Page 51

ASH

It’s past midnight, I’m alone, and exactly where I shouldn’t be.

Perfect.

My hands shake as I check over my shoulder before typing my response: INTELLIGENCE GATHERING PROGRESSING. ACADEMY SECURITY COMPLEX. RECOMMEND EXTENDED TIMELINE.

The reply arrives before I finish exhaling: UNACCEPTABLE. ASSET RETRIEVAL SCHEDULED IN 72 HOURS UNLESS INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED. AGENT DAVIS STANDING BY FOR REINFORCEMENT.

Five days. The countdown just became a death sentence.

Air shimmers like heat waves where Academy protection ends—magical static that makes my enhanced senses recoil. Technology dies at these exact coordinates, phone screen flickering before cutting to black as I step back onto protected ground.

Movement in the grove beyond. Liquid shadow flowing through moonlight with predatory grace that makes my lungs forget how to function.

A branch snaps behind me with the deliberate crack of someone who wants to be heard.

“Well, well.” Kieran’s voice cuts through darkness like silk-wrapped steel. “The troublesome little spy finally shows her true colors.”

Heat floods my cheeks—not embarrassment but the automatic response to being caught in operational security breach. I hold my ground, feet positioned for movement in any direction, weight balanced on the balls of my feet.

“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’t just 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.”

“They are blocking the path.”

Fifteen hunters between us and safety. An army with coordinated precision that speaks of careful planning and inside knowledge of our location.

This isn’t random. This is assassination with military planning behind it.

Kieran’s jaw tightens as he catalogs our situation—odds, ammunition, energy reserves. All the calculations painting the same picture.

We’re fucked.

Then his hand moves to his chest, fingers pressing against dark patterns that pulse beneath his blood-soaked shirt. The lines writhe like living things, responding to his touch with eager hunger.

“There is another way,” he says grimly, voice carrying the weight of prices about to be paid.

“What—”

Agony rips across his features. The dark lines beneath his skin flare with violent silver light, writhing through his torso like lightning trapped under glass. His back arches as something buried in his very essence responds to his desperate summons.

The sound hits first—bone cracking under pressure, cartilage tearing as something foreign forces its way through flesh designed to contain it. Then the blood, darker than human red, spraying in arterial patterns as his chest tears open from within.

The spear erupts through his sternum like it’s been living inside him his entire life.

Six feet of gleaming silver with runes that writhe like living things along its length. Ancient magic rolls off it in waves that buckle my knees and make reality itself seem negotiable. The weapon pulses with its own heartbeat, silver light bleeding from symbols that hurt to look at directly.

The Spear of Truth. One of the Four Treasures.

Living inside Kieran’s chest. Part of his flesh and bone and beating heart.

“Holy shit.”

His smile is sharp as winter wind, ice-blue eyes holding agony that goes deeper than physical pain. Blood streams down his chest where the manifestation tore through skin and muscle. “Indeed.”

The hunters freeze as the Spear’s power washes over them like a tsunami of absolute authority. This isn’t just ancient magic—it’s royal magic, the kind that wrote the laws reality follows.

More than that—recognition flickers in their eyes. They know what they’re seeing.

“The Unseelie heir bears the Spear,” one whispers, voice carrying across the sudden silence. “The treasure hidden for centuries.”

“Stand down,” Kieran commands, voice carrying the weight of mountains and the finality of winter. Silver light bleeds from his eyes as the Spear’s power flows through him.

They resist—elite forces trained against magical compulsion, disciplined enough to fight divine authority.

Kieran’s expression shifts to something colder than arctic wind.

“I said STAND DOWN.”

This time, the Spear doesn’t ask. It demands with the voice of creation itself.

Every hunter drops to their knees as if yanked by invisible chains, armor clattering against stone as they’re forced into submission. But their eyes remain alert, calculating, recording everything they witness.

They’ve seen too much. They know too much.

Kieran’s expression shifts to the cold calculation I recognize from my own mirror. Professional assessment. Tactical necessity.

“Close your eyes,” he says quietly, voice gentling in a way that makes my stomach drop.

“What?”

“Close your eyes, troublesome thing. Trust me.”

The ice in his voice crystallizes my blood. I know that tone—flat, emotionless, final. I’ve used it myself when civilian casualties become acceptable losses.

Execution tone.

I close my eyes, but I can’t block the sounds. The wet slide of the Spear through flesh and bone. The gurgle of destroyed throats. Bodies hitting earth with the meaty thud of dead weight.

Fifteen kills in thirty seconds. Professional. Thorough. Necessary.

When silence falls, the scent of blood and released bowels fills the clearing.

“They saw,” he says simply, wiping dark blood from the Spear’s blade.

“All of them?”

“All of them.” His laugh carries the bitter edge of someone who’s crossed lines they can’t uncross. “Witnesses to the Spear cannot be permitted to report back.”

“Even the Unseelie ones?”