Page 12

ELIAS

T he forest around Grayspine’s edge is breathing wrong.

It’s too quiet. No birds. No rustling in the underbrush. Just this… pressure. Like the trees are leaning in to listen. Like the whole place knows someone’s trespassing and is just waiting to pounce.

Which is exactly why I’m here.

The ruins buried beneath Grayspine are old—older than most fae living today remember. This place was sacred before the Veil even had a name. I’ve only been here once before, when I was seventeen and stupid and still thought maybe the world had a place for something like me.

It didn’t.

But the tablet I stole from the crypt won’t shut the hell up. It pulses at night. Glows when I get close to places like this. And when I traced the runes etched into its frame, it pointed me back here.

So I came.

I keep to the shadows, senses sharpened, every step calculated. My wolf is tense under my skin, sniffing out wards and whispers.

Then I smell her.

Kaia.

Her scent slams into me like a truck to the chest—wildflowers and gunpowder and something burning from the inside out. She’s here . Again. And gods help me, my body reacts before my brain can say “bad fucking idea.”

I find her crouched by a twisted archway, inspecting runes with the same grim focus she’d use dissecting an enemy. She’s in full stealth mode—Order-grade black gear, blades strapped to her thighs, hair tied back tight—but it’s her eyes that stop me.

They’re glowing.

Not brightly. Just a faint shimmer. Gold with flecks of something older, deeper. Fae.

I stay in the shadows.

My back presses against an ancient tree, bark biting into my shoulder through the fabric of my coat. I watch her move through the ruin’s edge like she was born for it—silent, lethal, precise. She’s scanning the stonework with a focus that borders on obsessive.

Something about the way she crouches, tilts her head at the carvings, the way her fingers skim the old Fae sigils like she knows them but doesn’t know why —it grips me harder than it should.

She’s glowing again. Faint, but there.

She’s not human. Not fully.

I’m about to move, say something or anything when she shifts too close to the wrong stone.

And the rune flashes red.

“Shit—”

She doesn’t even have time to react.

I’m on her before the ward finishes powering up.

I tackle her hard, roll us across the overgrown floor just as the trap triggers. The magic lets out a blast of violet flame that chars the moss beside us to ash. If I’d waited one more second, she’d be a smear on the stone.

She gasps under me, body tight, fists already flying before she even sees who it is.

“What the fuck!” she roars, twisting beneath me, knee aimed for my ribs.

I catch it mid-thrust, flip her sideways, and land on my feet in time to catch her blade’s arc with my forearm. Sparks fly as her steel scrapes my vambrace.

“Kaia—”

“Don’t you dare say my name, freak,” she snarls, eyes blazing. “You been following me?”

“You were about to get vaporized!”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, clearly,” I snap, blocking a punch aimed for my throat.

She doesn’t stop.

Neither do I.

She fights dirty, fast, brutal—elbows, knees, throws. I counter, shift just enough to keep her off-balance but not enough to hurt her. Not really . She doesn’t hold back. Her blade slices across my side—just a graze, but enough to make my blood start to burn.

She’s stronger now.

Her power’s waking up.

It’s right there, boiling under her skin. She doesn’t even know how dangerous she is yet.

And I can’t bring myself to stop her.

Even when I should.

The fight is chaos, tumbling across moss-slick stones, magic flaring with every impact. I drive her back, she counters, I twist her blade from her hand and toss it.

I’ve got her now.

I slam her against a carved pillar, my hand around her throat—not squeezing, just holding. Her chest rises and falls fast, lips parted, pupils blown wide.

I could end this.

I could kill her.

She’d do it to me without blinking.

But I don’t.

I can’t.

Her eyes lock on mine, gold and furious and alive . And I know, without question, if I let her go right now, she’ll try to kill me again.

But my hand won’t move.

And gods help me… I don’t want her dead .