…or maybe I’ll just keep playing with her.
Creed elbows me and I blink, realizing the doors have opened and half of the team is staring at me standing stone-still in the center of the square. Fuck them.
I lift my chin and move toward our side of the lockers. Yes, the Deverauxs have their own section.
Guess the school heard about the bullshit some low-level punks tried to pull on us back in Rathe. It was Creed's senior year of high school and of the six dudes on the ice come the drop of the puck on game day, we made up four of them. Being gifted, we have no real reason to rotate players. We don’t get tired and fighting is allowed back home.
Some guys didn’t like a team of royals and decided to put a silver scale in Creed’s locker, knowing the poisons it carries—there's a reason the silver snake is forbidden outside the castles of Rathe.
Unfortunately, for them, Creed’s got senses that rival both the Lycans and the Vamps combined. He didn’t know who put the scale in his shit, so he multiplied it and every single player on the team outside the four of us were stone stiff before the coach even set foot in the room.
The coach reamed our asses, the school attempted to scold us, and our parents were pissed we didn’t deliver a fatal blow. Not that a silver scale can’t be fatal. It can, but still. It wasn’t enough retribution for the leaders of the Stygians.
Gotta love the king and queen of dark magic.
Legend and Sin are already here, half suited up, so Creed and I make quick work of getting changed.
“Zeke already headed out, got him some new blades.” Sinner grins my way. “Boy went with a bigger bite.”
“His bite’s as threatening as a toothless Vamp,” I joke even though the bite he’s referring to has nothing to do with his mouth and everything to do with his skate.
A bigger bite means he’s giving up some of his glide for a better grip so he can pick up speed quicker.
Legend scoffs. “So he thinks a deeper hollow is gonna, what, somehow hold his own against us?”
Creed tosses his shit in the locker, shaking his head. “He’s already on the ice more than the others. He needs to watch himself or he’ll have a gang of teammates after his ass,” he mumbles.
Nodding, we finish up and hit the ice, running some small warm up drills before we work on defense based on the next team we’re playing. Again, waste of fucking time when they’re human.
No sooner than I’m skidding to a stop, is someone bumping into me from behind.
Whipping around, I come face to face with Zeke.
I tear my helmet off and let it fall to the ice with a harsh thwack.
Zeke rolls back with a smirk and his palms up. “My bad. Wasn’t watching where I was going.” The corner of his mouth hooks up and he shifts, skating past me.
I let him get four feet, far enough for him to think I let it slide, before I pounce, shooting forward and throwing a skate out. He is fucking gifted, so of course he hops over it in the last second … but that’s exactly what I wanted.
When he jumps up, I use my speed to stand, and his neck presses right into my open and waiting palm.
Using cyrokinesis, I manipulate the ice, lifting myself and forming a glacier-made fist for fun and slam him down onto it. The ice cracks and breaks against his pretty fucking face, and red colors the icy blue floors.
Zeke pops up, blood pouring from his slipskin from forehead to chin. “You’re going to pay for that.”
My mouth hooks to the right and I glide closer, arms at my side and nothing but an opening straight to my jaw … if only he wasn’t too much of a pussy to take the shot.
Or maybe he’s smarter than I thought.
To make an enemy of a Lord is to make an enemy of four Lords, and he already threatened me.
Zeke can't handle all the eyes on him and his busted face, and opens his mouth, seconds away from making a mistake.
Of course, the coaches sense it, fucking empaths. “Enough!” our head coach shouts. “Silver, get your ass over here and deal with Zeke. Zeke, just … be fucking smarter.”
“Yeah, Zeke, be smarter,” someone taunts and then a water Fae cleans up the mess while we get into position.
Creed grins from me to Sin and I smirk from Legend and back.
This. This right here is about the only fucking enjoyable thing this place has to offer.
Time on the ice with my brothers.
And a little blue-eyed, white-haired—
No.
Abso-fucking-lutely not.
Seventeen
London
“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t leave us at a party that you made us go to on Saturday,” I say to Jus as I reach for the amethyst sphere on the top shelf. I’m glad I skipped out on Ben’s team kickback last night. With how hard I’ve been going lately, I don’t know how I would have gotten through work today.
“I promise you, I didn’t.” The worst part about Justice is that I believe him. I believe that he’s not a bad person and that he wouldn’t just leave his friends at a freaking party alone with people they don’t know. Not to mention we had no idea where we were since we rode in wearing fucking blindfolds.
“Well, anyway,” I finally reach the heavy ball and swipe a microfiber cloth on my way down, “I think I’m partied out.” Moving to the counter, I start on polishing the lavender-colored stone. I don’t think much of amethyst. It’s not as self-indulgent as rose quartz, but still not for me. I like the darker stones. The kind that offers protection as much as they tell you everything that’s bad with yourself so you can fix it. I got Ben to do shadow work meditation with me once, and although he’s a Christian boy at heart, he still tried it with me. For all of two minutes.
“Yeah, me too.” Jus starts counting the money in the till. “Sorry I dipped out. I honestly thought that you and Ben were fine. Ben seemed to have his little toy for the night and you seemed to be busy with the”—he waves his hands around the place—“whatever you had going on.”
He has a point, and the crimson creeping up his pale cheeks tells me he knows exactly what I was doing.
“True,” I say, placing the freshly polished crystal on its stand. “But honestly, whatever that powder was that you gave us that night, it fucked me up for a long time.” I make my way back to the shelf, leaning up on my tippy toes. “I swear I saw floating people.” I land back on my feet and huff out a deep breath. “I mean, I was seeing, like, animals and shit. I think I was tripping really bad. Whatever you gave me, I cannot have again.”
Justice chuckles darkly, and I watch as he disappears into the back room. I wasn’t kidding when I told him that I don’t want any of that ever again. Aside from all the random shit I saw while I was on it, it also seemed to heighten my dreams as well. As if my nightmares weren’t bad enough.
Justice emerges with a new box of whatever his mother unpacked this week. “I know, and I said I’m sorry.” He places the box on the counter, sifting through this week’s stock. “Maybe I can make it up to you?”
Not likely.
There’s a reason Ben is my only true friend—I only fuck with the ride or die type, and well, he’s the only one I’ve found so far.
Justice has several strikes against him already, so he’s officially in the you’re-all-right-and-we-can-hang-but-that’s-about-it category.