Page 11

IRIS

I find the Guide Warden, Cherise, with the squad putting out fires in the hollowed-out second-floor offices. The cubicles are flattened and charred.

It’s open concept now.

She spots me and tosses her fire extinguisher to another Guide. “Iris? Are you okay? I’m so sorry. I ran to grab backup, but then everything was on fire again and?—”

“I get it.” I wave off her concern. “Is the Farguard always this wild?”

She rubs sweat off her brow, leaving a streak of ash behind.

“Major Azrid has been in slow decline, but I didn’t realize how far gone he was until tonight.

Trezzoran is always like that. Guides below B-class can’t handle their damage, and no one we have left is even twenty percent compatible with them.

We’ve been preparing for the inevitable. ”

“Yikes.” I grip my bandaged throat. That explains why Vhex was running around solo.

My heart pinches.

No Guide ever wants to watch a Sentinel flame out. The despair in those last few pulses of magic feels worse than dying.

It’s an accusation.

Why didn’t you save me?

I’ve only felt a final rampage a handful of times.

Never again.

“Yikes on pikes,” Cherise agrees, then pauses.

She scans me from head to toe.

I tense, half expecting her to punt me back on a train for blowing up her base.

Instead, she pulls off her warden’s badge and offers it to me with both hands. “Please. You have to take over. I’ve been running the Guides and lesser Sentinels, but I cannot begin to handle the dukes.”

“About that…” I pull the commander’s token from my pocket. “Duke Azrid is so out of it that his mark disappeared. I was thinking?—”

“Yes.” She presses the badge back to me. “Take it all, you absolute angel.”

“Why hasn’t anyone already taken command?” I tuck the badge away, too exhausted to deal with the info that keeps trying to zap into my brain. “What about the third S-class Sentinel? I can pass the badge to them if?—”

“Never,” Cherise says firmly. “You won’t glimpse Sentinel Simms unless the base is overrun.”

“Why not?”

“He’s too busy fucking his Guide.” She makes a noise of disgust. “They’ve been humping like jackrabbits ever since they imprinted.”

“That’s going to have to change.” One problem at a time . “I sent the dukes to clean up the damage they did outside. I’m not holding my breath on their follow-through, but at least they’re out of our hair. Can you assign a crew to start repairs on the perimeter wall?”

“Already happening.”

“Fantastic. What else is on fire?” I sway until I have to lean against a cube wall that somehow survived the vampire cannon.

“You look like you’re going to be the next one burnt out.” Cherise steadies my shoulder. “Let me find you a room and a healer. Don’t worry. I’m on top of everything else, Commander.”

I laugh woozily at the title.

A few weeks ago, Duchess Kyorgos was berating me for scraping my knife against my plate at our monthly “family” dinner.

Now, I’m a guard commander.

The responsibility of protecting Faervaine’s northern border can’t be under-stressed. The monsters that spawn from the mountains can’t be allowed to roam south to the border cities and farmlands.

I don’t know why the Farguard has been allowed to decline like this.

I do plan to find out.

Unless better-matching Guides than me magically appear, no one else has a chocolate’s chance in hell of shaping up these dukes.

“I also need the canteen and armory,” I add, letting Cherise steer me to the stairwell. “Then you can set me up in a guidance suite.”

“A suite? Are you sure?” Cherise bites her lip.

There’s no point in having my own room.

With two rabid Sentinels to guide, I’m not going to be spending nights alone. “They’ll come after me either way.”

We go for a medical check first, but I don’t need stitches. Apparently, Remy’s bites self-heal.

After I grab a ham sandwich and then a couple long-poled glaives from the armory, Cherise shows me to the suites.

All of the base’s residences are in the basement, which is dug much wider than the footprint of the building above.

“Guides to the left, Sentinels to the right.” Cherise gestures to corridors on either side of the downstairs lobby. Each is sealed with blast doors that glitter with the patterns of sound- and magic-shielding arrays. “The guidance suites are straight ahead.”

We walk through double doors into a reception area that would look at home in an upscale spa. Lush plants surround the comfy seating.

“Warden.” A guy in a Sentinel’s uniform jumps up from the desk and gives a crisp salute. He’s red-headed and his porcelain cheeks flush heart-attack red when his soul senses mine. I spot the shadow of a stud, hidden in the helix of his left ear.

Of course it’s the left.

“Guide,” he gasps.

Ugh . I’m so exhausted that my silks go rogue and stretch to greet him.

I reel back the misbehaving wisps while the Sentinel shoots me heart eyes.

Warden Cherise steps between us, folding her arms over her body-armor vest. “Did you just wave your silks at her while you’re on duty?”

“No. Yes. But —” he stammers, clutching his chest. “She’s my?—”

“She’s your new commander,” she cuts him off. “Show some respect.”

I’m too tapped to read the Sentinel’s emotions, but the resonance that says I can is always there. I may as well get this next part over with. “Do you have a compatibility testing artifact?”

“You feel it too?” He knocks over a stack of logbooks in his rush to whip out the testing machine. “I’m Crispin Sebastian Pietrovski and I’m your?—”

“She’s your commander ,” Cherise growls.

Crispin rushes to me with the artifact. Electricity is unreliable thanks to magical interference, so the machine is the archaic kind. No digital screen.

Instead, two handle pieces are welded to either side of a metal slab etched in a sparkling array pattern. An unlit crystal sits embedded in the middle of the magic circle.

Already gripping one handle, Crispin offers me the other side.

His heart eyes intensify.

“If you’re up to it, I can have everyone who’s off-duty rotate down here,” Cherise says. “We better test while the dukes are out.”

“Yes. Please.”

Vhex and Remy aren’t going to love seeing proof that I am not THEIR GUIDE in all-caps and neon emphasis, but I’ve had my fill of being bound. Now that I’m free of Kyorgos, I refuse to be restricted to one Sentinel ever again.

I want to help every Sentinel I can.

“Why bother?” Crispin frowns. “I can feel it. You’re my match.”

Time to kill another imprint fantasy . “Fair warning. Our match rate is going to be seventy-five percent.”

“No. This is too strong. I’ve never felt?—”

“Sentinel Pietrovski,” I say firmly, leaving no room to debate. “I’m going to be seventy-five percent compatible with every Sentinel in the Farguard. Including Sentinels Azrid and Trezzoran.”

His jaw sets as he pushes the grip toward me. “I’ll believe it when I feel it.”

Resigned, I take the handle.

Thankfully, the artifact doesn’t require much oomph. All I have to do is touch a soul-silk to the right spot in the magic circle.

Crispin’s soul is locked and loaded. As soon as our energies meet, a light sparks inside the crystal.

“You feel so good.” He shudders, shaking the device.

I hold my side steady as our souls and powers meet.

Considering that eighty percent compatibility is a soulmate-level, fall-to-your-knees and thank fate kind of match, seventy-five percent is insanely amazing.

Most Sentinels never find an imprint partner and will never come close to feeling this high.

I wish it didn’t feel the same on my side.

But it does.

Every time.

Crispin’s weaker energy isn’t as enthralling as S-class power, but it gives me familiar warm and fuzzies.

The not-quite but-close-enough joining of our super-compatible souls warns that Crispin would cuddle me, protect me, and treat me like his jewel…

Until he meets a real eighty percent match and drops my ass without a second look.

“Are you A-class?” He moans, greedily watching the rainbow light rise inside the crystal. “You feel strong.”

“S-class,” I answer, mentally distancing myself. Crispin’s soul-silks flow arrow-straight and his energy glows healthy and bright, without a hint of jagged pain or built-up poison.

He doesn’t need me.

He’s already working well with some other Guide.

Crispin greedily watches the light rise. “Holy shit. Sixty-five. Seventy?—”

“It stopped. Seventy-five percent.” I release the handle to rub my tingling palm.

Crispin pulls the unit to his nose to squint at the lines notched in the crystal. The light hangs frozen, halfway to the eighth mark.

“How?” Cherise leans past his shoulder. “I thought you were just exaggerating to shake Trezzoran off your ass. You’re really this compatible with every Sentinel?”

“So far.” I rub my arms.

I can’t answer how or why. I’m always more concerned with the results.

I’d feel even more guilty about the heartbroken look in Crispin’s eyes if I didn’t always feel the same.

“Go grab Dorset and her squad.” Warden Dell slaps his shoulder, knocking him out of his daze.

Crispin stumbles away, glancing back at me with every step.

After the doors slam behind him, Warden Dell whistles. “Emotional damage.”

“It cuts both ways.” I collapse on the lobby sofa.

“What’s it like?” she asks, perching on the sofa’s arm. “My highest match was fifty percent, and that already knocked me on my ass.”

My head tips back against the cushion.

It’s hard to explain how something can feel so good and yet be total torture. “Imagine you’re with the Sentinel who was your best lover? You’re guiding them, giving them everything they want and need. But they just take and never let you finish. They edge you and edge you and edge you and?—”

“Got it.” She hunches her shoulders, shuddering. “So like, constant spiritual cockblock?”

“Pretty much.” Sentinel sex is fantastic, even with a transformed lich. It’s the after that always leaves me empty.

Sure, I’m special.

Like the rental version of their dream car.

Fun to test-drive, but who would be satisfied with a temporary dream?

Every Sentinel is waiting for their lottery win. They want the real deal in their garage.

When it’s really right, they kick out the old, and boot the new wheels.

Just ask Kevan.

Without an imprint, no Guide-Sentinel partnership will ever be permanent.

“Are you sure you want to test with everyone? Crispin is a puppy compared to the A-classes. They’ll follow you around like wolves.”

“Azrid and Trezzoran won’t let them.” No smitten, B-class Sentinel is going to fight to steal me from a duke.

They give like wet paper.

Kevan wasn’t even my first betrayal.

Marsh. Viktor. Samsen.

I started feeling the high compatibility long before my power showed up on the tests.

Every Sentinel I trained with in Ashbourne’s private force who waxed on and on about a future with little teenaged Iris ghosted me the second a Kyorgos put in a claim.

The fantasy—even the future possibility —of a better match always wins over the girl who’s giving them everything right now.

Determined, I take the artifact back from Cherise. “I want all the Sentinels to know they don’t have to be afraid of rampaging while I’m here.”

Vhex and Remy need a different message made clear.

The S-classes will be my first priority, but they’ll never be my only priority.

Just like I’ll never be theirs.