Chapter 8 #2
He examines his fingernails. "Oh, now I'm worthy of your attention? Thought you were going to go back into your cottage and play loner like the biggest sad sack on campus." A half-grin. "That's supposed to be my gig, Hex. I don't appreciate the competition."
"Someone carved that into my door after I moved in. You said you recognize it." I cross my arms. "So either tell me what it is or stop wasting my time."
He grins. Doesn't answer. Of course he doesn't—giving me what I want would end the conversation, and ending the conversation isn't what he came here for.
Fine. Fuck. I’m going to have to play his game if I want information.
I plaster a fake smile on my lips and change my tune.
"My name is Calypso. Calypso Dellaby." I extend my hand out to him. An olive branch. A human gesture. "Since we haven't been properly introduced."
He looks at my hand. His smirk sharpens. His eyes drop to my outstretched fingers, then track up my arm—slow, deliberate, taking inventory of my wrist, my shoulder, the curve of my neck, before landing back on my face. He looks at me the way a cat looks at a bird that just hopped closer.
The second my hand crosses the doorframe, he grabs my wrist.
Not gentle. His fingers close around my wrist like a vice—cool and hard and absolute—and before I can process it he's pulling, yanking me out of the cottage, off the porch, around the side of the building.
My feet leave the step and hit grass and the world whips past in a blur of dark oaks and garden shadows and then my back is against the cottage wall and Kage is in front of me, one hand still on my wrist, the other planted flat against the wall beside my head.
"What the fuck—"
"Shh." Close. So close I can feel the word against my jaw.
The stone wall is cold against my shoulder blades and damp from the night air.
His body blocks the porch light, the path, the sky—everything reduced to the six inches of charged air between his chest and mine and the smell of him, cedar and sweat and old iron, filling my lungs whether I want it there or not.
The contact hits me like a live wire. His fingers on my wrist—heat shoots up my arm and explodes behind my sternum, my magic lurching toward him so hard my ribs ache with it.
Every inch of skin where he's touching me is buzzing, tingling, awake in a way that feels like the opposite of the dampeners.
Like twelve years of numbness being ripped off in one second.
I try to yank free. His grip doesn't budge.
He leans in. Dips his head. And inhales—a long, slow breath drawn along the line of my neck, from my collarbone to the hinge of my jaw. A sound comes out of him—low, guttural, caught between a grunt and a groan—and his fingers tighten on my wrist.
"God," he mutters against my skin. "You smell like a lit fuse."
"Let go of me." My voice comes out wrong.
Too breathless. Too aware. I can feel my pulse slamming against his fingers where they're wrapped around my wrist, and the heat pooling low in my belly is making me furious because it has no right to be there—not for this, not for a man who just dragged me out of my own home and pinned me against a wall in the dark.
"Your magic's doing that thing again." He pulls back just enough to look at my face. Storm-blue eyes, inches away. The scar catches the moonlight. "The pulling. You feel it too, right? That current?"
"I feel you assaulting me. Let. Go."
He doesn't let go. He shifts his weight instead—crowding closer, his chest pressing against mine now, pinning me harder against the stone.
One knee edges between my legs. He's watching me with a focus that borders on clinical, cataloguing my reactions the way I catalogue everyone else's.
My shaking hands. My rapid breathing. The flush climbing up my neck that I can feel but can't stop.
"You're trembling," he says. Not concerned. Amused. Like he's poking a hornet's nest with a stick and enjoying the buzz. "Relax, Hex. I'm not going to hurt you."
"You're pinning me to a wall." My magic is roaring inside me, clawing to get out.
"And you're letting me." He grins. The scar pulls his lip and the moonlight catches his teeth and he looks like exactly what he is—something dangerous that's having fun. "All that power in your body and you're just standing here shaking. What are you waiting for?"
The sparks.
They're back—flickering at my fingertips, little arcs of light dancing across my knuckles. He sees them. His eyes drop to my hands and his whole body changes—shoulders rolling forward, chin dropping, like a wolf that just caught a scent. His tongue drags across his lower lip.
"There she is," he murmurs. "There's the fire. Knew you had it in you, Hex. You just needed a push."
"I didn't need anything from you—"
"Sure you did. You were in there doing homework on a Friday night." He tilts his head, grinning down at me with the lazy pleasure of someone who's exactly where he wants to be. "Somebody had to come remind you what you are."
"You want to see what I am?" My voice is shaking and I hate it. The magic is building behind my sternum—pressure climbing, heat spreading, my palms burning against his shirt. "Fine."
"Yeah?" His breath against my ear. "Show me, Hex. Show me what—"
I plant both hands flat on his chest and push.
Everything I've been holding detonates at once—a concussive blast of raw power that erupts from my palms and hits him square in the chest. The force of it lifts him clean off his feet.
He flies backward and hits the ground ten feet away, skidding through the wet grass, the impact so hard I hear the air leave his lungs.
Silence.
I'm pressed against the cottage wall, hands outstretched, fingers blazing with sparks that crackle and pop in the dark. My chest is heaving. My magic is roaring—a bright, deafening static behind my sternum, still surging, still pushing, looking for the next threat.
There is no next threat. There's just Kage, lying in the grass with his arms out, staring up at the sky. Flat on his back. Still.
Oh god. Oh god, did I kill him? Did I—
He laughs.
Low, rough, surprised. He pushes up onto his elbows and looks at me across the dark yard and he's grinning. Ear to ear. Blood on his lip from where he bit it on impact. Absolutely delighted.
"There she is," he says again. Quieter this time.
Seductive.
Hungry.
I run.
Through the grass, around the cottage, up the porch steps, through the door.
I slam it behind me. Lock it. Press my back against the wood and slide down until I'm sitting on the floor with my knees pulled up and my sparking hands buried in my hair and my breath coming in short, hitching gasps that I can't seem to slow down.
What just happened. What just happened.
My hands are still glowing. Little arcs of light threading through my fingers, illuminating the dark cottage in flickering gold.
I stare at them through the curtain of my hair and watch the sparks die one by one, each one dimmer than the last, until my hands are just hands again—shaking, ordinary, but always seconds away from exploding.
From murdering.
I don't know how long I sit there. Long enough for my breathing to slow.
Long enough for the roaring in my chest to settle back to its usual hum.
Long enough to replay every second of the last five minutes on a loop—his hand on my wrist, his breath on my neck, the sound he made, the heat in my belly, the blast, the laugh, the there she is—and feel sick with every repetition.
He provoked me on purpose. And it didn’t take much.
He pushed until I broke because he wanted to see it.
Wanted to see what I'd do when the leash slipped.
And I showed him. I showed him exactly what I am—a girl who can't be touched without exploding, who can't be pushed without pushing back hard enough to level a room, who will never, ever be safe to be close to.
Eleven people. A hotel hallway. The sound it made.
My fingers dig into my scalp.
A knock at the door.
"GO AWAY."
"I have your food." Zeva. Flat. Unimpressed. She’s probably questioning every career decision she’s ever made that’s brought her here.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I scrub my hands over my face. Wipe the sweat off my forehead. Stand up. My legs are unsteady. I unlock the door and open it just wide enough to take the plate—some kind of pasta, a bread roll, a side salad that's seen better days.
"Thank you," I mumble.
Zeva looks at me. Her eyes narrow. She doesn't say anything—doesn't ask, doesn't comment—but her gaze lingers a half-second longer than professional protocol requires, and in Zeva-language, that's practically a wellness check.
"Goodnight, Miss Dellaby," she says. And walks back to her side of the duplex.
I close the door. Lock it. Carry the plate to the kitchen counter and set it down beside the empty fridge and the scraped-clean peanut butter jar and the three remaining crackers.
I look at the food. I look at my hands. Steady now. No sparks. But my wrist is still warm where Kage’s fingers were and I can still smell cedar and iron on my shirt and the muscle memory of his chest under my palms—solid, real, gone—is doing things to my nervous system that I refuse to examine.
"Fuck," I say to the empty kitchen.
Above all… how did he know where to find me?
How did he know I live here?