Chapter Nine #2
Thyrix reaches the first layer of clouds, and my heart clenches for some reason as I wait for him to vanish like the others.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he punches through the thin white veil and then stalls, wings spreading wide and holding. He banks slightly, massive body rotating in a tight arc.
Heat surges up my throat so fast it steals my breath. I open my mouth to call his name, but choke on air, ash puffing from between my lips in a rough cough that burns all the way down.
“Thyrix!” I manage finally, voice raw.
He tips his head back and releases a roar that splits the sky, but doesn’t turn back.
“What—where are they going? Beast, where are they going?! I need… I don’t even fucking know what I need! Why did I come here?” I scream, fingers digging into my hair.
The Nightkin presses against my ribs in weighted comfort. “Close your eyes, Hellpet, and I will show you, though I think you already know.”
My spine tingles with awareness, but fog clouds my mind. “And how, exactly, would I know?”
“Because little mate. You’re the one who sent them.”
“What?” I whisper, looking up to the sky once more. “Why would I do that? And sent them where?”
The Nightkin sighs. Fucking sighs. As if he’s the one inconvenienced.
“If only you could call on a portal, let it take you where you wish to go…”
“So fucking helpful, you are.” I scoff. “Don’t you think if I could, I would?”
I would. The thought alone does it, my body answers like it’s been waiting for permission.
My hand snaps out as if it has a mind of its own.
The portal tears open in a splinter of black. Thorned vines bloom outward from the edges, curling and braiding around the frame. Dark flowers split open along the border, petals flat and wide like open palms, like the flowers give the portal life.
The Nightkin goes still inside my chest.
“She’s stunning, Hellpet.”
“Why does it look like that?” I step forward, boots scraping gravel.
Rimmed in fire and not that pretty pearly shit I saw on Rathe. Although, I guess it makes sense—considering I’m not one of those “pretty things.”
There’s something patient about this portal, as if it’s afraid if it moves even an inch, I’ll hesitate walking through.
My feet move before I tell them to, the threshold humming against my skin like a second heartbeat syncing with mine.
The darkness beyond the frame isn’t empty. It’s full. Dense and so thick it’s blinding, pressing against my face. Damp rock and distant smoke drag across my tongue, but something else lingers there, right on the edge.
My shoulder brushes the petals when I move past them, and with one foot in front of the other—
I step through.
The darkness opens its hands and lets me step inside, and the feeling is intoxicating.
The cobblestone comes up fast.
Too fast.
My knee hits first, then my palms, skin shredding across wet stone as the portal snaps shut behind me with the kind of finality that says You’re on your own now, dickhead. Not even a rush of air to mourn its passing. Gone, like it didn’t want to be associated with my disaster of a landing.
I stay there a second, on all fours, hair curtaining my face and my knee screaming. Fire burns through my palms as rain drizzles over the courtyard.
“Graceful,” the Nightkin murmurs somewhere in the dark behind my eyes. As always.
“Shut up,” I breathe.
“I said nothing.”
“You thought it loud.”
He clucks his tongue with a beat of amusement, as I push my hair back.
Palms—bleeding. Knee—bruised if not worse. Pride? That bitch is somewhere in pieces across these cobblestones. I can work with that.
I get up when dread suddenly fills every inch of my body. Fuck.
Every set of eyes in the immediate vicinity has already rotated toward me, and the ones farther back are craning.
I can hear the silence spread like a ripple, conversation dying in rings from where I’m standing, voices dropping off one by one until the only sound is the soft drip of water from the stone ledges above.
Dozens of gifted—maybe more—frozen with their attention swung toward the girl who just dropped in the middle of the royal courtyard.
I straighten to my full height. Roll one shoulder. Then the other.
Fine. Okay. So that happened.
My eyes sweep the space on pure instinct, not that I can do fuck all about it.
Most of these people look startled. A handful look entertained, which I hate, but the majority? Look seriously pissed off, which I find mildly satisfying.
I get about ten feet before sirens cut the air and the clatter of armored boots follows. Lights flare in windows, voices rise into a chorus, and the guards pour out of hidden posts.
The Nightkin hums as if proud. “I was starting to get pissed off. Glad they realize the threat that we are.”
“Only Legend’s demon would be happy that guards are ascending on us.” My stance shifts, power rippling through my senses and taking over, because apparently, there’s no off-switch to this shit.
“Just like a Tourmaline Dragon.”
“What does this have to do with the protector?”
“Why do you think the black beast is the protector of the flock? He sees all, hears all, anticipates all.”
“You know, changed my mind. Not the time for a history lesson, beast,” I argue.
He rumbles, prepared to argue back, but then he goes silent, and the reason why reveals itself a breath later.
The bond pulses. It hums and thrums and claws at my insides, desperate for what’s mine.
I hate that that word is even related to that little prick. He deserves to be castrated. Hung up by his balls and—
“Focus.” The beast snaps.
My lungs inflate, the air sweeping over me like a wave of calm. “Stop doing that.”
“Do you think he has this gift by mistake?” The Nightkin teases. “The fates clearly knew he’d need it with a mate like you.”
My teeth clench. Chaos meets calm and with that: balance.
I glare. “Focus.”
The Nightkin chuckles.
We both fall silent as a deep tugging grows low in my belly.
“He’s close.”
“Not close enough.” I look up at Thyrix. “Let’s fix that, shall we?”
With pleasure…