Page 83 of Shattered & Returned

I wasn’t exactly sure if the threat was aimed at me or Ravencrux.

Probably both.

Fuck him.

Fuck all of them.

Fuck this academy.

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

Nero Ravencrux

The Curse

The only way my enemies could hurt me was by hurting her—my one true mate.

In this lifetime, I’d found her again.

Someone had taught her how to hide from me. For years, her presence had been veiled, until two weeks ago, when the shield shattered like glass.

I’d tried everything before. Leaving her alone, hoping my enemies would spare her if I stayed away. Hiding her in remote corners of the world. Neither worked.

They always found her. Always butchered her before her twentieth birthday, leaving her broken body where I’d find it.

I was forever one step behind, because Moirai saw to that. The Fates held a grudge against me and joined my foes. Their eyes never turned away from her.

No more chances. No more distance. This time, I changed the rules.

It took decades to prepare. I built Forsaken Academy with Hecate, weaving blood wards against every god except the four within these walls, myself included. Here, bound by ancient rules, even my enemies couldn’t touch her directly.

In this gothic cage, she’d be safer than in any other place.

They recognized her immediately, of course. The vultures always did. But for now, they could only circle, watching, waiting.

She had six months until her twentieth birthday. Our enemies had moved their timetable forward—they’d sensed the shift in the air. This third millennium could be the endgame.

She was different this time. The frailest of all her incarnations, yet fiercer in will. Something had already awakened in her, a spark even the Fates couldn’t extinguish.

The siege had begun at dawn a few days ago.

Minor gods hungry for glory sent their monsters to our gates. Some came for sport—this hunt had entertained them for two thousand years.

My team and I met them at the perimeter, painting the wards red with their blood.

A hundred corpses later, we won the day.

Exhausted, wounded, I returned to find her scent lingering outside my study. She’d fled before I could call her in.

After Morrigan healed me, I’d tracked down Bloom. My chest had squeezed with fear for her when I saw her body pressed against his. When I saw Apollo’s golden hands on her hips, her head thrown back in laughter, wrath filled my veins like molten lead.

Shadows writhed around my fists at the unholy sight. Every instinct screamed to tear them apart, to remind her whose mark she’d borne since the dawn of time.

She felt me first. Always did. Even in mortal form. The longing beneath her hate burned so brightly in her beautiful eyes, it undid me, dragging me back an eon ago to her old hatred for me.

When I stole her.

---