Page 12 of Hidden

Bryce wasn’t even fighting back, but Damen was too far gone to notice. And he probably wouldn’t before the other man became an unrecognizable husk of beaten flesh on the ground.

Miles was trying to separate the two of them, but Brayden was in the way. Panicking. His actions were becoming more of a hindrance than help.

“Hanah!” I spotted her. Between the two of them, they should be able to physically restrain Brayden. “Do something.”

“O-okay!” She stepped beside Miles, and they were able to clear the way.

I hadn’t had to resort to using this level of power in this lifetime. Because of that, it initially felt odd to reach for this magic.

My blood turned cold, and a ripple washed over me. Old magic prickled under my skin. An echo of the person I was once, a manifestation of the power that remained buried beneath my current skin.

“Stop.” I grabbed Damen’s arm, directing my focus to him. “That’s enough.”

His movements slowed as he was no longer able to act freely. As his fists fell, his stunned eyes lifted.

I held his gaze, unrelenting. “I know you’re upset. But this is not the time. We have other priorities.”

His gaze bore into mine, and I could feel his resistance. His body shook with it.

“It’ll be okay,” I lied. It might not ever be okay again.

There was blood, so much blood. Splattered across his features, covering his torso and arms. I didn’t even need to look at his hands to know that they were red, too.

I wondered if Bryce was still alive, but I couldn’t check.

Damen blinked, and all the fury that had been present in his gaze vanished. Instead, he looked lost and afraid. Completely unlike his usual cocky, annoying, arrogant self.

He’d broken, and it wasn’t hard to guess why.

Huo’s weakness had always been Mu. I controlled Fire through force. But Mu could get him to do anything with only a word. Mu inspired him.

Tu, our spiritual leader and Miles’s incarnation, traveled for work. And Jin—Titus’s first life—was a general. He spent half of his time on the battlefield, working to make Mu’s plots a reality. Neither were particularly close to Huo.

I stayed in the palace, or rather, the dungeons. My responsibilities consisted of dealing with spies, or suspected spies. The traitors. They were all sent to me, and they knew that death was coming.

I could destroy a person from the inside out, and then get answers from their dead bodies. I had spent lifetimes perfecting my craft, and I reveled in the violence. Darkness and blood were my domain.

I did it for him.

Mu was always Seelie. Hecouldkill. He was rather good it, actually. He was a logical person and detached himself from his emotions during stressful situations. But his heart had never been into it.

He was the optimist, he always tried to see the positive. And his instincts were frighteningly accurate. It was he and Tu who held the rest of us together. Huo, Jin, and I were simply too different.

But although we all carried aspects of our previous lives, Bianca wasn’t Mu.

In some ways, she was the same. Her mind was always working, and the conclusions she came up with—the ones that I’d heard at least—weren’t technically wrong.

Although they did border on the more dramatic side.

However, in this life, a darkness existed in the way she thought.

Bianca was naive, but that was because she was being fed incorrect information. Her strangest thoughts though might even be denial. Her way of thinking had lost its innocence.

We had seen signs but hadn’t put the pieces together.

Bianca was terrified of being hurt, unless it was in a situation where she was defending others. People frightened her. And she was petrified of relationships and physical intimacy.

Now we understood why.