Page 79 of The Bound Blood
The girl with the faint Veil-mark on her wrist and the three protective shadows orbiting her like sentinels—she goes very still. Stillness born not of fear, but readiness. Her gaze sharpens. Her spine straightens. She looks like she could run or fight or unravel a spell with her bare hands.
Interesting.
Her magic hums beneath her skin like something half-awake. Half-wild. It brushes against my senses—lightning-soft, instinctive—and for the first time in a very long time, I feel it: Curiosity. And something dangerously akin to attraction.
Two things that normally do not touch me.
I mark her immediately.
Not because of the rawness of her power—though it pricks like static along my fingertips—but because of the tethers.
I see them. All three.
Two of them glow near her now—dim threads of connection, faint but undeniably there.
The human-looking one beside her is no mere mortal. His magic is soft gold, scholar-bright, threaded with sigils like a story written in light.
Warlock,I note.
But a warlock with a strange resonance to the Veil. Rare. Valuable. Dangerous.
The other male—is unmistakable.
His aura crackles, a controlled wildfire. A shifter. But not any shifter.
Kitsune magic leaks from him in thin, fraying threads—power cut at the root but still bleeding. An interrupted bond.
I inhale sharply.
Someone severed him from his ancestral magic. Recently. Violently. And he’s still standing.
That earns a flicker of respect.
But the third tether…
My eyes follow it and shift to the dais.
Kael stands beside the headmaster, a pillar of shadow and cold restraint. And connected to her by a thread of magic so dark and ancient I feel it resonate in my bones.
A Reaver prince. Tethered to a human-born girl.
Unusual. Impossible. Delicious.
I smile slowly.
Very, very interesting.
The tethers don’t lie. They whisper truths long before mouths speak them.
A warlock bound by light. A shifter bound by instinct. A shadow prince bound by something older than his bloodline.
And she—she stands at the center of them, unknowing, unclaimed, and powerful enough to make the Veil take notice. Oh, this is better than I expected. I thought I was in for a boring trip. But this is so much more.
I can’t help the soft laugh under my breath.
“Fascinating,” I murmur.
My gaze drifts back to her—and she feels it. She looks up, eyes wide, startled…and then locked on mine.
