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“On it.”

The scratch of the pen against paper roared through my ears as I fought off the panic gripping me. My friends were out there, and sure, they were some of the best fighters I knew, but they would also be greatly outnumbered by any troop Kakias sent after them.

And if she went herself, with that untamed power, they might not survive it.

“We don’t even know where they are now.” I frantically looked between the others.

“The letter will find them, Malakai.” Lyria attempted to soothe me, but fear for her brother burned in her stare.

My breath was coming in short gasps now. “They’re traveling,” I roared. “It could take time to locate them if they’re moving quickly.” And that power Kakias exerted over Ophelia could be stronger. We didn’t know its full extent.

I rubbed the heel of my hand against the knot forming in my chest. “Dammit if this fucking tattoo worked properly I could reach her!” The Bind had never been a bigger disappointment. My hands raked through my hair as panic closed my throat. My hearing muddled, like I was beneath water.

I spun away from the table. And across the room, Mila’s eyes caught mine.

Breathe, she mouthed.

I couldn’t fucking breathe, not when the people I loved—my family—were outrunning a queen they didn’t even know had a direct link to them and we may not be able to reach them in time.

Breathe, Mila mouthed again, taking a deep inhale. The voices in the room swam together.

Forcing myself to mimic her, I counted as air inflated my lungs. Held it. Counted. Released it. Counted that, too.

Kept repeating that method until my heart had returned to a normal rhythm and clarity focused my vision and mind.

We would write to them, and they’d be safe.

“What can we do from here?” I asked, once my hearing had returned to normal.

“Kakias is going after our own.” Mila’s lips curled into a vicious smile that only belonged on a battlefield. “We’ll find her first.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Tolek

Could I wake up with her every day? Fucking Spirits, what did I have to do to make that a possibility, because I’d do it. Whatever it was, whatever I needed to sacrifice, I’d give it over right this moment to make waking up with Ophelia’s head on my bare chest, her breath tickling my skin, and her arms wrapped around me a reality.

I was obsessed after being denied the one thing I wanted more than life itself for so long. She’d given me a small taste. The addiction was full-fledged now. Bars down, my heart in her hands, no going back.

I’d woken long before her, and the first thing I did was grab my journal from my room and come back. My thoughts never made sense in my head. I had to turn my feelings into written words to understand them. Didn’t know why; I’d always been that way.

Despite every damn flaw I’d exposed last night, she didn’t run. I didn’t understand how. I shouldn’t have shared any of it truly. Block those faults in their own compartments and bury them deep beneath the smiles and humor and try to be better than the man who sired me, that’s what I’d always trained myself to do. No one knew the truly dark side within me. The selfishness, the anguish, the helplessness.

Maybe I shouldn’t have shared any of it, but she’d been so happy to protect me. So perhaps I could tell her the rest? Spirits, my head was a damn mess.

Exactly as it was last night when she straddled me and used that mouth to make me forget all of my issues. She’d tried to make me talk, but I wasn’t having it. Not when all she wore was a thin silk nightgown and I could feel her heat through my undershorts.

When things had gotten a little too carried away for her comfort, and she rolled to the side disappearing into that mind of hers, I’d pulled her tighter against me to remind her I wasn’t going anywhere. Her thoughts had been so loud, nerves over whatever she still struggled to say bouncing around her head, so I gave her silence and time.

Nothing we did or didn’t do would make me love her less, no matter how long she needed. Probably the opposite, but I didn’t say that out loud.

I didn’t give a damn that all we’d done was talk and kiss. Beneath the sheets, hands trailing up her spine as she arched into me, laughing as I teased her and she playfully threatened me…it was a side of her she rarely dared to show. Carefree and relaxed.

Damn, I needed all of it. As she slept beside me, I poured a poem onto the page about the weightless look in her eyes and the way it tied a string around my heart and tugged.

The world was calm, the distant sea a lullaby in the dawn, and I was so fucking in love with the girl sleeping beside me.

When she shifted against me and stretched one arm up, that North Star tattoo caught the light and my stomach fucking plummeted. Ophelia’s eyes fluttered open, and I tucked away the uncertainty her Bind dragged up in me every time I saw it. Like claws scraping against my gut, piercing and utterly bloodthirsty.