“Or you stay dead.” Tyler sounded like he cared, which was surprising.
“Tyler, c’mon,” Donovan said softly. “Enough.”
“You should’ve told us,” Tyler whispered. “About the reading, about your magic, about everything.”
Ryder’s top lip curled back and he rolled his eyes. “I’m not a white witch,” he teased. “I don’t have to abide by your rules.”
Tyler’s magic whipped toward him. “That’s not my point!”
A few people looked up from the other tables. Christy hushed Tyler and slid down in the booth.
Liam took Ryder’s hand and pulled. “We’re leaving.”
Ryder didn’t argue. “See you tomorrow,” he said to everyone and no one.
Donovan said, “Wait,” while Christy said, “Hold on.”
Tyler grabbed Ryder’s elbow, stopping him in his tracks. When Ryder whipped toward him, his eyes were black as night.
“Will you?” Tyler asked. He chewed on his bottom lip and sighed through his nose. He didn’t waver, not for Ryder’s black eyes or his slithering, upside down magic. “Because we’re still a circle.”
“Now we’re a circle?” Ryder bit. He yanked out of Tyler’s grasp and headed for the exit, gazing at the ground to conceal his eyes from the rest of the people at the pizza parlor.
The nerve. Ryder’s hands shook. Heat spiked through him, burning and unyielding. The absolute fucking nerve. He stepped into the night air and welcomed rain on his face. A chilly breeze kicked through the trees and Port Lewis smelled like home. He inhaled as much of it as he could, because he might not get to again.
“Where’s your car?” Ryder asked.
Liam laced his fingers through Ryder’s and tugged. “This way.”
Chapter Six
RYDER CLUTCHED HIS reaver in his palm, smoothing across its delicate ridges with desperate strokes of his finger. Rain splattered the windshield and Liam’s thumbs drummed on the steering wheel. A string of beads swayed from the Subaru’s rearview mirror. One of the cup holders was filled with polished stones, and a vial of essential oil was stuffed in the compartment of Ryder’s door.
Liam’s car smelled like him—crisp and clean, with hints of rosemary and citrus. Ryder had sat exactly where he was sitting many times before, foot propped on the dash, watching Liam out of the corner of his eye while music drifted from the speakers. Everything was different now. Everything was evolving and accelerating, and it could be ending before Ryder even understood when it’d begun in the first place.
The woods were a safe haven, even in the storm. Especially in the storm.
Ryder glanced at Liam and their eyes met briefly. The intent between them was palpable.
Liam directed the car down a dirt path toward a familiar meadow nestled in the trees. The forest stirred. Critters crawled onto branches to watch, as if they’d been anticipating their arrival. Ryder heard the trees whisper in a different language.
Darkling. Storm wielder. Bone bender. Water conqueror.
Liam put the car in park. The headlights went out, shrouding them in darkness. They sat there, listening to the rain come down and the forest come alive, until Liam unclicked his seatbelt and sighed. “Ry…”
“C’mon,” Ryder said. He kicked his shoes off, his socks, and slid out of the car. Soft grass cushioned his feet. He curled his toes and closed his eyes, pulling his elemental magic to the surface. Heat pulsed around him, warming the rain as soon as it hit his skin. He took off his shirt and threw it to the ground.
“You don’t have to do it.” Liam’s voice was muffled by the rain and the trees. “We can find another way to make this work.”
“Until I kill someone,” Ryder said.
Liam walked around the side of the car. Thunder rolled across the sky, each loud rumble in tune with his footsteps. Until I kill you, Ryder thought.
The forest stirred delightedly. Sea sorcerer. Alchemist.
Liam stood in front of him. His brown eyes were masked gray and white, and his lips were parted, chest heaving in breath after breath. He shook his head, and Ryder looked at all of him, every bit of him. His gaze wandered the slope of his neck, along his shoulders and down his arms. The raindrops clung to Liam, while steam lifted off Ryder’s bare skin.
“If I come back—if I make it—can we do this?” Ryder flicked his wrist between them. “Me and you, us, can we be something?”
Liam shook his head. His hands latched around Ryder’s hips and pushed him backward. “We’re already something,” he said.
Ryder stumbled, almost tripping over his feet. The rain poured down on them and the night felt endless. The forest chattered and whispered, and Ryder’s eyes squeezed shut when Liam crushed their mouths together. Their lips were slippery, and Ryder could barely keep up with each step, with the part of their lips, every shared inhale and exhale, the grass around his ankles and on his back.
It happened in segments. Ryder’s head spun and heat built in him. Flames licked across his bones, coiled around his joints and ligaments, hummed in his muscles. He clung to it—to the Fire inside him. They’d landed on the grass somehow. Ryder tripped or Liam pushed him; either way, it didn’t matter. The meadow was cool on his spine, soft and grounding, and the air smelled like pine and magic, like every spell they’d ever attempted to perfect in these woods, like every afternoon spent lying in the sun with his grimoire open, surrounded by his circle-mates.
Liam kissed him harder, longer, with intermissions of steamed breath drifting between them, and Liam’s teeth set in Ryder’s lip. Pain radiated in the indentions left behind from Liam’s canines. Want ached behind Ryder’s ribcage and between his legs.
“Off.” Ryder tugged at the bottom of Liam’s shirt, guiding it up until Liam pulled it over his head and dropped it beside them. “Tell me to stop, okay?” Ryder’s reaver was snug around his index finger. He dragged the tip of it through the water on Liam’s stomach, across his hipbones and up his side. “If it hurts, just—”
Liam’s fingers closed over Ryder’s hand, guiding the point of the reaver into the flesh stretched across his bottom two ribs. Another flash of lightning splintered above them. Fog turned the moon hazy and blurred the stars, clung to the treetops and snaked between their gnarled branches. Blood soaked Ryder’s fingertips and pooled in the hollow of his reaver.
He dragged the bloodied point across his tongue and Liam watched, transfixed. Vitality tasted like sea salt and honeysuckles. Ryder focused on it—the emotions, the power—and let his pupils bleed over, allowed his Fire to burn hot and his magic to be present and unrestrained.
Liam’s fingertips dipped under the front of Ryder’s jeans. “What’s it like?”
“Your energy or you touching me?”