Page 42

“Demonstrate that you remain human,” he whispers, so low I almost miss it. Desperation bleeding through every carefully chosen word. Then louder, with forced bravado, “Show me more.”

This time when he attacks, I don’t think. I react.

Ancient muscle memory hijacks my nervous system. My body moves like it remembers being someone else—someone royal, someone dangerous, someone worth killing for. Combat knowledge buried in DNA awakens with each exchange.

But it’s my speed that makes him go perfectly still.

I move faster than human reflexes allow. Three strikes land before he can blink—ribs, solar plexus, nerve cluster that drops his arm like severed strings. Not just fast, but Fae-fast. Inhuman reflexes that no human should possess.

His face goes corpse-pale.

“That velocity,” he breathes, voice cracking like winter ice under pressure. “Only royal bloodlines move with such... precision.”

“Maybe you need better sparring partners.”

He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t smile. Just stares at me with something between awe and absolute terror.

“Kieran? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything.” He evades, but his voice breaks completely. “Everything is precisely as I feared it would be.”

The admission slips out before he can stop it, and I see him mentally curse himself for the revelation.

While he’s distracted by whatever internal war just intensified, I make my choice. Not the Academy’s choice. Not the courts’ choice. Mine.

I’m done hiding what I am because others fear it. Done pretending to be less than I am to make others comfortable. If they want to know what Wild Court royalty looks like, I’ll show them exactly what they’ve been hunting for centuries.

I close the distance between us, no longer fighting my nature but embracing it.

Instead of striking, I hook my leg behind his knee and use his momentum against him—but this time, I let my real strength show.

The strength that comes from royal bloodline, from earth magic flowing through my veins, from finally accepting what I truly am.

We go down together, and this time I’m the one on top.

I cage him beneath me like he’s prey I’ve finally cornered. His pulse hammers against my palms where I pin his wrists—prey pretending to be predator.

“I win.”

“Do you?” His voice goes rough, deeper than before, but there’s something broken in it now.

The question hangs between us, loaded with meaning I don’t understand. His skin burns cold beneath my palms, but instead of numbing my fingers, the sensation spreads up my arms like liquid fire.

The thorn patterns flare brighter, visible through my shirt. They pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat—a rhythm I can somehow feel despite the layers between us.

“What’s happening?”

“Ancient magic recognizing its counterpart,” his voice cracks like breaking ice. “Your power knows mine as intimately as lovers know heartbeats. As predators know prey. As weapons know their intended targets.”

His shadows rise around us without conscious direction, wrapping my calves, my waist, twining up my arms. But they don’t feel constraining. They feel like... completion.

And that’s when vines explode from my wrists without permission. Living ropes that lash around his forearms and tighten like they’re claiming him. The ivy pulses with my heartbeat, roots digging deeper with each breath.

We both freeze, staring at the impossible connection.

His face goes completely white.

“What the hell?—”

“Ancient magic,” he finishes, voice gone hollow with something between awe and absolute despair. “Older than court divisions. Older than the Academy. Older than anything I believed still existed in this realm.”

The ivy pulses with warm light that contrasts sharply with his cold shadows. Where they meet, silver sparks dance across our skin—beautiful and damning.

He breaks my hold with desperate strength, surging upright as shadows whip around us like living things.

His hands tear at the vines binding our wrists, but the ivy only tightens in response, roots digging deeper.

His momentum carries us both to our feet before he slams me back against the arena wall, his body caging me in.

“This should not be possible,” I breathe.

“Nothing about you should be possible,” his thumb traces my jawline with devastating gentleness, but his eyes hold the grief of a man watching something precious die. “Yet here you stand, confirming every suspicion I prayed would prove false.”

“Kieran...” His name comes out breathier than intended.

“Say it again,” his forehead drops to mine, ice-blue eyes burning with intensity, and something that looks like farewell. “Speak my name in precisely that manner once more.”

“Kieran.”

The sound breaks something inside him. He devours my mouth like a starving man claiming his last meal. Tongue sweeping in to taste every corner, memorizing the flavor of me like he’ll never get another chance.

But there’s desperation in it too—like he’s memorizing this moment, storing it against some approaching darkness.

The kiss sets my nervous system ablaze. Our magic doesn’t just combine—it wars. Ice and fire, shadow and growth, claiming and conquering until the crystal windows scream with harmonic resonance. The training room responds, moonlight brightening until everything goes silver-white.

My eyes snap open, and I know without looking that they’re blazing green. Wild magic courses through me, reshaping reality around us. The ivy at our wrists blooms with impossible flowers that smell like midnight and promises.

He pulls back just enough to meet my gaze, breathing hard. His perfectly controlled mask has shattered completely, revealing raw want and something deeper. Something that looks dangerously close to reverence—and absolute heartbreak.

“Three centuries,” he whispers against my lips, shadows caressing my throat like possessive fingers. “Three centuries of existence, and I have never encountered magic like yours.”

The ivy tightens around our joined wrists, pulsing with power that makes us both gasp. Final, undeniable proof of what I am.

“Tell me you remain human,” he whispers against my mouth, voice breaking completely. “Please. Tell me I am mistaken about what you represent.”

I can’t answer. Can’t lie to save us both when my body is literally sprouting royal Wild Court magic.

He doesn’t step back. Doesn’t give me space to recover or think or remember why this is impossible.

Instead, he presses closer, his body against mine while ivy and shadow bind us together. His eyes hold mine with terrifying intensity, searching for something he won’t find.

“I apologize,” he finally whispers, voice cracking like spring ice. “I am profoundly sorry, troublesome thing.”

“Sorry for what?”

But he’s already pulling away, shadows retreating as ivy reluctantly releases its hold. Cold air rushes between us like a physical wound. His mask rebuilds itself with each inch of distance, but it’s cracked now—fragile.

“Six days,” he says, stepping back with visible effort and aristocratic precision. “Six days until I am compelled to destroy everything I have just discovered I want.”

“Six days until what?”

His smile turns sharp, dangerous, full of secrets that could destroy us both. But underneath it, I catch a glimpse of genuine anguish before he locks it away.

“Six days to memorize the taste of you before I am forced to forget it ever existed.”

He melts into shadows, leaving me alone with thorns blazing beneath my skin and the taste of winter magic still burning on my lips—and the terrible certainty that something is very, very wrong.

I touch my mouth where ancient power still tingles, staring at the space where he stood.

Six days.

The countdown has begun, and I don’t even know what happens when it ends.

But from the devastation in his eyes, I know it won’t be anything good.