Page 31 of We Hunt the Night

Forbidden magic.

One touch and that’s it.

Vale.

I climb to my feet and face Lock, blocking the way. Tears roll down my cheeks and I paint a confused look on my face. “You saved me.”

Lock, the fucking idiot, falls for it. His shoulders drop, and he walks to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “I love you and everything is going to be okay. That dragon will be gone soon, and I will stay with you through it all.”

I smile before I punch him straight in the mouth and blood sprays across me. Before he can react, I bring my knee up between his legs and he cries as I make impact and his knees slam to the floor with a bang. Before he can fall further, I grab his hair and lift his head so that he is looking at me. Rage is pounding in my body like a drug. Blood is pouring from his mouth and all I can think is—good. “When I’ve saved my bonded, I’m going to watch them burn you. They are mine, they belong to me, and you do not get to kill them. How. Fucking. Dare. You.” I lift my knee and smash it into his jaw, which cracks under the slam. Before I step away, I pull my dagger out and point it at him. “Say another spell and I’ll put this where the sun doesn’t shine.”

“Don’t go in there, it’s death magic!” He snarls. I see him going to whisper, but I’m faster. I whisper a spell first, a new silence spell, and his eyes widen as his mouth disappears.

“Bet you didn’t know I make up spells. Good luck talking with no mouth, dickhead.” I walk over and I slam my dagger into his arm. He can’t scream, but he passes out. I turn on shakylegs and walk to the classroom, feeling the magic in the air, the wrongness of it. Black magic is dancing through the air like lost spirits in a forest—glowing and beautiful—but death. They are death and there is no way to stop them known to us. The enchantress made up this spell and uses it in the war. It kills everything.

Vale.

His eyes meet mine in disbelief, in horror... and I think worry as I walk in. I whisper a spell at the chains to undo them one by one, beginning with his mouth. I need to be closer to do the rest. They are too strong, the magic needs touch.

“Fucking get out of here, HEX!” he screams at me.

“You know I don’t listen!” I shout back, fear making my blood feel cold as a black swirl of magic dances around my waist and continues through the air. Close. Too close. “I thought that’s why you hate me so much, Vale.”

I walk straight to him, every footstep shaky. He sounds broken when he speaks next, and it hurts my heart. “For once, just listen and leave. I can survive this.”

We both know he can’t. We both know it’s impossible. When I get close, I throw myself on top of him and the contact is enough for him to pull at my magic, to strengthen his. I whisper the undoing spell with him. “Get off me and let me protect you. Please, Juniper.” He has never said that word to me. “Please don’t break me by staying here. Go away. Fuck, please.”

Please. Please. Please.

I can’t let him die, though.

My eyes are wet as I lift my head and touch his cheek. “No. You’re my bonded and we might hate each other... but I won’t let you die.”

“Hex, fuck, don’t—" Just as the last chain is undone on him, a swirl of black death magic slams into my chest. Time freezesas I stare into Vale’s *name eyes. The black swirl goes straight through my chest, through my heart, and back into the air.

For a moment, all I see are his eyes. All I see is his fear. I’ve not felt pain for a long time, not really, but this? I scream as pain rips through my body, digging into my bones and swimming through my blood. I slam my hands onto his chest on instinct, a spell easily rolling out of my head, out of my memory like I’ve done it a thousand times, yet I don’t know it. A life spell that shouldn’t exist. Instinctively, I pull magic from my bonded and red magic, like pure fire, bursts out of Vale’s chest into my hands. Vale lets me drain him of magic, drain all of them as I whisper an endless, timeless spell.

The black death magic turns to ash around us and Vale doesn’t ask how. He doesn’t ask anything, as he scoops me into his arms. “I’ll never let them take you from me.”

He won’t be able to stop them.

Chapter 19

“Find the tarot cards, please.” A female screams to me, from across a blood-soaked field, her body hidden in thick fog. Flowers have grown in the ground, the pink petals moving in the breeze around my legs. “Take them and come to me. We can end this. You were born to end this war... and not for them.”

The woman keeps desperately screaming from deep within the fog. I take a step forward, only to fall straight into the blood until it marks my very soul.

I wake up to the feeling one of my bonded with me when I open my eyes and instantly, I’m not as scared as I thought I might be. I used a new spell, and I don’t remember ever making it up. Where did that red magic come from? How did it exist in the first place? Wait, Vale? I feel him down the bond and my shoulders relax. He is alive and likely left me to it. All his promises about never letting me go gone up in smoke. It’s Vale. What more could I have expected?

I don’t expect it to be Kane lying in the bed with me, his eyes searching my face. “You.”

“What fucking spell did you do?” He hisses low. “And tell me you’re okay. I know you are healed but tell me you are fine. I need to hear it. I should have been there.”

“Don’t know what spell or what happened. I swear,” I whisper back. But I did know it, like I’d done it before and more than once. “I’m fine. Look, I’ve made up silly spells for like drying my hair and stuff like that, but that was?—”

He touches my cheek. “I always thought when we bonded with you that we were the biggest threat to you. Dragon riding bonded die. They always die, and it’s an actual curse. But you stopped an out-of-control death spell with a whisper of a spell. The enchantress uses that spell to hold ground, to win. You just made a spell a hundred, if not thousands of witches, have only prayed to try to make. Died to try to make. Everyone saw you do it.” He grunts. “I don’t know how you did it, but it was incredible, and you saved him. He’s an asshole, but he’s like a brother to me. All he’s done is treat you badly. Why would you save him?”

“That’s between me and him,” I answer because I can’t explain it. I can’t explain how it felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest when he was going to die. I can’t explain how this sheer panic that I felt, like—I can’t think about it either. Not yet, when it’s too raw. “Tell me the fucker is okay, though.”

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