Page 92 of The Bound Blood
Not perfect. Not whole. Never whole. Just fragments of what the Veil wants me to see. Whatshestirs.
I brace the glass in both hands as the vision sharpens into pieces:
Lindsay’s mark glowing. A tear widening. A creature dragging itself through. Dorian’s magic flaring bright. Her reaching for the Veil.
It’s not every detail. Only the moments tied to her magic and the thing trying to reach her.
Azrael warned me—“It shows what you’re not supposed to see. What touches her magic. What hunts for her.”
And this creature?
It is hunting.
My shadows surge instinctively, wanting to move, wanting to tear open the space between us. I fight them back with a growl lodged in my throat.
I told Azrael I could handle this. That I could protect her from a distance. That I could obey the rules.
Tonight, I nearly break them, again. But she’s in danger. Is it because I broke them before? Because I let myself hold her and comfort her for a full night that I can’t get out of my head? Still, I wouldn’t take it back. I’ll hold onto it while I try to keep my distance and do what I was supposed to do from the start.
When her magic slams into the tear—the artifact flares so brightly I have to avert my eyes.
She isn’t just closing it, she’s controlling it completely. The tear collapses. And the vision in the glass fades. Only then do I move.
I reach the path a moment later, stepping out of the tree line just as Lindsay, Dorian, and the shaken student begin heading back toward campus. Dorian’s head lifts immediately, and our gazes lock.
His smile is too knowing.
“Well,” he says, “the academy’s phantom arrives at last.”
I ignore him and look at her. “Are you alright?”
She shakes her head. “Just tired.”
Her magic says otherwise. She’s drained, nearly fainting, and the shadows around her tremble with the aftershock of channeling something too big for her body.
Dorian shifts slightly, positioning himself between the girl and me with instinctive protectiveness. “She closed a tear most trained mages would hesitate to touch,” he says, tone too casual. “I would be amazed if she wasn’t exhausted.”
“She shouldn’t have had to do it alone,” I answer. I know I’m angry that I just watched it all through the shadow-glass, I should have been here, but he’s an easy target.
Dorian’s eyes glitter. “I wasn’t exactly letting her fend for herself. We were working together, as a team.”
“You weren’t stopping the tear.”
“And you weren’t here,” he says with a shrug. “Spying again?”
The familiar barb. The familiar truth.
Lindsay watches us, confused and worn out. “You two… know each other?”
Dorian smirks. “Unfortunately.”
I answer at the same time. “We’ve crossed paths.”
She blinks at our overlap. Dorian looks insufferably pleased.
Dorian shifts the girl’s satchel higher under his arm. He murmurs instructions to the trembling student, and she nods shakily. But his eyes drift back to me once Lindsay isn’t looking.
A silent reminder: He saw her power tonight. And he is very, very interested.
