Series: Lords of Rathe Series by Meagan Brandy
Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“You’re not afraid,” Zeke observes, swimming closer. There’s heat in his voice now, the kind that comes from magic and proximity to danger.
“Should I be?” I ask, because the water here tastes like violence, and I’m drunk on it.
Other students have followed us deeper into the tombs, but they’re not here for the history lesson. Bodies press against bone walls in the shadowed spaces between ribs. I watch as hands explore skin that shimmers with magic and clearly drunk with sweat. Damn. This how the folk around here fuck?
The power here is thick enough to choke on, making everyone desperate and reckless. A girl with gills fluttering along her throat has someone pinned against a siren’s femur, their movements making the water around them pulse with bioluminescent light.
The magic hits me like liquid fire, making my skin hypersensitive, with every brush of current feeling like fingers trailing lightning.
Zeke floats closer, close enough that I can see the same hunger burning in his storm-gray eyes.
“The magic here,” he murmurs, hands finding my waist and pulling me against him, “it makes you want to do terrible things.”
“Does it?” I let him drag me into his orbit, magic wrapping around us like silk laced with poison. “Or does it just make you honest about what you already wanted?” I’m not sure I can tell the difference, and I don’t hate it.
We claim our own alcove carved deep between cages of ribs, where ancient binding runes pulse like dying heartbeats. Zeke’s back hits bone and I settle onto his lap, intoxicated by the thrum of power that hums around me. I’ve never felt the high of magic like this.
His hands tangle in my hair when I lean down to kiss him, and he tastes like salt and secrets and exactly the kind of mistake I want to make. Unease crawls up my throat, but before I can overthink it, my teeth sink into his lower lip, marking him the way I mark everything that’s temporarily mine.
The water around us turns black.
Zeke’s eyes go wide with terror just before darkness devours us whole.
The sensation is like being turned inside out and fed through a needle made of midnight. Water becomes void—turns into something that tastes like old magic and…rage. Pure, undiluted rage.
My lungs scream, my vision shattering into a thousand pieces, and then—
Stone replaces water. Dry air burns my modified lungs as the magic slowly dies off and the gills evaporate.
I open my eyes to Zeke. He held me through whatever that was and didn’t let go?
Impressive. I wonder how flexible he is in bed. Eager to test that theory asap, but before I can voice it, storm-gray is replaced by something infinitely more dangerous.
Blue. Not like the ocean, but like the color of a corpse right before it hits rigor mortis. He’s smiling like he’s just won a war.
Or about to start one.
Fuck.
“Had fun?”
Chapter Fourteen
Legend
The scent hits me before the sight does. Not her blood, thank the gods, but the sharp tang of another male too close. Too interested. My vision rims in black as the bond snaps taut, burning like a brand in the center of my chest.
And then I see her.
My little menace. Straddling that wide-eyed pretty boy like he’s a throne she means to desecrate. His hands on her hips, my hips, his mouth close to hers. Her pulse stutters with want. Zeke.
He must have a death wish, or a need for revenge. I mean, we did murder his mother when she dared cross our king.
Yet another example why Argents shouldn’t be mistaken for pure and good. Light magic is as dark as our magic, only where ours turns you to rot, theirs fucking blinds you.
Purely fucking pathetic.
A sound rips from my throat—half snarl, half laugh. “Had fun?”
The boy jolts like prey hearing the predator’s pawstep, but Haide doesn’t even flinch. She turns her head, slow as death, those wild island eyes locking on mine. Defiant. Like she doesn’t know the bond is screaming in both our veins. Like she doesn’t feel it.
It makes me want to set the entire cavern on fire just to remind her who she belongs to.
The pretty one swallows hard. “I…Legend?”
I bare my teeth. “King Legend,” I correct him. “You’re lucky you still breathe, now run along, little Argent,” I purr. “Before I send you to meet your mother.”
The little fuck, Zeke, dares to glare at me. But I can’t focus on him right now, as much as I want to rip him to shreds on principle alone.
With a flick of my hand I send him flying, my attention now on her face.
My mate’s hand presses to her temple, just as a thin line of blood spills from her nose, bright red against the pearl sheen of her skin. My body moves before my brain can think, crossing the distance, hauling her into me like she’ll vanish if I don’t.