Page 19 of Shadebound
Instead, everything above my wrist went numb. My power sagged, collapsing until only a dim hum remained—eighty-five per cent gone. Maybeworse... Panic flared as I reached for my creatures; but relief surged when I felt them there. Still alive, though curled into a half-slumber. They were muted at the edges, almost unconscious. But still there.
A hollow dread gouged out my chest—being cut off from my magic was like losing a piece of myself, wrong in every way.
It was worse than the blades cutting into my skin. And the only thing that tethered me was the knowledge that they were not gone forever.
And Zayden quickly grabbing my free hand in such a tight grip, I knew he was keeping me from retaliating. Even as he flinched, and shook his own cuffed arm, clearly disgusted by what had happened to me.
Hightower’s lips curved into a satisfied smirk. “Based on your display of magic,” she purred, “it’s clear your dose of inhibition runes in your cuff was insufficient. Adjustments have been made to ensure compliance. I would so hate for you to become a threat to your peers before you can be of use to your world.”
Zayden’s eyes dropped as he released a slow, exasperated breath. And I finally understood his warnings.
Hightower grinned harder as her wings fluttered. “Welcome to Mors, Miss Draconis. I do think you will fit in just fine.”
The crowd finally roared.
I didn’t cheer. I didn’t move. I was already planning how to get Draven out—and rip this cursed cuff from my wrist so I could reclaim every scrap of my magic.
Because whatever this place was—school, prison, training facility—it wasn’t safe. Not for him. Maybe not for anyone. And I didn’t trust a single one of these smiling monsters.
Least of all myself.
Field Journal, Entry #431 — Classified
They say our magic makes us strong because pain cannot touch us the way it touches others. What they never see is where that pain goes.
A fated mate feels it—long before they know the bond exists, long before they accept it. Every wound, every ragged breath, every drop of suffering bleeds into them through a thread they cannot cut.
We rise sharper, stronger, because someone else is forced to carry what should have broken us.
If that is fate, then surely it only proves what we are. Monsters, bound to the ones we were meant to love, and built on the ruin we give them.
Chapter Seven, Tunnels And Tales
Iwasn’t supposed to still be in the arena tunnels. They cleared the place quickly after the fight. They swept the upper levels clean, warded the lower halls shut. But there were always cracks in the system, always places people forgot. I’d been in and out of the tunnels enough times to know the rhythm of the hooded guards, the timing of Hightower’s magical wards, and the way footsteps echoed off stone.
I knew enough to make myself invisible. And I also knew that the staff were lazy.
Hightower thought she’d broken the students already. She didn’t know most of them only pretended to be shattered.
And the truth was, despite the danger, I didn’t want to leave. Not yet. Not after what I saw this morning back in Salem.
The carriage magic had taken Jinx without warning. One moment she was standing beside her sister’s grave, and the next she was caught in a web of darkness that sparked across the snow. Her body arched against the spell, black-and-pink hair lashing across her face as wind howled around her. Silent, but furious, even from a distance. She didn’t scream, my dark delight. Didn’t speak beyond a few muttered curses. She was simply dragged and swallowed by the magic without a chance to stop it.
I’d watched it happen from the edge of the graveyard, near the cracked stone marked with her surname. Though I wanted to protect her, I hadn’t moved. I never did unless she wanted me to. Or I could do so without being truly caught.
There was nothing I could do to stop old magic. It would have only ruined our game and killed me. I doubted she would have enjoyed that.
But I hadsomeuses. Like seeing where her necklace fell just before she vanished into the haunted Mors carriage. One second it was around her neck—a colour-changing stone dangling from a delicate silver chain—and then it was in the snow. It caught the light for half a heartbeat, glinting like something alive. But when the necklace turned black, she vanished entirely.
The courtyard went silent. The carriage floated away.
Boot tapping against the ground, I waited until the spell residue faded, until the last shimmer of light dissolved into the frost. Then I walked across the graveyard, knelt in the snow, and picked the charm up.
It was still warm.
Not from the sun—it was early, and the sky had been overcast since the storm started. No, the heat was something better than sunlight. The necklace had just been resting against her skin long enough to remember the shape of her. To cling to some of her beautiful grey skin until I swore I could feel her heartbeat pulsing in the stone. I felt it when I closed my hand around it. It knew her and recognised the wrongness of being touched by someone else. It knew that my hands were not designed to hold something made of love and magic.
I hadn’t let go of it since, though. Because it washers.
