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Hells.The fact that coherent vampyres—not the baffling bloodsuckers I had killed hundreds of times—were out there somewhere terrified me.

But it also put a hollow pit in my stomach that I couldn’t seem to shake.

“Forget about vampyres. When do we learn to bond?” Ryder asked, rapping his pencil against his desk with a casual air. “We’ll need it for the final test, right? Shouldn’t we learn as soon as possible?”

The bond?

“Not now,” Headmistress stated, narrowing her eyes at his pencil, which promptly stopped moving. She lifted her chin. “We’ll learn to bond when you’re ready, and none of you are ready. You must first learn to control your magic.”

“What’s the bond?” Ashlani spoke up. The fae in the front of the room laughed while others looked just as clueless as the rest of us.

Headmistress rolled her eyes before addressing the class again. “It’s a way to share magic between two souls. When you must use magic to save yourself or your people and you aren’t strong enough to wield it alone, the bond will allow you to split the burden with another. Many students choose to bond before the final test, although it isn’t required.”

“What does it mean?” Ashlani’s roommate asked. “I mean, what happens during the bond?”

“Probably much of what you’d imagine. Aside from having access to another’s magic, however, you’ll also be hit with their thoughts, their emotions. Many students must already have a relationship with the one they choose to bond with, otherwise the mental sharing becomes too much to control.”

Interesting.

Lord said nothing about a bond to me. Maybe it was because he knew I would never bond with anyone.

Or maybe he didn’t know about it.

I shook that thought from my mind. Lord seemed to know everything about Moira and The Golden City. Surely, he knew I would have to bond with another if I wanted to survive. He trusted me to do whatever it took to complete my mission.

Lanson’s foot slid out and tapped mine, just casual enough so nobody else would notice. Or that perhaps I’d think it might have been an accident.

“Enough of this,” Headmistress announced. “Like I said, we’ll learn more about the bonding when you’re ready. For now, we’ll focus on the basics.”

We sat in the classroom all damn day. I tried my best to memorize everything that was said about the magic system, about the uses for it in The Golden City. Wolf sat and listened quietly next to me, not bothering to write a single thing down but also paying attention to the mentor in a shockingly respectful way.

Unlike the other fae assholes in the room, Ryder and Espek included.

By the time class was over, Wolf practically bolted out of his chair and into the hall.

“What’s that guy’s problem?” Lanson whispered to me, staring after him.

I shrugged. “If you find out, I’d love to know.”

“I’m starving,” Ashlani chimed in. “Come on, we’re going to eat.”

I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder, trying not to grimace at the growing soreness in my body. Thank the goddess today was only a classroom day. The thought of sparring with someone else today and having to take punch after punch while the entire courtyard watched made me sick.

I would deal with that tomorrow. Today, I could relax and eat with Ashlani and Lanson.

We were two steps out of the classroom when someone slammed into me from behind, spinning me around and pinning me to the hallway wall so hard I saw stars.

“Where do you think you’re going, little rat?”

Chapter

Ten

“What thefuckare you doing?” I growled. Ryder held me against the wall with all of his strength, his nasty fingernails digging into the skin on my wrists.

Espek did the same to Ashlani, while it took two other fae brutes to restrain Lanson.

“Are you kidding me?” Ashlani screamed. “I’m hungry! Let me go!”