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“Wasn’t spying on you.”

“No?” He emerges from shadows that shouldn’t be deep enough to conceal him, materializing like ink bleeding through water. Sweat gleams on pale skin. Black hair disheveled from exertion. Ice-blue eyes burning with something fierce and unguarded that makes my pulse stutter against my throat. “Then explain why you are lurking outside Academy walls at midnight, troublesome thing.”

The nickname sounds different now. Less mocking. More possessive in ways that send molten honey cascading through my veins.

“Personal business.”

His laugh is sharp as winter wind, shadows pooling at his feet in response to his amusement. “How fascinating.”

He stalks closer, each step dropping the temperature another degree until my breath mists between us.

“You are afraid of me,” he observes with dark satisfaction.

“I’m cold. There’s a fucking difference.”

“Is there?”

The night explodes into chaos.

The whistle of projectiles through air hits first—arrows that shimmer like crystallized moonlight. Then the scrape of claws on stone, wet breathing that sounds wrong, like lungs filled with grave dirt instead of air.

Enhanced senses assault me with information. Ozone and burning crystal from Seelie magic taste like copper pennies. Grave earth from Unseelie wraiths coats my tongue with the flavor of old bones. And something else that makes my newly awakened magic recoil in primal horror—the scent of iron and dead flowers that speaks of magic deliberately corrupted.

Thorns erupt without conscious direction, spiraling around my arms as Wild power responds to threat. Blue-green light bleeds through my sleeves, casting my skin in alien phosphorescence.

“Fuck!” I drop into combat stance, ceramic knife sliding into my palm. Muscle memory catalogs threats—fifteen hostiles, coordinated approach patterns, professional spacing that screams military training.

But Kieran is already moving.

The shadows around him don’t just respond—they explode outward in waves of pure destruction. Darkness becomes weapons, becomes shield. Temperature plummets as he draws power directly from the void between stars. He doesn’t just fight; he commands the night itself with authority that makes ancient trees bow.

A Seelie hunter flanks left, light-spear aimed at my heart. I roll right, ceramic blade leaving my hand in a throw that should put steel between his ribs.

The knife passes through him like smoke.

“Mirror-magic! Seelie illusion—they project false images while attacking from elsewhere.”

His shadows coil around my waist, yanking me against his chest as the real attack comes from behind. The darkness doesn’tjust protect—it brands. Cold wraps around my waist like a living vow, furious and unshakably possessive. When they release me, reluctance bleeds through the connection like phantom touches.

Mine,they whisper against my skin in a language older than words.

The real hunter materializes exactly where I’d been standing, light-blade passing through empty air. Kieran’s shadow-spear takes him through the chest before I can blink—not conjured but formed from concentrated darkness, solid as steel and twice as deadly.

Dark blood blooms across his ribs as an Unseelie wraith slips through his defenses. Spectral claws rake across flesh, leaving wounds that smoke at the edges.

“Kieran!”

Fear pierces my chest as my magic responds to his pain without conscious thought. Thorns erupt from the earth beneath my feet, spiraling upward in protective barriers that glow with blue-green fire. Wild Court power claims territory with primal authority that makes the ground itself remember older laws.

“Impossible,” one of the wraiths hisses, spectral form flickering with agitation. “Wild magic here? The bloodline was destroyed?—”

“Evidently not,” Kieran cuts it off, shadows reforming into a blade that removes the wraith’s head.

But there are too many. For every hunter we drop, two more emerge from darkness. My thorns hold the perimeter, but each pulse drains something vital, leaving me gasping as power bleeds from my system faster than I can replenish it.

Blood streams down Kieran’s ribs, staining his shirt in expanding circles. His breathing turns shallow, skin taking on a gray pallor that speaks of significant blood loss.

“Academy grounds. Now.”