Page 5 of Darkness and Deceit (Obsidian Academy #2)

Her eyes find us almost immediately. She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t smile. But something flickers across her face—recognition, maybe. Relief. Then it’s gone, swallowed by exhaustion as she drifts toward us on autopilot.

We fall into step beside her, like we’ve always belonged there.

No one speaks—not until the stone corridor curves us out of Keeper earshot.

Then Lilith halts so suddenly I nearly walk into her. She turns on us with an expression I’ve never seen before: raw, exposed, like someone’s scraped her defenses down to the nerve.

Her gaze moves over me and Vaughn, quiet and searching.

“They dug into my mind,” she says. “Literally. Without warning. They just... tore through everything I had. My memories, my thoughts like it was their right. Like I was a door they could kick open and walk through without wiping their feet.”

The words slam into my chest, leave something hollow in their wake. My fists clench at my sides.

“They didn’t ask?” Vaughn demands, voice low and razor-edged.

Lilith shakes her head, a bitter laugh catching in her throat. “They didn’t even pause. Just went rifling through my entire life like it belonged to them. I could feel them— feel them —tearing things open.”

She’s trembling now, jaw tight, eyes glassy with fury. “It didn’t feel like magic. It felt like violence. Like being held down and unmade from the inside out.”

I take a step toward her, helpless against the surge of protectiveness rising up in me. Every instinct screams to close the distance, to offer her something solid to lean on, to prove she’s not alone in this.

But I stop myself. Her shoulders are squared, spine stiff, like she’s holding herself together by sheer will. One wrong move and she might either shatter or snap. And I won’t be the reason she falls apart.

So I stay where I am.

Close. But not touching.

Not yet.

Vaughn explodes. “Fucking bastards. ” He storms a few feet away, rakes his hands through his hair, then pivots back, wild-eyed and pacing like he might combust. His fingers twitch toward his lighter, but he fists his hands instead.

He’s never been good with pain—not his own, not anyone’s—and Lilith’s hits him harder than most. Not sure if that’s how she sees it. But I know him well enough to recognize it.

Lilith doesn’t answer. Her silence says enough…

and too much. When she finally looks up, there’s no armor left between us: just fatigue so deep it swallows the sparks before they can surface.

She opens her mouth as if to say more, but then something like horror sweeps across her face—a sudden realization then dread.

“Kai,” she says urgently, voice trembling again for entirely new reasons. “Where’s Kai?”

She looks around wildly as if expecting him to materialize from stone or shadow right there beside us, which honestly isn’t far from the truth–he often does appear from nowhere. But there is only Vaughn and me.

“He fell. From the seventh floor?—”

As if she had summoned him, the shadows around us shift.

I tense before I even see him. The hallway folds, bending inward toward the dark. And then Kai is there—emerging from it like it spat him back out, bruised and bloodied but alive.

Lilith gasps and runs. No hesitation, only pure instinct. She throws herself at him like the only thing that matters is feeling him, solid and real and still breathing. Her hands grip his shirt and she buries her face against his chest.

Kai freezes for half a second. Like his body doesn’t know what to do with gentleness. Then his arms wrap around her, slow and deliberate. One hand rises, cradling the back of her head like he’s afraid she might disappear.

He holds her like she’s breakable.

Like he’s not.

Vaughn exhales beside me. Says nothing. And neither do I.

When Lilith finally pulls back, she doesn’t let go entirely. One hand stays curled in the front of Kai’s shirt like a lifeline.

“What were you thinking?” she demands. Her voice wobbles, but there’s fire beneath it. “You could’ve been killed.”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says flatly, like nearly dying is just a footnote.

“You fell, Kai.”

He shrugs. “And I landed.”

“On your face?” she mutters, brushing her fingers over a fresh scrape on his cheek.

That’s when Vaughn finally cracks. He snorts. “You know, I’ve been saying for years it’d take a seven-story drop to knock some sense into him.”

Lilith doesn’t laugh exactly, but the tension in her shoulders eases a little.

“I can’t lose you,” she whispers.

“You won’t,” Kai promises.

But I see it—the truth he doesn’t say. The weight in his eyes that knows promises don’t always matter.

Lilith leans into him again, exhausted and angry and undone. And Kai just stands there, letting her, steadying her.

I glance at Vaughn, expecting a sarcastic comment, but he’s watching them with an intensity I’ve never seen before.

There’s a promise in his eyes. He’d rip the sky open for any of us. For her, most of all.

When Lilith finally lets go, she’s steadier, chin lifted stubbornly even as her eyes burn red. The old cockiness isn’t back, but something else is. Something I recognize.

Determination.