Page 194 of Hidden Kingdoms

A hazy memory flitted through my mind, one of trees and a gentle blue sky. A large figure on their knees. Cracked and bleeding fingers. Something inside me recoiled at the image.

Had that been part of the dream?

My eyes caught on the dirt caked underneath my nails, and I frowned down at them.

All confusion about the state of my hands were forgotten as the main door slammed open. I twisted towards the sound, followed only moments later by the bedroom door flying back on its hinges. Energy surged into my fingertips as a tell-tale heat preceded its maker.

Blair,of course, remained utterly unbothered.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me right now!” Bastian’s towering form barged his way into my room, the swell of my power retreating a little. “Again?”

I didn’t have the brain space to bring up his midnight visit, the empty place where I had grown accustomed to Kaius’pendant was unnerving, along with the flashback of being restrained by flaming ropes.

As was the realisation I’d kind of liked it.

Do not fucking go there.

“Where is he?” he demanded, eyes darting around, ignoring my annoyance completely.

“Get out,” I said, closing my eyes and rubbing at my wet temples to relieve the lingering tension of the nightmare Blair had just pulled me from. I was grateful, she just could have chosen a better method.

When I opened them again and found Big Man still there, I reluctantly ground out, “Where is who?”

“Kaius,” he growled, now pinning his attention on me, and I didn’t miss how his eyes dipped to the wet top plastered across my chest. They moved past me, landing on something that upped his anger levels, if that was even possible.

“Not here,obviously,” I replied, hand gesturing to the room that was clearly empty of anyone but us. “Unless you think I have him stashed under the bed, or something equally ridiculous that could only come from your thick skull?”

He looked ready to argue with those facts before thinking better of it.

“Why are you here? Come to think of it, why are either of you here?”

Bastian’s eyes narrowed into his trademark glare as if me asking him why he was here was the issue.

I wouldn’t put it past him to pull off all the covers to check Kaius wasn’t playing peek-a-boo under there.

“He’s gone.” The unnerving monotone of Blair answered him, speaking as though her words were a complete explanation.

A trickle of dread crawled down my spine as Bastian’s body grew rigid. The scowl that was so naturally ingrained on his face whenever we were in the same room dissolving into one of panic,my eyes flicked between them as I struggled to make sense of his reaction.

“No.” The whispered word was laced with a fear that punched through to my soul, flashes of my dream beginning to play more clearly before my eyes, and I found myself unfolding from the bed, feet hitting the warm floor as I cautiously stepped forward.

“NO!” Bastian repeated, this time his voice a guttural roar, followed by a low whoosh that vibrated through the room. An acrid scent hit me a moment later, and I knew something was currently on fire, but I didn’t turn to look, too caught on the facts that were straining to arrange themselves as they pushed and pulled at my psyche.

“What do you mean,he’s gone?” My nightmare was now a vivid picture playing in my mind. “Gone where?”

Blair’s eyes slid past me, meeting Bastian’s over my shoulder, and a suffocating heat bathed the room, magik beginning to surface within me in response through no urging of my own. It rose in a violent wave that stole my breath as it crashed against my skin, and for a moment, the darkened room blinked out of existence. I twisted around blindly as my senses were taken from me, until the flare of Bastian’s heat pressed sharply across the skin of my shoulders. I leaned into its touch, sucking in air as my vision was returned and he appeared before me.

Gone was the vulnerability of his fear, and in its stead was the anger that was so often aimed at me. I was unsure what I had done this time, but Bastian rarely needed a justified reason to turn his ire my way.

Flames were dancing within his eyes along with the ones just outside my field of sight as my mind grew heavy, my thoughts sluggish as something pulled at the fabric of my being, and his face flickered in and out of view. A cold that didn’t belong in this room threatened to invade my body, the cloying smell of damp replacing the charcoal and Maplewood scent of him.

I stumbled forward, head spinning with the speed at which my vision was changing, and as it cleared, my eyes locked with glittering emerald ones, creased now with a look of concern that was so out of place on his handsome face. I couldn’t look away as they offered me an anchor. One I couldn’t claim as my body sagged, growing heavier under the onslaught of magik that was pulsing within me.

My knees buckled, and I reached out to the man before me. Watching in a distant surprise as he reached back, strong hands grabbing onto my biceps in an attempt to keep me upright. Scores of heat marking me where our skin connected, but it was too late. A flare of magik that I had felt once before breached the barrier of my own as his skin met mine, and our energies melded together in a heady clash. It heated my body, a delicious warmth that chased away the chill. Where our skin touched, it blazed, searing into my bones.

But still, I was falling, and as he dropped with me, pulling me into his hard body, my eyes darkened once more. Whatever part of me it was that left, that escaped my physical form to drift away, did just that.

My knees slammed into a hard floor that, unlike the warmth in my room that I had become accustomed to, was unnervingly cold. Painfully so.

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