we’ll need my father.”
“On it,” Sinner tells him, stepping back.
“How long until he wakes?” I ask, my voice controlled when I feel anything but.
“Shouldn’t be too long now.” He draws his hand back slowly, and the light recedes into his skin like it never existed.
Creed moves to the other side of the table. “You don’t trust his old wounds.”
“It’s more that I don’t know how he’s lived through some of them.” Silver turns the man’s shoulder carefully, exposing the lattice of healed damage across his back.
“See this?” His fingers hover above a jagged seam near the spine, shredded skin bubbled up at random angles around it.
“This was a puncture through the lower lung. It doesn’t look treated.
Yet, the lungs are intact, functioning normally.
And here—” He traces a pale line across the ribs.
“I would swear his rib cage was torn open. This man has definitely survived more than he should have, over and over again.”
“What is he?” Sinner asks. “His blood smells Stygian, but is he an ordinary? Healer like you? Fae? A fucking Lycan?”
“That’s the thing.” Silver sighs, scratching the back of his neck. “My magic recognizes him, but I didn’t find a single thread of magic inside him. It’s like he has none, or it’s caged. Almost like—”
Creed clamps a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll figure this out. Why don’t you go see if your dad’s arrived yet?”
“Like what?” I push.
“Go see if your dad has arrived.” Creed stands tall.
My jaw tightens as Silver leaves the room. “What the fuck, Creed?”
“We have no answers yet, Legend.”
“No, we have no answers. You have something, and you’re keeping tight-lipped. That’s bullshit.”
“I want to make sure the facts are right. When they are—”
Surprisingly, it’s Knight who steps forward. “You don’t get to make every decision, Creed. “We followed your lead last time because you were so sure, but we feel the change. A mistake has been made. Say it.”
“Knight,” Creed warns.
“Don’t Knight me, brother.”