Page 52

I wish I could say I scrambled to my feet, that we somehow got back to Neverthorn before Typhon realized that we’d even stepped foot off the grounds, but my luck, well, we all know how much luck I have. Not a lot.

And none of it good.

“What’s wrong?” Liam crouched in front of me. “Harlow? The paths are gone, and you’ve blocked me out again. I need you to pay attention and try to find the path.”

I wanted to reply, but I couldn’t form the words.

Typhon’s emotions were slamming into me, dizzying me.

Fear and rage were at the front. And I was still gorked on whatever rune Liam had cast. The sensation in my chest, the way my rib ached, Typhon’s emotions, they were all too much when my guard was so far down from the relaxation rune.

It was like Typhon had reached through the bond and kicked Liam out of my head altogether.

“Harlow,” Liam’s voice was insistent, and I stared into his eyes as he cupped my face, holding me close enough that our noses nearly touched. “Harlow, dig deep my friend, you need to get to your Quirk. Do you understand?”

I did understand, but we were out of time. I had to find the words to warn him. “Typhon,” I whispered.

Saying his name was like whispering a prayer in that moment, and he answered as if I were in danger.

Liam was in front of me one moment, and the next he was just gone, thrown from my view as the blur of a black cloak took his place in a swirl of magic.

“Damn you, O’Connor! What the fuck are you doing?”

“Trying to find her Quirk!” Liam snarled back. “It’s not like you and Tarquinius are doing anything about it. You realize she could wind up dead without it.”

I stumbled to my feet, wobbled and ended up leaning against a tree. They circled around one another, and I knew what was coming.

“Stop it!” My voice was weak. I shook my head and tried again, pushing through the fog that made me want to lay down and sleep. “STOP!”

Neither of them looked at me. They were too focused on each other.

Runes flashed in the air as they threw their magic at one another.

Faster and faster, body binders, bone breakers, runes to knock each other out at the least, and then the defensive runes, blocking one another as fast as they were trying to hurt one another.

It was a display of speed and power that had the trees around us trembling. In another situation I would have been in awe of what I was seeing.

But I didn’t want either of them to die, one was my friend, and the other was my ... I didn’t know what Typhon was ... so I did the only logical thing that my addled brain could come up with. I shoved off the tree and flung myself between the two men.

My timing, as always, was impeccable. I fell between them just as one of Liam’s runes left his hand. I saw it, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I was going to need it if I read the rune right, because there was no time to block it.

The magic slammed into me, wrapping itself around my throat, cutting off my air supply. I pitched forward, gurgling, fingers going to my neck. Strangulation rune, a particularly nasty one that reeked of vileness. I crafted a counter rune, but even as I tried casting it, I knew it was wrong.

Backwards. I tried again, scrambling now as I fought to get the strangling rune off me.

But the rune tightened around my throat, cutting off more than just air. It cut off the blood, and the yelling around me faded. I flopped onto the ground, face down, everything going dark, the world around me disappearing.

There was a moment of sheer panic that I was going to die, but then I wasn’t alone. I knew it in my bones.

Typhon will save me.

I don’t fully understand what happened next. I was in the Dark Wood one moment, strangling to death, and the next I was in a bed, staring up at a painted ceiling. The deep-blue velvet looked like the night sky with stars painted on it, and that was interesting.

Warmth surrounded me, the heaviness of a soft comforter, the smell of a wood fire and the musk of a man sinking into my bones. I could just go to sleep, but I knew I shouldn’t.

Something had happened, hadn’t it?

It all came back to me in a rush.

I blinked. “Where am I?” The words scratched out of my throat, and I winced. Between Doyenne Parunah’s poison and this, my throat had taken a beating today.

Typhon stepped into view, bruises on his chin, shirt partially torn, his hair completely mussed. “Drink this, it will ease the pain.”

He pressed a flask to my mouth and a honeyed mead poured into me. There was a bite of ginger that lingered, sharp and distinct against my tongue. I pushed the flask away and sat up, grimacing.

“What happened?”

“You mean after O’Connor tried to kill you?” Typhon stared down at me. “Or before, when you blocked the bond between us?”

I scrunched up my face. “The former.”

“I reversed the strangulation rune, and carried you back here, but you were still out of it. The combination of the two runes he laid into you ... left you babbling all sorts of stuff at first. Then, you got violent.” He touched his chin. “You have a wicked right hook.”

My eyes just about bugged out of my head. “I ... hit you?”

He grunted. “I’ve had worse.”

Pushing to a sitting position I realized I was in his room and subsequently ... in his bed. “Why didn’t you take me to the infirmary?”

He didn’t sit on the bed, he just stood there staring down at me. “You think things would go well for you if the Sage knew you were outside school grounds? With O’Connor?”

I couldn’t help but flinch. “Point taken.”

Typhon took a step closer and the bond between us seemed to shiver, giving me a quick insight into the fact that he was ... afraid.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

The frown pulled at his scar, making him seem far fiercer than the bond was telling me in the moment. “For what?”

“For scaring you.” I shrugged. “I could feel that once the bond snapped back into place. I was just ... I want to find my Quirk, Typhon. I’m still slower than everyone else with the rune casting and can’t stop Nocta with my bare hands.

I can’t protect anyone if I can’t dig into what I’ve got, and you’ve been stonewalling me.

I had to do something. I would do anything, break any rules, to keep Opie and my friends safe.

If that makes me a bad guy in your book, so be it! ”

Might have been yelling that last bit. But it didn’t seem to bother him.

He looked away from me, then back, the bond carefully contained again. “Do you understand what rune O’Connor used on you? He said you asked him to use it. And I need to know that he isn’t lying.”

“It was a relaxing rune. Like a Valium,” I explained. “I asked him to use something on me, so that I could find my way to my Quirk.”

His silence hung over us, and the words that broke it did nothing to ease me. “Yeah, well, I left him in the Dark Wood, with a full body bind on him, for what he did.”

In the Dark Wood where there were predators a plenty. Like that massive wolf that had found us, even behind Typhon’s protective runes.

“Typhon! He could be killed!” I pushed the covers off and got to my feet only to have my knees crumple under me.

He caught me, and held me there against his chest, and I didn’t need to feel the bond to know his heart was pounding.

“Harlow ... It’s the equivalent of a date-rape drug,” he bit out, his one hand at my lower back, the other cupping my head. “That’s what I could sense when the bond snapped into place. I thought ...”

He truly thought Liam was going to hurt me. And he’d left him to die.

His fingers softened against my cheek, so damn gentle I couldn’t help but melt against them.

“Don’t let him die, Typhon. He was trying to help me. At my request.”

He let out a heavy sigh, his head lowering. For a second, I thought he might kiss me. Hoped, maybe. But he just pressed his chin to my forehead.

“I’ll go get him. Go back to your dorm and stay there, Harlow.” He paused. “Please.”

“Okay.” I couldn’t say anything else.

He let me go and I grieved the loss, my body aching to find my way back into his arms. He shut the door behind him, and I just stared at it for a long time.

There had been no questions about how I’d blocked our bond.

And that made me wonder just what I’d said when I’d been incoherent and fighting in his arms ...