Page 21

DOMINIC

D ominic hadn’t said more than ten words to Lillith since they left Rowan and Markus’s place.

Not out of spite. Not really. Just… protection. From himself. From her. From what he might say if she looked at him the way she had the night before and didn’t mean it.

She’d flinched at his affection like it had teeth.

And maybe it did. Maybe love, real love, had always been a little too wild for people like them to hold without bleeding. So he focused on the one thing that didn’t twist him into knots—the woods.

The very reason they were in this mess.

Because before there was kissing and curses and shared homes, there was a magical storm ripping through Echo Woods and a prince with too much power and too little conscience.

He needed answers. And if Lillith wasn’t going to help him find them—at least not right now—he’d do it himself.

Which was how he found himself at Everglen Market with a basket of empty spell jars on one arm and a temper hovering somewhere between simmer and explode.

Lillith had obviously had to go with him but he had insisted that she stay and visit with a few of her friends at their stand while he did his shopping and inquiry. Mainly because he didn’t feel like explaining who he was meeting.

“Dominic Kane,” drawled a familiar voice behind a stall full of glowing vine cuttings and moon-sweetened herbs. “I was beginning to think you forgot about the rest of us.”

He turned, cocking a brow. “Bea. Still hoarding every magical garden secret like a dragon?”

Bea Blackthorn, half-fae, full menace, and occasional provider of hard truths, grinned like she had something sharp between her teeth. Her long braids were threaded with silver charms, and her hands were stained green from the elixirs she brewed in her alchemy greenhouse two towns over.

“I don’t hoard,” she said, plucking a leaf from his collar. “I just don’t hand things over to shifters with more brawn than brains.”

“Bold coming from someone who once sold me talking chamomile.”

“You’re still mad about that?”

“It tried to unionize.”

Bea laughed, rich and warm, and handed him a vial of something glowing faintly pink. “You look like a man who hasn’t slept in three nights and just found out the woman he’s bonded to would rather run than stay.”

His jaw ticked. “That obvious?”

“Only to everyone.” She softened, voice dipping. “She scared?”

“She’s... herself.” He shrugged. “Sharp edges and smoke screens.”

“You care.”

He didn’t answer.

“Why are you here, really?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron. “It’s not the charm berries.”

Dominic leaned on the edge of her stall, voice low. “Thaloryn.”

Bea’s smile faded.

“He’s gaining strength,” Dominic said. “Something’s moving in the woods. Hazel said the bond wasn’t random. That it was… old magic. Buried.”

Bea nodded slowly. “That tracks.”

“You know something.”

“I know stories,” she said carefully. “Ones whispered by hedge witches too scared to write them down. About the Moonlit Pact. About what Thaloryn wants.”

He straightened. “Tell me.”

Bea hesitated, scanning the crowd before pulling him slightly behind the stall. Lillith hovered nearby, close enough not to hurt but distant enough that her attention stayed fixed on a stack of antique runes at another booth.

“The Moonlit Pact wasn’t just about peace between realms,” Bea whispered. “It was about power. Hidden power. Each royal bloodline signed off to keep a piece of something ancient, locked away. Thaloryn’s piece was the key.”

Dominic narrowed his eyes. “So if he gets it?—”

“He unlocks the rest. And if the others are weakened, or if the wards break…”

“Then he doesn’t need a war,” Dominic finished grimly. “He just wins.”

Bea nodded once, her expression haunted. “And your bond? Might’ve been the only thing that rerouted his curse. Magic that old doesn’t miss. It adapts.”

He swore under his breath, fists clenched at his sides.

But then a scream sliced through the late afternoon air like a blade.

It wasn’t the kind of scream that came from a startled shopper or a spilled potion bottle. It was the kind that made your bones rattle, primal and raw. Every head in the square snapped toward the sound.

A boy—barely a man—convulsed beside the fountain, body writhing in unnatural angles, his mouth open in a silent wail. Smoke curled from his chest, and along his arms, jagged black runes pulsed with violent light, flaring red and violet and back again like they couldn’t settle.

“Dominic!” Lillith’s voice cracked with alarm.

She was already moving, skirts bunched in her fists as she ran. Dominic didn’t think—he bolted, outpacing most of the crowd as people gasped and staggered away from the epicenter.

The kid’s eyes had rolled back. His skin blistered in patches. The runes etched into his flesh twisted with a life of their own, like they were burrowing deeper.

And the stench—gods, the stench. Not blood. Not sweat. But sulfur and nightshade and something sweetly rotting underneath. Magic. Warped. Rotten. Wrong.

Lillith hit her knees beside the boy, her hands already glowing with the beginnings of a diagnostic spell. She murmured something sharp in Old Faerun, voice laced with power.

Dominic dropped to the other side, catching the kid’s shoulders before he could crack his skull on the cobblestone. The contact sizzled through him like static.

“Don’t touch him bare-skinned,” Lillith warned. “That magic—it’s?—”

“Fae,” Dominic finished, his voice low and guttural. “Thaloryn.”

She looked up sharply, eyes wide with horror and understanding. “It’s the same as the shadow beast. The same stink, the same feel. But this—this is worse.”

The runes crawled higher, now wrapping up the boy’s throat like black vines. He gurgled, gasping, fingers clawing at his chest. The sigils weren’t just etched into skin anymore—they were burning into bone.

“He’s being marked,” Lillith whispered. “Claimed.”

Dominic’s blood ran cold.

“Then he’s turning them into what?” he asked. “Weapons? Hosts?”

“Conduits,” she breathed. “He’s not just spreading chaos. He’s spreading himself.”

The market had gone deathly quiet. Even the breeze had vanished. Townsfolk stood frozen behind fruit stalls and charm booths, eyes wide, faces pale. And not one of them moved forward.

Only Dominic. Only Lillith.

Bea appeared at his side with a hissed curse, tossing a protective ward circle onto the ground. It sparked to life, a dome of silver shimmer enclosing the boy and those close to him.

“It’s spreading too fast,” she said. “Whatever you do, do it now.”

Dominic glanced at Lillith. Her hands trembled over the boy’s chest, magic pulsing at her fingertips, but the runes resisted her power like oil to water.

“They’re repelling me,” she said, face taut with frustration. “They know I’m trying to break it.”

Dominic’s heart pounded like thunder.

This wasn’t a fluke. This wasn’t an isolated case of cursed magic.

This was a warning.

A message.

“I think he’s awake,” Lillith muttered.

Dominic blinked. “What?”

“Look.” She nodded at the boy’s eyes. The whites were gone, replaced with ember-red orbs—too bright, too knowing.

And they were staring directly at Dominic.

Not through him.

At him.

The boy's lips twitched. Cracked. And in a voice not his own, a voice laced with a dozen others, low and regal and cold as winter death, he said:

“You should have stayed in the wild, lion.”

Dominic reeled back.

Lillith gasped. “That’s not him.”

“No,” Dominic growled, nostrils flaring. “That’s him. That’s Thaloryn.”

The boy shuddered, then coughed violently—black smoke curling out of his mouth.

Bea scrambled for her satchel. “I need salt. Iron. Something—dammit—he’s using the kid like a scrying stone.”

Lillith reached for her charm satchel. “We need to contain it.”

But it was too late.

The boy screamed again, and this time the force of it shattered the barrier Bea had thrown up. Magic exploded outward in a shockwave that knocked half the market off their feet.

Dominic grabbed Lillith, pulled her into his chest, shielding her with his body as the wave rippled through them.

And then it stopped.

Just like that.

The boy slumped unconscious, the runes still flickering but no longer spreading. His body limp. His breath shallow. The market still as death.

Dominic didn’t speak. He just stared at the boy lying on the cobblestones—marked and empty and no longer entirely human.

The prince wasn’t coming.

He was already here.