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Ipushed my luck, bringing in the second course—a pho and barbecue mix—and Silver’s eyes flashed, but she let me get away with it.

Once we’d emptied our plates, I knew my time was up. Before she’d strangle another set of expensive cutlery to death, I opted to stop the small talk and jokes Gideon and I had been engaged in through dinner.

“All right, guys. First of all, I’m asking younotto panic.”

Gideon tilted his head, probably in confusion.

Oh, right. Hedidn’tpanic. Another word he didn’t truly comprehend, just like grudges.

On the other hand, Silver’s lips were one straight line. I could tell she was physically preventing herself from shouting already. Out of the two of us, she should be the redhead, given her temper.

Deliberately slow, I removed the cashmere cardigan I’d thrown over my tank top. Gideon’s eyes widened the moment they settled on the first red rune on my collarbone, and I had the displeasure of witnessing one of the rare moments when my easygoing cousin lostallhumor, his sky-blue eyes turning toice. For once, he looked more like my father than good-natured Uncle Leo.

It was ever so easy to forget that Gideon, for all his charm and easygoing personality, was also ahalf dragon, and just as fiery and protective as Silver. Dragons were, after all, the kind of creatures who left everyone alone, so long as they didn’t trample over their territory, threatening the safety of their clans.

I was a part of Gideon’s clan.

Unexpectedly, Silver was the lesser of two evils, though shewaspissed. The runes merely confused her, while Gideon knew what they could have meant.

Rather than letting either of them conduct the interrogation they were no doubt seconds away from starting, I quickly launched into the entire story at my own pace.

“I woke up in a lot of pain—burning,” I specified when Gideon’s mouth opened to ask what kind of pain. He was in work mode. “In the middle of the night a few weeks ago, on the last full moon.”

I took care to give as many details as possible.

“I stopped a curse while it was progressing, cutting it off in the middle of it. I started researching it immediately—that’s what I’ve been doing when I stayed late in the archives,” I explained to Silver.

She found me after hours at least three times per week, so she nodded reluctantly, still put out, but not as angry as I knew she would be in a few moments. After all, she could have asked what, exactly, I had been researching, but she hadn’t been interested. That won me a few points.

“I wasn’ttooworried,” I admitted, to justify my silence. “I mean, I wanted to find out who did this to me and make them pay, because fuck, ithurt. And as the runes haven’t faded, I also wanted to dismantle the curse, in case it was doing something to me. From what I can tell, the fact that I struggled to move meansthat the point was to control my body, make the caster able to move me as they please. I figured it was a particularly nasty prank. I mean, we’ve seen stuff like that back in school.”

That much was true. People had been cursed into doing some ridiculous things for the entertainment of their fellow students our entire lives—jumping around, dancing in the middle of class, stripping at lunch…Teenagers and sorcery meant mayhem.

Only typicallyIwasn’t the victim.

“I tried runes, clearing potions, plus several charms, but nothing worked. I can’t even mask them. So—” I cleared my throat, my eyes returning to Gideon’s steely, analytical gaze.

Gulp.

“Then I saw your file today, and I realized it was more serious than I thought.”

“I’ll say.” Gideon was still ice, barely contained rage. He wasn’t exploding at me—that wasn’t in his nature—but I knew if I could place him in the general vicinity of whoever was behind this, he’d literally roast them alive.

Turning to Silver, he summarized his own investigation in a few words to bring her up to speed. “Three bodies were found, one per week, all covered in those runes.”

That was when she turned to stone.

“The same mixture of rubbish that doesn’t make sense to anyone,” he continued. “I only got the file today, and I asked Kleos to take a look—at the marks, mind you, not the gory details—since she’s good at runes.”

I expected the doll-sized tornado to start shouting, maybe throwing things. She did far, far worse.

We’d been best friends for over a decade, and not asingletime in all those years had I seen Silver cry. Not even when that dumb bear shifter she used to have a crush on said she shouldn’t bother with pink lipstick because she was such a tomboy. She just punched his nose, breaking it in two places, before dyingher hair pink for the first time—and doing it every day since, ensuring she was always wearing a touch of pink in her badass tomboy getups.

But now, there was a single tear falling down her cheek—molten, liquid silver, shining in the light.

“You could have died,” she whispered, wiping her face with the back of her sleeve. “Those three people—they had the same hex, and theydied.”

She stood up suddenly, and started to pace the length of the windows opening up to the balcony, back and forth.