Page 40 of The Bound Blood
A dozen more pour through the crack, and I send my shadows after them.
I’m pretty sure we’re losing this battle.
More of them keep coming—clawing their way through the crack in the Veil like a dam has burst, spilling nightmares onto sacred ground. There’s nothing stopping them. Not when theone personwho might’ve had a shot at sealing the breach is unconscious in my arms.
Then Auron appears.
His magic rips through the room like fire raging through a gasoline-soaked house, lashing back at the creatures with unrelenting force. Spellcraft coils from his fingertips in violent arcs, sigils burning midair before slamming into the nearest veilspawn.
He’s vicious in a way the other two aren’t. There’s a darkness in him, one that reminds me of my own shadows—only his doesn’t whisper, theyscream. And the grin on his face says he’s enjoying this.
But I don’t care.
Not when he’s helping us protect her.
“You’ll be okay,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to her forehead even as my eyes track another creature lunging from the rift. She whimpers faintly, like she canhearme, but her body remains limp. I tighten my grip on her and shove down the panic threatening to claw up my throat.
Beside me, Raiden growls—a sound more beast than man—as he tears into one of the creatures trying to circle us. Nolan’s magic pulses bright and golden, a flash of pure will as he shields our flank.
And Auron?—
Auron is a vortex of rage and—joy.
He sends a line of bloodborn runes across the floor, each one erupting into flame when touched. The last of the veilspawn screeches and convulses, shattering into dust under the weight of it.
Then silence.
No more pour through the rift.
The breach still pulses—an angry, festering wound in the wall—but nothing stirs behind it. Nothing comes.
Just the sound of our breathing.
Ragged. Uneven. Alive.
I don’t know how long we stand there. Seconds. Maybe hours. Magic still crackles in the air, clinging to our skin like smoke.
Then Raiden shifts back and straightens slowly, eyes locked on the bloodborn standing at the heart of the carnage.
Auron lowers his hands, his magic retreating like a leash being drawn tight. That same amused smile curves his mouth, cruel and unreadable.
None of us speak. We just stare. Becausehe’snot bound to Lindsay.
He doesn’t act out of love. Or duty. Or anything we can name. He helped us because it servedsomepurpose. And none of us know what it is.
Auron stands at the edge of the ruin we’ve carved together, magic still clinging to him, as if it refuses to let go of its master. His chest rises and falls like he just went for a walk instead of flaying nightmares open with nothing but his will.
He tilts his head, gaze raking over the three of us—me crouched with Lindsay in my arms, Raiden bleeding, naked, and panting, Nolan still half-shielded in gold light—and something flickers across his face.
Not triumph or concern, but calculation.
He offers no parting words. Just turns and walks back through the scorched door he came in, disappearing like the whole thing never happened.
Good.
Because I don’t trust him not to gut us the second Lindsay isn’t between us.
She stirs in my arms.
