로그인SAGEI tore through the pack like breath given purpose.Mist wrapped around me, my body dissolving into vapor and intent as I slipped between trees and rooftops, through wards and shadows, moving too fast for eyes to follow. The night rushed past in fragments—stone, iron, blood, fire—yet my mind burned hotter than any of it.The Queen.The realization clawed at me with every passing second.Claire had not learned that magic by accident—she had been the telling the truth in that regard at least. I had seen it in her mind—the precision, the structure, the discipline behind her spells. That kind of power was not born in secrecy or desperation. It was taught.The Queen had trained her. When? I did not know. But the truth tasted bitter on my tongue.How dare she?How dare that woman touch another life, mold it into a blade, and aim it at me while wearing the mask of inevitability? I had thought I was using her. Thought I was clever, strategic, exacting my revenge with cold intelligence.
ADAMThey were everywhere.Even before I counted them, before my mind could make sense of the scene unfolding in the courtyard below, I knew one thing with absolute certainty—we were outmatched.Not in numbers. In power.At least fifty vampires prowled the open space beneath us, their movements sharp and predatory, red eyes catching the moonlight as they stalked between fallen bodies. My guards lay scattered across the stone like broken dolls, throats torn open, chests hollowed, blood slick and blackening as it cooled.I swallowed hard. At least they hadn’t been turned.That mercy, twisted as it was, settled like ash in my chest. The dead should remain dead.Beside me, I felt Sage’s tension coil tighter, her guilt thrumming through the matebond like a second pulse. It wasn’t subtle. It never was with her. Every loss landed on her shoulders as if she alone bore the weight of the world.“This is my fault,” she murmured again, voice barely audible beneath the distant shrieks and snarls.
SAGEThe world came rushing back all at once.Now in my body, I staggered, my knees giving way beneath the weight of what I had seen, what I now knew. Strong arms caught me before I could hit the floor, pulling me into a familiar chest. Adam.For a moment, I let myself stay there, breathing him in, anchoring myself to the solid heat of his body while my mind reeled. Shock didn’t fade quickly. It clung, sticky and nauseating, eating me out from the inside.The Queen.The realization burned like acid.Through the bond, I felt Adam’s awareness sharpen, felt the echo of what I had dragged back with me bleed across the connection. I knew—without needing to look—that he had seen fragments. Enough. And if the murderous glares hardening the faces of his brothers were anything to go by, he hadn’t kept it to himself.Good. Let them all see.I straightened slowly, easing out of Adam’s arms, though my fingers lingered at his side for a heartbeat longer. Then I turned back to Claire.Rage surged
The moment my magic slipped past Claire’s defenses, past the wards she threw up weakly around her mind, the world inverted.There was no gentle transition. No warning. One second I was before her, hand pressed to her forehead, feeling her panic skitter uselessly beneath my palm—and the next, I was no longer in my body at all.I was inside her.But her mind did not open like a door, as Adam’s. It fractured like glass.Memory rushed at me in jagged shards, unfiltered, dragging me forward whether I wanted to go or not. I braced instinctively, grounding myself, and then—Fire.Not destruction. Not chaos.A small, perfect sphere of flame hovered above a child’s hands, spinning lazily, obedient and warm. Little Claire sat perched on a chair too large for her, feet swinging as she laughed, eyes bright with delight as the fire obeyed her every thought.The room was quiet. Private. Sealed away from the rest of the world. It seemed like a room inside another, a secret base or something like th
SAGEI’ve noticed that shock does not scream. It hollowed. It carved you out from the inside and left you standing there, breathing, blinking, while your mind scrambled to catch up with reality.For a heartbeat—just one—I was certain I had misheard her.Then I saw it. The way the room froze. The way every single face mirrored what was tearing through me.Catel looked like the ground had dropped out from under him. His mouth parted slightly, his eyes fixed on his sister as if she had grown another face, another mouth speaking blasphemy where love used to live.Whatever bond he thought they shared fractured right there, audible in the silence.Claire’s words hung in the air like poison. Do you think you’re the only one with magic?Her laughter sliced through the stillness, unhinged. It wasn’t the mocking laughter she used to wield so carefully—it was manic now, frayed at the edges. The kind that belonged to people who had crossed a line and decided there was no going back.The other bri
SAGEShock didn’t hit me all at once.It came in slow, nauseating waves, each one heavier than the last, until my knees finally gave out and I was lying fully on Adam, that he had to sit down at the edge of the bed, legs stretched outward, my fingers curling into his shirt as if fabric could anchor me to reality.Claire was behind it all? How?Naomi’s confession still echoed in my ears, unfinished yet already devastating.My mind leapt ahead, unwillingly—to the rest of the truths that would soon spill, to the consequences waiting just beyond this room. To the vampires.They would be here soon. I could feel it in my bones, in the way the air seemed to tighten around my chest. The wards I had placed earlier , after getting the first truth, were thinning, stretched by my own unstable magic.Could I fight vampires?The thought wasn’t heroic. It was practical. Cold. Fear-edged.I reached inward, instinctively searching for El, for her voice that always cut through my spirals.El.Nothing.







