Page 45 of Blood Oath
“Do yourself a favor and don’t.”
“Gotta keep my mate safe. And warm,” he adds, frowning as he realizes I’m not wearing a coat over my baggy sweatshirt. “Want my shirt for an extra layer? As a bonus, you’d get to see me half naked—and don’t even pretend like you don’t want that. Feel free to touch as much as you want.”
Oh, my gods. There’s no point even trying to with this guy, is there? I need to start being an absolute bitch starting now if I want to have any chance of sparing all of us of this quintet.
I open my mouth to say something scaling, but Silas beats me to it.
“Feel free to go fuck yourself, dragon,” he mutters. He reaches into his pocket—probably for his bleeding crystal. All blood fae have them. “A warming spell will last longer. Hold still, Maven.”
I look at him sharply, taking a step away. “Don’t.”
His jaw clenches, and he’s clearly about to argue, but the coach instructs all the legacies to line up outside the woods to prepare for the whistle.
“I doubt the separating magic will affect me in Limbo,” Crypt muses as he stands beside me, studying the darkness of the woods ahead. “The faculty were rarely so thorough with their spells during my time here. So I’ll see you on the other side, my darling.”
“Stay with her,” Silas agrees. “Plenty of legacies here want to weaken our quintet?—“
“We’re not a quintet,” I mutter, but he talks over me like that’s a non-issue.
“—and Maven will be their first target if they find her. Kill first, act sorry about it later.”
Baelfire pops his neck on both sides, and Crypt slips back into Limbo without argument.
Apparently, they also think the no-kill ban is a joke. Good to see we’re on the same page with that one thing, at the very least.
Glancing to my right, I see an incomplete quintet look away from me quickly, whispering low to one another. Other legacies openly glare at us. It’s clear no one is thrilled about going into this training with the Nightmare Prince, Silas Crane, and a Decimus.
They assume we’ll work as a team. They see me as the weak one here, so it’s easy to deduce that Silas is right. I’ll probably get more real combat than I usually do in this class because instead of ignoring me, people are going to actively try to kill me.
That puts a small smile on my face as I turn back to the woods.
The whistle blows. I step past the border, and magic whisks me away.
14
MAVEN
Transportation magic is a bitch.
For a moment, I feel like I’m being pulled in eighteen different directions at once while the world twists in on itself, and then all at once, I stumble to my feet in a section of barren forest floor just as a flag appears in my left hand.
Righting myself, I glance down at the fabric marked with the Everbound University symbol—the colors and signs of the Four Houses with a golden heart in the center, uniting them all. Tucking it into my pocket, I eye my surroundings.
Flurries filter down through the barren canopy above, swirling softly past gray and white tree trunks marred with long scratches from otherworldly creatures. Though the sky is pale far above, the wintry wood surrounding me is wreathed in mist and shadows, hiding any dangers or other legacies lurking nearby. Whenever a breeze passes through the twisted treetops, it turns into spine-chilling whispers, like dozens of ghosts hissing to beware. A few dozen yards away, Everbound River rushes past its rocky banks, white with ice and forbidding rapids.
Utterly beautiful.
I don’t sense Crypt’s dark, chilling presence nearby, and I assume he would have appeared by now if the magic hadn’t affected him. Which means I’m really on my own as I wait for danger to find me.
Just the way I like it.
Climbing up into one of the twisted trees takes only a minute, and then I watch the ground below at my leisure, enjoying the sinister ambiance and the chilly, fresh air. The white noise of the river is soothing.
And as I sit and wait, I mull over my options.
Using Everett to turn the guys against each other is a good plan, one I still intend to use. Acting like a bitch might annoy them a bit, but I’m guessing that I’ll have to do some significant damage for them to reject me completely like I need them to.
Which makes me wonder…
