Page 71 of Wicked Bonds
Something alters.
The world doesn’t change, exactly, but it stutters. Like a record skipping. Wickersly freezes mid-step, her foot hovering above the ground. The dust motes in the air stop moving. Everything stops except me.
I don’t question it. I run.
Past Wickersly’s frozen form, through the library door, down the hallway where the halls are now filled with people who don’t move. The world is silent except for my ragged breathing as I dodge students, and I briefly take note that one of them is Thorne, but it’s not Thorne from tonight, it’s Thorne wearing that orange sweater and tweed mini skirt from the first committee meeting. I don’t know how long this will last, but I keep running, running, running.
The moment snaps back like a rubber band when I’m halfway across campus. The world lurches into motion, and I stumble, catching myself against a wall. Behind me, I hear the library’s emergency alarm going off.
Wickersly.
I make it to my dorm room and lock the door, shoving my desk chair under the handle for good measure, but I’m fully aware it won’t stop a witch like Wickersly. My hands shake as I pull out the book, opening it to that crucial page again.
I know how to find the Accord now. Not where, but when. The moment of signing, centuries ago, preserved like a bug in amber, reachable only to someone with the right blood and the right knowledge.
But knowing and doing are different things. And now Wickersly knows I’m looking. The game has changed. The stakes are higher.
I had less than two years to figure this out, and now I’m being actively hunted, which brings the time I have left to pretty much zero.
No pressure.
Thirty-Three
Rose
I grab the book and bail from my dorm room, because staying put when Wickersly’s hunting me is probably the dumbest move I can make. The hallway’s empty, but that doesn’t mean shit, she could be anywhere, could come out from any shadow as I run by. My boots slap against the floor, and I’m pretty sure I look deranged, clutching a book to my chest while sprinting through the dormitory in my too-short, too-revealing Samhain dress. Thorne wasn’t wrong. But at least I can run faster in this than I could in a floor-length ball gown.
The emergency alarm is still wailing, which means everyone who is staff or faculty is probably on alert now, including Lucien and Soren. The bloodmark burns under my sleeve like someone’s pressing a branding iron to my skin, and I know it’s responding to my panic, my desperation, my absolutely batshit plan to access a temporally displaced document that’s been hidden for centuries to save my ass.
I race up the stairs, nearly eating it when my heel catches on the edge of a step. On the third floor landing I dodge around a half-naked shifter who’s trying to pull on pants while hopping on one foot, and duck under the arm of a witch who’s gesturing wildly about fire safety protocols.
Someone calls my name, but I don’t stop. Can’t stop. If Wickersly catches me with this book, if she figures out what I know, I’m dead. Not in two years, but tonight.
I’m racing up the stairs to the fourth floor now, almost to the door. I shoulder through it, and the temperature drops immediately. It’s always cold up here, I think it’s due to Drake’s presence, and I hope he’s here now.
The fourth floor corridor stretches out in front of me, lit only by moonlight streaming through windows that are half-boarded up. Dust motes drift through the silver light like snow, and I can see my breath. The whole floor feels abandoned, forgotten, which is exactly why Drake haunts it. This is his domain.
His prison.
“Drake?” I call out, my voice thin in the dark emptiness. “Drake, I need you.”
Nothing. Just the distant sound of the alarm below and my breathing.
I move further into the corridor, past doors that haven’t been opened in decades, their handles thick with dust. Some of them have numbers, some don’t. One has what looks like claw marks gouged deep into the wood, and I don’t want to know that story.
I turn in a slow circle. “Please, Drake. Where are you?”
The air changes, just slightly, and I feel him before I see him, that sense that someone watching even when no one is there. Then he’s here, materializing right in front of me.
“Rose?” His eyes, those perpetually sad eyes that have seen a century of students come and go, widen as he takes in my state, the disheveled dress, the book clutched to my chest, the probably wild look in my eyes.
The relief crashes over me. I don’t think, I just move, launching myself at him with trust I’ve never given anyone else other than my mother. He catches me, and for a second I think I’ll pass right through him, but then his arms are around me, solid and real and cold butthere.
“Hey,” he says into my hair, and I can feel the rumble of his voice through his chest, which shouldn’t be possible but is. “What happened? You’re shaking.”
I am shaking, I realize. Full-body tremors that have nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the fact that I just discovered how to maybe save my life while simultaneously painting a massive target on my back.
“Wickersly,” I manage, pulling back just enough to look at him but not enough to leave his arms. “She knows. She’s hunting me. And I found it, Drake. I found out how to find the original blood contract.”
