Page 232 of Gathered Sparkle

They’re spaced just close enough to be reachable.

I double back toward the van, ignoring the shouted protests in my earpiece, and clamber onto the hood.

“What the fuck,Short King?” Sylus pounds his fist on the windshield. “You’re gonna make a dent in it!”

“I paid for this pile of rust.” I glance at Sylus through the windshield. “I can dent it as much as I want.” Then, I leap onto the van’s roof, making the metal creak under my weight.

Sylus rolls down the window and yells at me, apparently not satisfied to use the comms. “Hell,Harrington, what are you doing?”

I don’t respond because I’m too busy jumping.

My fingers grip the edge of the first balcony, and the metal bites into my skin as I dangle there for a second, my muscles straining as I pull myself up and over the railing.

The next balcony is farther away than it looked from below, the gap wide enough to give me pause. My heart pounds as I calculate the jump, the distance. I glance down and see Veronica moving farther away, her security clearing a path for her.

No time for second-guessing.

I balance on the railing, my breath steadying as I crouch, and then I push off, leaping through the air. I’m weightless before I land hard, my knees bending to absorb the impact.

“Holy shit,” Sylus’s voice comes through the comms. “You’re fucking crazy, Harrington. You know that, right?”

“Shut up,Walker,” I mutter, already moving.

The next jump is easier, and after another, my movements grow even faster, more instinctive.

Jump. Land. Balance. Repeat.

Veronica’s security doesn’t even glance up, too focused on keeping her moving.

“Where the hell is he going?” Koen’s voice growls in my ear.

“Apparently, he’s auditioning for Cirque du Soleil,” Sylus answers.

I ignore them, pushing harder. Veronica and the guards split from the crowd and turn into an alleyway, which plays in my hand because the balconies are closer together here, and I’m gaining on them.

One more leap puts me directly above where she’s rushing through the alley with her guards. I crouch, gripping the railing, waiting for the right moment. With a final exhale, I push off the railing and drop, twisting midair into a backflip. The world spins, gravity yanking me down, and I land in a crouch, my feet hitting the pavement with a thud.

I rise slowly as Veronica skids to a halt, her guards doing the same a few feet behind her.

“Evening,Mother,” I greet innocently as we lock eyes, but a sharp smile curls my lips while I try not to pant.

That was fucking epic, and I hate that Sylus didn’t see it.

Veronica’s lips part in shock, and the guards shift their hands to hover over their weapons, but I hold my ground.

Novalee’s and Alaric’s voices crackle in and out over the comms as they make it back to the van, but they’re a distant hum, drowned out by the sharp focus tunneling my vision. Everything narrows to this one moment.

“Nicholas.” Her lips curl into a sneer, dripping with venom. “What you’ve done here tonight… it’s not only a disgrace. It’s a betrayal. A betrayal of me, of the Harrington name. Your grandfather would turn over in his grave. You’ve destroyed everything we built,” she spits. “Everything I built for you. And for what? To play the hero? To save these pathetic magicians and their circus tricks? The ones who treated you like a pariah for the last decade?”

Weeks ago, this would’ve wrecked me. The accusations, the guilt, the weight of her expectations—I would have carried it all,buckling under the pressure of needing to be her legacy, hersomething.

But now?Now, it’s nothing.

I force myself to stay rooted, refusing to flinch under her scrutiny. There’s a strange kind of clarity in the moment, slicing through the last threads of whatever hold she thought she had over me.

I don’t need to be her legacy.

I don’t need to be her son, her heir, heranything.

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