Page 146 of The Blood Rites

But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.

Just watches.

Nyxen.

He is perched on a thick branch, knees bent, arms hanging loose. His face is unreadable. Shadows flicker around his eyes, making them look hollow and deep. He is so still I think he might be dead.

He drops from the branch, landing in front of me with the barest whisper of sound. Neither of us moves.

I sit up, groaning, my head a mess of pounding blood and old threats.

He speaks first. “How are you able to focus it like that?” he asks, voice accusing.

“What do you mean?” I answer, quietly, trying to sound unassuming. Unthreatening.

“Now is not the time for games,” he says sharply. “Your Mana. How did you make it cut? It is impossible for a Lightborn.”

Of course he saw me. Fuck.

“You must be seeing things,” I say, bracing myself for his response.

He surveys me, eyes scanning for threat. Finding none, he circles me, then inspects the vine and the scorch marks where I burned through it.

“I thought you were supposed to be intelligent,” he says.

“What gave you that impression?” I reply.

He chuckles and crouches before me, close enough that I can see the individual hairs of his stubble and the scars on his knuckles. He grabs me by the chin, rough enough that the callouses on his fingertips scratch my skin. I grunt in surprise, but lock eyes with him. He looks older in the semi-dark.

“Perhaps I’ll kill you right now,” he says.

My eyes go wide. He wouldn’t. Kael wouldn't forgive him. I’m sure of it.

An Overseer floats through a nearby copse of trees. It hums low and deep before disappearing again. Only its glittering blue trail remains.

“Kael would never forgive you,” I try, fear spiking in my chest.

“Kael will never know.”

He’s right.

The thought lands harder than the threat.

Above, a shadow flickers. The Mana Echo of a girl dangles lifelessly from a vine, her throat slit. Phantom blood drips from the wound, falling towards Nyxen and me. It feels invasive. Dirty, somehow. The blood passes through my arm. Cold—not real, but my body doesn’t know that, and my bones shiver anyway.

My stomach drops. Marissa isn’t here.

I twist against the vine, searching the dark between the trees. Nothing. No pale uniform. No frightened brown eyes. No small shape curled somewhere safe.

Safe.

There are so few safe people left. If she woke beside the wrong one, if no one is watching, if one the Fireborn woke up with her—

I bite down hard on the thought, but it keeps moving anyway.

“You’re bleeding,” he says, releasing his grip on my chin and pointing to my forehead.

I must have hit something when I fell. I can’t find it in me to care.