Chapter 86 Chapter 86

Chapter 86 Chapter 86
KILLIAN
Lenore…
About an hour ago, I’d told her I was going to write her a poem on the spot, but as I thought about her now—a habit as inevitable as breathing—I found that it was so hard for me to put her into words. So hard for me to picture what my life would be like if her warmth hadn’t come into it. So hard for me to comprehend how she simply moved through my world and everything rearranged itself around her.
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t scary, but it was just as wonderful, and I was entirely lost in her.
A sharp noise right beside me snapped me out of my thoughts, and I blinked as Aurel’s grating voice filled my ears. “Earth to you, genius. We also have places we’d rather be.”
Lowering the now-empty bag from my mouth, I furrowed my brows at him as he walked around the central island to stand across from me with a blood bag in his hands. “I didn’t ask you to stay.” I hadn’t even asked them—Aurel and Fabien—to join me.
I’d simply dropped by the kitchens because by the gods, Lenore had pulled a ravenous hunger out of me—one that had nothing to do with blood—and caused my fangs to develop a mind of their own. The only time they did that was when I was on the brink of insanity with bloodthirst, so even though I wasn’t starving, I decided to take care of it before the need actually arose. It had been a couple of days since I fed anyway.
While I was draining my last bag, Fabien walked in with Aurel to give me an update on the things I’d asked him to do before last night happened, but most of my attention was on the sound of Lenore breathing from the second floor and I’d drifted off while he was talking. It was difficult to care about anything else after all… not when I could still feel her nails digging into my back and hear her crying out my name.
Fuck. I’d never thought there was anything special about my name, but hearing her chant it… fuck.
My lips curved into a smile.
“Off he goes again. You’re drooling by the way.”
Raising my brows at Aurel, I quickly brought my hand to my mouth, wiping the edges. They came away dry.
He grinned as I worked my jaw. Last night, he and Aurora had found out Lenore was my mate, and Aurora had been the one to figure it out because of how I’d acted. I hadn’t had a proper conversation on the topic with them, but Aurora was a bit annoyed that I chose to keep it from them while Aurel was just Aurel.
“How’s Lenore?” he asked before biting into the sealed end of his bag as I dropped the empty one I was holding on the island. Next to the pile of empty bags lay a piece of cloth bearing a strange symbol—a circular ring with six pointed, star-like spikes radiating outward from its right half. I turned the cloth sideways, about to ask Fabien what it was, when a flash of red beneath it caught my eye. An envelope… the same one that had been passed around in the banquet hall.
I killed my father’s summoner.
It wasn’t some belated epiphany—it had been at the back of my mind since it happened, and it was precisely why my mother’s palace was so tense, as though it was waiting for my father to show up. My uncle had said he wouldn’t after ripping into me. He was staying in the main palace tonight to make sure of it, and though I was grateful for his concern, I didn’t feel the tiniest bit of remorse. There was no world in which I wouldn’t have done what I did.
The way he’d stared at me after Cederic died came to mind, and anger flashed through me at his belief that cruelty was a one-way street between us. I’d taken most of his shit for years without retaliating—not because I didn’t want to, but because I hadn’t been strong enough to—and if my friends hadn’t come from families that would have revolted if he killed them, he would have killed them just to make a point.
I still wasn’t strong enough to take him head-on in a fight, but I wasn’t as weak as I was when I left the city ten years ago.
Fucking bastard.
The sound of Calley cackling at whatever she was watching in the study broke through my thoughts, and I blinked at the envelope before turning my attention back to the cloth bearing the strange symbol.
“Are you going to bond with her?” Aurel asked and I frowned, shooting him a hard look.
“No.” If anyone figured out a way to create a vampire bond without one party taking the other’s injuries, I’d love to—I’d know whenever she was in danger, after all. But with the way the bond worked now, no.
Aurel grinned even harder. “I still find it hard to believe you have a mate. You’re almost adorable now.”
“Sorry, what were you saying?” I asked Fabien, who was standing beside me with his gaze fixed on his phone. He glanced up at me, then gestured at the cloth beneath my hand.
“That’s the coven mark of the equinox witches,” he said. “The only thing I got was they’re Turi witches and they’re all women. There’s nothing about them using magic without restrictions, not to talk of it going on for a decade.”
I drew my brows together, shifting my gaze back to the symbol. Was my uncle wrong? He’d sounded so sure when he told me—
“Killian,” Lenore muttered under her breath, derailing my thoughts completely, and a smile instantly bloomed on my face.
Fuck... Was she dreaming about me?
“Is that good news?” Aurel asked, confusion evident in his voice, and I paused before clearing my throat.
“What about the necklace?” I’d also told Fabien about Cameron’s necklace, and since the only explanation for the Alpha of Moon Valley being in possession of that kind of artifact was him working with a witch, I’d asked him to look into it. I couldn’t care less about whatever deal he’d made with a witch, but he was Lenore’s father, and I needed to know if he could attract danger to her.
“I can’t find any connection between their father and a witch. In fact, I found that witches tended to avoid him.”
I drew my brows together. “Why?”
“Heavy dislike.”
“Oh,” I muttered before my frown deepened. How did McGuire get the necklace then?