She huffed an unexpected laugh, but it disappeared with her next breath. Eyes clenched shut and lips pursed, she put on a good show of trying, but she couldn’t pull one over on me. There wasn’t even a flicker of her magick. No movement. Not even an attempt. I pulled my hand back, and her eyes fluttered open.
“Sorry,” she whispered, anything but apologetic. “I guess everyone is wrong about me.”
Fat chance.
I schooled my features and wrapped my arm around her shoulders to steer her outside. “Nice try, you devious little glow stick, but we both know you were faking.”
Her outraged squawk was cute, and so was her trying to wriggle away from me. “One, stop calling me stupid nicknames, and two, I wasn’t faking!” she growled. “Itoldyou I’m not what you all think. Maybe I do have magick, but not enough to cause all of this and do crazy things like sense others doing magicky shit.”
Her hands waved around in the air as she spoke, animated with her fury, and I grabbed one and brought it between us withour fingers intertwined. So much denial. I was going to enjoy getting her to admit I was right, as well as a few other things.
Pulling on that hand, I stopped her before we got close enough for Kai and Eryn to hear our conversation. “I know when a woman is faking, babe.”
“Get that a lot, do you?” she mocked and tried to free herself from my hold.
I waited until she got tired and then grudgingly met my calculating gaze with her furious grays. “I know because I’m good at reading people. I know that little furrow between your brows means you’re lying and that the skip in your breathing right now means I’m right.”
“I—That’s not—I told you—”
Checkmate.
Eryn held seven humans under her thrall without even touching them, and we walked past without someone trying to burrow into our brains. Rani still sputtered beside me, but she couldn't find the words to counter what I said. Because I was right, and we both knew it.
Kai took one look at us, raised his brow, and opened his mouth to say something detrimental to my plans and not at all beneficial to me, I was sure. The smug asshole just loved how hard I was having to work for my bond.
“We should head back to the condo,” I called out before he could say anything. “I don’t think the dorms are the safest place right now.”
With Kai’s shadows concealing us and Eryn’s ability to turn humans away, it should be a fairly easy trip back to the truck. Once Rani was safely locked away behind the wards, we could figure out what we were going to do next. Whatever it was, I had a feeling she wasn’t going to like it. Especially because she was digging her heels into the grass already, over my one tiny suggestion.
“Absolutely not.” I let her go so she wouldn’t hurt herself, but was ready to sprint after her if she tried to bolt. “I want to go back to my room and finish packing. The sooner I’m out of here, the better.”
Kai and Eryn exchanged looks, both of them thinking what I was. It wasn’t safe for her to go home. Uncontrolled powers aside, the djinn were still unsettled and would love nothing more than to have a chance at grabbing someone we cared about. The rest of the family was already on lockdown. Eryn’s parents were well on their way to the family seat for protection as well. And I’d be damned if my bond went anywhere without me by her side.
“Rani, we really should go back to the condo first… to talk,” Eryn tried. The fact that she could control the humans and still have a conversation was impressive as fuck.
Kai seemed to think so too, if his grin was anything to go by.
“I don’t know, princess, maybe they should go on to the dorm andwecan go home for theconversation,” he purred.Gross.“I have a lot to say about how incredibly sexy it is to see you wield your magick while barely lifting a finger.”
Okay, big ick.
Eryn giggled, and I held back a fake gag. Now was not the time for their flirting. The gods knew I saw enough of it sharing a place with them.
“As fun as this is to watch”—I stuck my finger down my throat to show them just how much fun—“Rani here is still all aglow and taking her into a dark, old dorm where she will stick out like a flashlight in a power outage is not the best idea.”
Really, like I was going to let my bond hide in her little hovel of a room, hide fromme, when I’d just started to figure her out? Zero percent chance. No, she wasn’t going to hide any longer. It physically hurt to have her so far, but it hurt even more to see what her pain and rage were doing to her. It was going to stop now, all of it.
“I’m still glowing?” Rani asked, looking down at her skin like she couldn’t see it.
She probably couldn’t if she was cutting off her magick like I suspected she was.
“Like tinsel on a Christmas tree,” I replied and placed a gentle hand on her lower back to get her walking in the right direction.Awayfrom the dorms. “But the prettiest tinsel I ever saw, like the pieces you hang at the tippity top and right up front. You like Christmas, right, babe?”
Her sigh of resignation was like music to my ears. Oh, we could fight all the way home if she wanted, but I’d rather save my strength for the battle I knew was coming. The one where she learned that she wasn’t going anywhere this summer. Not until I knew she could handle her magick and that the threat to her safety was over.
The second I got her somewhere safe, we’d get her aversion to all things supernatural taken care of. Maybe along the way, we could heal that hatred she carried for herself. The two of us didn’t stand a chance if she couldn’t love all the things about herself that I was just starting to.
CHAPTER 5
