Page 76 of First Ritual

Wild pushed his chair back, glancing at me. “Mind?”

“Go for it.”

He crouched by my purple cushion, pulling up my top—and brushing the underside of my boob in the process—to kiss the rune.

Nope. “Nothing. It’s gone for now.”

A blissful sigh left him as he pulled away. “Not nothing. Touching her feels better now.”

“Her touch soothed you before,” Huxley murmured. “It’s stronger?”

A beat went by before Wild tugged my shirt down and returned to his seat. “It is. What did you feel prior to me kissing the rune?”

“I felt really restless. It started when the rune appeared and got worse and worse.” I tapped my lip. “Why didn’t our kiss in the bar have any effect?” I hummed, then answered myself. “Our magic was tucked away at the time. The magic is crucial to whatever is happening.”

Huxley squinted at me over his glasses. “Why was your magic tucked away that night?”

I twirled my hair. “A woman needs her secrets, Hux.”

His focus shifted over my shoulder. “What’s that?”

The magus appeared in front of my face in the next instant. As soon as he took hold of a chunk of hair at the base of my skull, I froze.

Fuck!

I’d forgotten to chop off my streak of rust this morning. How the hell did I forget? “That’s none of your business. That’s what that is.” I slapped his hand away.

“You have a rust streak in your eye,” he murmured. “But your hair?” Horror filled his voice. “Hair is dead.”

Huxley recoiled, and the quad stared at me. The weight of their silence filled the room.

Dammit.

All magus had to learn their limits as children and teens, and sometimes, when magus learned the limits of their magic, they overdid it. As a consequence, their magic borrowed from their essence to restore reserves. That’s what happened with my eye. My magic drained the essence from living tissue. Not a big deal.

Hair was dead though. That was a big deal. Not normal. A totally different thing from my eye. A magus never borrowed from death to replenish magical reserves. Doing so wasn’t possible.

Except, as my hair displayed, it was.

For me.

“I don’t know how it happened,” I said flatly. Summoning a hairband, I twisted the rust streak amid the heavy wave of my white-gray hair, then wrapped the strands in a low bun. Out of sight.

Tempest, you fool. I was letting these guys too far in. Getting sloppy. I didn’t know who they were. We’d entered a silence pact, but they could use this against me.

I rose to my feet in their continued silence and grabbed Huxley’s notebook from Wild. The others didn’t seem sure where to look, but Wild the Giver of Orgasms was ever watchful.

I rummaged through the pages, and two circled words caught my eye. “Dark energy.”

“That’s mine.” Huxley snatched it away. “Don’t touch my notebook.”

“Is that in reference to me?” I demanded. “What does it mean?”

The four exchanged a long look.

“The moment I feel this is a thing where you four talk about me and not to me, I’m gone.” My voice had never been icier.

Corentin smirked. “Go then.”