One Mark: Steamy Friends to Lovers Paranormal Romance (Blackwell Djinn)

by Nikki Kardnov

  To the left of the judge’s bench, Rose sat with another man who could have passed as her twin. He too had a thick black cloud surrounding him but at least his eyes were intact.

  “Prime Council,” Dae said. “This is our witness, Lola St. James. As you all know, she’s an integral part of this unfortunate situation so it only makes sense to hear her testimony.”

  “She’s mortal,” the older man said and sniffed like what he really meant to say was, She’s no better than primordial ooze.

  “It is a djinn’s right to have a witness testify for him or her in a trial,” Mad called. “As you all are aware.”

  “What could she possibly add to this?” the Asian man said. “Does she know what Thorin is? Because that is the question I’d like answered.”

  What he was? Lola posed a questioning look at Thorin but he gave nothing away.

  Lola tried piecing this new information into what she already knew.

  Thorin definitely was unlike his brothers.

  And he had that weakness, the uncontrollable power.

  Lola didn’t know enough about the supernatural world to know what other beings had that characteristic. But if a council of djinn didn’t know, then she wasn’t embarrassed by her own ignorance.

  Did she know what Thorin was?

  She knew what he wasn’t.

  He wasn’t evil. He wasn’t bad or broken.

  He cared deeply about everything and he was always the first person to give another the benefit of the doubt.

  And he was hers.

  She’d come halfway around the world to have his back and nothing could stop her from doing that. She’d been in front of crowds much bigger than this many times before. She knew how to be in front of people. How to speak with confidence and self-assurance.

  Maybe she was just a mortal who had only just begun to understand the supernatural world, but she was an Aries, dammit. And she never backed down. Not when someone she—

  Loved.

  She loved Thorin.

  The realization flooded her chest with warmth.

  Before now, she knew she cared deeply for him.

  But it wasn’t until she came here to an unknown place to plead Thorin’s case in front of supernatural beings who could literally break her in two, that she really understood.

  I love Thorin and I’m no longer afraid of what that might mean.

  I won’t lose him.

  “Thank you,” she said to Dae and took a step forward. “It’s nice to meet you—Prime Council was it?”

  The woman in the center shifted languidly in her chair. “Young lady,” she said. “Do you know what you’re doing here?”

  “Of course I do.” Lola clasped her hands behind her back. “It’s recently come to my attention that Rose Northman orchestrated the events of the last few days in order to prevent Thorin from having a future.”

  Rose’s mouth screwed up. Her wrath was brewing. Next to her, her older brother narrowed his eyes.

  “Do you have proof?” the Asian man said.

  Lola smiled at Rose. “I have something better.”

  “And what’s that?” the older man asked.

  “Testimony from Rose Northman.”

  Rose scowled. “Don’t do this, Lola.”

  Lola inhaled and said, “I, Lola St. James, wish to invoke my second wish. I wish that the djinn known as Rose Northman would speak the truth about the events surrounding the djinn known as Thorin Blackwell for the period of the last four days of this week of this year.”

  Thorin’s eyes lit yellow. The phantom wind kicked into the cavernous room and ruffled the hair around Lola’s face.

  His intoxicating smell filled her senses. Wild and unfettered.

  “Lola St. James,” he said. “Wish granted.”

  Chapter 42

  THORIN

  Was this going to work?

  Thorin felt the magic leave him in a gasp of excitement. He wanted it to work. It would work.

  Never was a mark refused a wish. A djinn could get crafty with the way they granted it, but Lola—his Lola—was smarter than that.

  Her wording was rock solid and it made him ridiculously proud.

  If it wasn’t for the cuffs on his wrist, he would have taken her in his arms as if to say, Mine. Look at her. Look at how brilliant she is.

  Thorin felt the moment the wish took hold. It was like a chain link breaking open. A stirring in his gut.

  Rose stood up in the peerage box and physically shook like she was trying with everything she had not to open her mouth.

  Her brother, Aleksander, grabbed her hand and tried to yank her back down.

  The Council turned in their seats suddenly rapt with attention. This wasn’t going the way they’d thought it would go, but who were they to turn down a show?

  Rose opened her mouth and spilled everything. All of the details going as far back as 1644 to the incident that changed everything. His greatest sin.

  Hearing the truth—that she’d manipulated him, that she’d lied about being physically assaulted in Walwick, it opened the flood gates on all of the years of his pent up shame and guilt.

  He’d still done horrible things.

  But he hadn’t been alone in doing them. He hadn’t turned the lever. Rose had.

  She’d always been a master of mental warfare.

  “And then my brothers and I came back to Blackwater,” she said as fury trembled on her face, “to stop Thorin from claiming his caeli.”

  The room went silent.

  Thorin could hear only the pounding of his heart in his chest and the excited leap of Lola’s next to him.

  “Lo?” he said. “Is that true?”

  Tears escaped her eyes and trailed down her sun-kissed face. “Yes.”

  He yanked himself out of the guards’ grasp and with barely any effort, snapped the cuffs from his wrists.

  The iron clattered to the floor.

  Thorin went to Lo and dropped to his knees and took her in his arms, his head pressed to her belly.

  He breathed her in.

  Her honeysuckle scent.

  She was his caeli?

  How could he do so many horrible things and still be lucky enough to have his Fated? To have someone like Lola?

  And would she want him?

  Her hands came to either side of his face and drew him to her.

  “I love you,” she said. “And that fucking scares me. But I’m never going to doubt you ever again. I will never leave you if you’ll have me.”

  “Of course I’ll have you. I loved you before I knew. I think I’ve loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you.”

  She laughed and more tears spilled down her cheeks. “When we ruminated on architecture?”

  “You had me at ionic columns,” he said with a smile.

  In that moment, Thorin thought everything would work itself out.

  He thought by some stroke of luck that he’d won.

  He thought it right before a knife sailed through the air and sunk itself with a dull thud right in Lola’s chest.

  Chapter 43

  THORIN

  Lola’s knees buckled and Thorin had to help ease her to the floor.

  Blood bloomed across her t-shirt turning the white material crimson black.

  “Lo,” he said as panic fluttered in his lungs. “Fuck. Lo!”

  This wasn’t happening.

  His caeli.

  The woman he loved was bleeding out in his arms.

  Fuck!

  Lola gasped for air.

  Thorin cradled her head in his hands as an echoing panic flared in her eyes.

  “Someone help!” he yelled. “Dae. Poe. Help me!”

  Poe crouched beside them.

  Dae shouted, “Get Rose. Before she escapes!”

  “It wasn’t Rose,” Poe said. “It was Aleksander.”

  Mad darted away. “They’re both guilty as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Guards!” Mary yelled.

  The ro
om flooded with people.

  Fear bloomed in Thorin’s chest and it quickly crackled into rage.

  The hair on his arms rose.

  Blood spilled from Lola’s mouth.

  “No. Lo. Please no.” Angry tears blurred his vision. What was he to do? He had to do something. He needed to save her. He couldn’t lose her now.

  If he lost her he would—

  The witch disc burned at his sternum.

  He clenched his teeth as the disc sent out a flare of sharp pain all over his body.

  “Calm down,” Poe said.

  “I’m trying to!” he growled. “She’s fucking dying in my arms!”

  “She’s your caeli. But…she has a wish left,” Poe said. “Right? You’re still invoked.”

  Relief washed through him. “Yes. Yes, one more wish.”

  “Lo, darling,” Poe said. “Make a wish to heal yourself. Can you speak?”

  She just barely nodded.

  “I’ll remove the blade, all right?” Poe wrapped his hands around the hilt. “On the count of three. One.”

  Thorin wiped the tears from his face with his shoulder.

  “Two.”

  Come on, Lo.

  “Three.”

  Poe yanked up. The blade came free and blood gurgled from the wound.

  Lola gasped.

  “Say the words,” Thorin said. “’I wish to be healed.’ That’s all you need to say. I’ll do the rest.”

  She blinked several times clearing the tears from her eyes.

  “Say it, Lo.”

  She wrapped a cold hand around his wrist and squeezed. She smiled up at him, blood staining her lips red. “I—I, Lola…St. James wish…for Thorin to” —she inhaled again, but it was shallow and wet— “to accept who he is.”

  “What? No. Nononono.”

  The magic left Thorin in a great and horrible gust.

  He gritted his teeth and mentally yanked at the magic, trying to pull it back to him.

  That was the wrong wish.

  The wrong fucking words.

  What the fuck was she thinking?

  She was going to die.

  He was going to lose her.

  Aleksander—the Northmans’ hatred—had killed her right in front of him and he’d been unable to protect her.

  The witch disc kicked back up again and the pain radiated outward like a sunburst.

  “Fucking—” He lost his grip on Lola and went to all fours.

  How could she waste her wish on him?

  Accept who he was?

  He was a bastard.

  An anomaly. An abomination.

  Born of rage and violence.

  The reaper’s words came back to him: Unless he’s not entirely djinn.

  The magic glittered around him like a cool mist and then shrunk back in with a whump.

  Who are you?

  The wish needled along his skin. It slithered like a snake up his spine and coiled around his throat.

  He didn’t know who he was. Didn’t she get that?

  His entire life he’d been told he was djinn and even that wasn’t entirely true.

  The disc pulsed as his anger beat through him.

  He looked over at Lola. She rolled her head to him, reached her arm out.

  With a breath, and then another, he met her halfway and slid his hand into hers.

  Her touch was a cooling relief.

  Accept who you are.

  With Lola beside him, he was the luckiest man alive.

  That’s who he was.

  With Lola beside him, he was better—greater.

  His entire life, he’d struggled against what he was and what he could do.

  The rage had felt like a handicap. Born from a dark place inside of him. A part that was wrong.

  But if that were true, he never would have deserved someone like Lola.

  If he was as fundamentally dark as his rage, then why did he want to do good?

  Accept who you are.

  He was not the rage. The rage was not him.

  It was a part of him like anything else. Like a limb. An organ. A bone.

  In any room, in any world, he was always the strongest, the mightiest, if only he could become one with the rage.

  He just needed to stop fighting it.

  He needed to stop fighting who he was.

  And as if by a switch, his light came on.

  Stop fighting it.

  The ground trembled beneath him.

  The plaster above cracked and rained down from the ceiling.

  “What is happening?” someone said.

  The witch disc grew hot and hotter still. The spindly arms that wrapped around him pulled away from his skin. He tore the shirt from his body as the disc cracked in half and detached from his sternum.

  It clinked to the floor.

  His magic coiled yellow around his legs as he rose to his full height and towered over everyone in the room.

  “What the bloody hell?” Poe said.

  Yellow and silver light danced around the room.

  All eyes turned to him—no, not him, his magic. It swirled around the room like a tornado of light and fire.

  They could see it. They could all see his magic.

  The guards outnumbered him ten to one, but they stood around him in a stupor trying to decide if they should dare edge closer.

  Was he the enemy?

  He wasn’t even like them.

  He was something other.

  The magic built inside of him.

  He shouldn’t have it now that his deal with Lola was done.

  The magic should have been locked away just out of his reach.

  But he could feel it at his core. A pulsating chasm of power.

  Instinctively he reached for it and it soared to his call.

  The magic snapped at his hands as lightning crackled along his arms.

  The pressure to release it built and built inside of him until he turned his face toward the ceiling and roared.

  The lights above shattered. The bulbs burst and sparked.

  A thundercrack rent through the room as the magic and light crackled electric.

  The floor shook as his magic spread outward in a web of lightning and all the guards toppled over one by one.

  Thorin stood, the epicenter of the storm, and heaved a breath as the magic pulled back to him with a final snap and then went dark.

  No one moved.

  No one barely breathed.

  “Holy shit,” Poe said. “I saw that. Did you see that? Did everyone see that? Magic is a thing felt, not seen! How did I see that?”

  Thorin knelt to Lola’s side. She was still conscious, but her breathing was labored. He scooped her up and cradled her in his arms.

  He faced the Council who all stared at him slack jawed and silent.

  “I am not entirely djinn,” he said. “You said it yourself. And as such, your laws do not pertain to me.”

  He held Lola close and for a stroke of a second, he forgot he was no longer invoked, that his magic was not his to command. He meant to vade and then remembered he couldn’t.

  But his magic still swelled around him again unbidden.

  The gates were no longer shuttered on his power.

  And the rules of djinn magic no longer pertained to him.

  The air popped open, and with Lola safe in his arms, he was gone.

  Chapter 44

  LOLA

  Lola was vaguely aware that they’d won when Thorin deposited her on a table in the workroom at the back of the conservatory. She had little strength left so she lay on the table staring up at the glass ceiling and the overgrown vines that webbed across it outside.

  The air smelled like lemons and cinnamon and roses and musk.

  Someone tied a strip of fabric around her shoulder just over the wound in her chest and tied it tight enough to make her gasp.

  “Oh, Lo,” Ashley said when she appeared overhead. “What happened? Are you okay? Why isn’t she using a wish to heal he
rself?”

  “She used her last one,” Thorin said.

  “But you vaded,” Ashley pointed out.

  “Apparently the rules no longer apply to our dear baby brother,” Poe said.

  Mad grumbled. “We might as well throw the rules right out the fucking window.”

  Oddie came in beside Lola with a cold wet rag and pressed it against her forehead. “She’s burning up, you guys.”

  “Get out of the way.” Mad tried shoving Thorin aside, but Thorin didn’t budge.

  “She’s my caeli,” Thorin said. “Leave her to me. Everyone out.”

  They hesitated by the table.

  “Now!” Thorin yelled.

  They quickly filed out of the room.

  Thorin took her hand in his and squeezed. He looked different now with her special sight. Lightning crackled around him. His golden glow now had a silver streak to it.

  “Lo,” he said. “We can heal you if we perform the caeli bond.”

  It was hard for her to breathe, but she managed to say, “Do it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She would have laughed if she had enough breath in her lungs.

  Hadn’t she already showed him how sure she was?

  There were no more lingering doubts. No more questions about it.

  She was absolutely sure that if she made only one decision about her life right now, right here, it would be to have Thorin by her side forever.

  She wanted him to take care of her.

  And she wanted to take care of him.

  Together they would make each other better.

  “You have to say the words,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Repeat after me.”

  He relayed the binding words to her and she committed them to memory. She’d only get one shot at this.

  The air wheezed in her throat as she said, “I, Lola St. James…claim myself to be caeli to…the djinn known as Thorin Blackwell.

  “As caeli, I—I bind myself to…Thorin Blackwell and offer my body, soul, and power to him. I vow…never to harm him. I vow never to use—use my…power against him. I vow to uphold our bond until…Death sees fit to sever it.”

  The room lit up golden and silver.

  Thorin brushed the hair from her forehead and kissed her tenderly. “I, Thorin Blackwell, accept your claim as my caeli. If your claim is true and blessed by the Fates, I bind myself to you and offer my body, soul and power. I vow never to harm you. I vow never to use my power against you.”