Page 69 of Darkness and Deceit
I didn’t meanto fall asleep, but at some point, sleep caught me anyway. I’m curled up in a chair beside Kai’s bed, one leg tucked under me, blanket half-falling off my shoulders.
The room is quiet and still. Kai hasn’t moved an inch. His chest is still rising and falling. His hand is still resting between mine. But he hasn’t stirred. No flutter of eyelids. No change in his breathing.
Not since before.
Gods, what if he never wakes up again?
I stroke my thumb along the edge of his hand, memorizing the shape of it like it might fade. I tell myself he’s going to wake up, but the silence stretches so long it starts to feel like a lie.
What if I never get to tell him how much he truly means to me?
The door clicks open behind me, and I turn, expecting the healer making her morning rounds, or Simon and Vaughn checking on us. But to my surprise, it’s Augustus who steps into the room, still in his blue Keeper robes. He’s all sharp lines and quiet power, with dark, neatly tousled hair and a face that would be almost boyish if not for the constant restraint carved into it.
His expression is carefully blank, stoic in a way that makes it hard to tell what he’s thinking, but not unkind.
His eyes flick briefly to Kai, then to me, calculating and unreadable.
“I said I’d return by morning,” he says, holding something wrapped in silk cloth the same color as his robes. “And I don’t break my word.”
I shift in my seat and rise slowly, keeping one hand on the back of the chair. “What is it?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he sets the bundle gently on the empty cot near the far wall and begins to unwrap it. I cross the space—wary, but curious.
Beneath the cloth is an object about the size of a book. It’s thin, metallic, with faint runes etched across the surface. It pulses with gold light once, like it’s sensing the magic in the room and responding to it.
“It’s called a tether scryer,” Augustus says quietly. “Keeper-forged. It’s meant to assess out-of-control tether magic. Usually used on newly bonded Predators or Preys who’ve undergone trauma. It’s old—a relic, really. But it may help us understand what’s happening inside him.”
“Will it hurt him?”
“No,” Augustus replies. “It’s passive. Diagnostic only. But… it will respond to whatever is happening in the bond.” He hesitates. “And in you.”
My stomach knots. “Me?”
“You’re part of this too, Lilith. Your bond with Kai may be the only reason he’s still tethered at all.” He meets my gaze. “But if the flame has corrupted that bond, even partially, this device will show us.”
I shift my gaze back to Kai. He’s still. Too still.
“What do I need to do?” I ask.
Augustus doesn’t answer right away. His fingers are steady as he unwraps the device, but his jaw flexes once like something inside him is grinding gears.
“Nothing, yet,” he finally replies. “I’ll handle the placement. But I wanted you to be here when I started. So you can see what we’re up against.”
I give a small nod of permission.
Augustus moves with precision, laying the tether scryer across Kai’s chest. The metal hums faintly. Then it glows.
A halo of golden light spreads outward—then fractures. Tendrils of deep blue corrupted energy slither along the edges like frost over glass.
I suck in a breath. “That’s?—”
“His magic,” Augustus finishes. “Or what’s left of it.”
My fingers twitch at my sides—drawn to the soft hum of the scryer, to the magic threading through the room like a low, endless breath. I barely realize what I’m doing until my hand brushes the rim of the device.
The golden light fractures again, deeper this time, pulsing once… twice.
A low hum threads into my chest like someone tugged a string inside me I didn’t know was there. The pulse spreads to my fingertips, like warm static, like a name I haven’t learned but already know.
