He does, but he wisely keeps his mouth shut this time.
Grayson closes his eyes so he can see the miasma of black again. It can’t be a coincidence, could it?
It pulses with hunger, oily tendrils tightening like a noose, drawn to the bright pinpricks of Ansel’s soul.
Sliding a magical fingertip along the outer edge, Grayson pumps a tiny bit of magic into the light.
The miasma surges at the direct attack on its food source and tries to gobble Grayson’s rose-colored light instead of actively avoiding it like before. It can’t touch him, but the attempt still provokes it into swirling at a higher speed, as if it’s threatened by the brighter magic.
He can’t get it to come away, no matter how he tries, so instead, Grayson plants mental tiki torches around the perimeter of the piece of Ansel’s light he pinned down earlier.
He adds more and more torches until there’s a broad circle of rainbow light around the outside of the dark mass.
He’s thinking about how he might tighten the web and possibly contain the blackness—or even force it to back off when he feels a sharp bite to the inside of his thigh.
When he opens his eyes, Winnie, Finn, and Nimue are standing over him…while Rowan has his sharp teeth embedded in the fabric of his pants.
“Holy shit,” Finn swears, jamming his hands into his hair, pulling on the strands until they’re even more of a mess.
“Good thinking, Rowan,” Nimue adds, running her hand over the top of his mate’s furry head.
No one seems to care that he’s a man under there, or that he looks like a wild animal. Rowan’s good heart must shine through.
“You were gone quite a while, Grayson. Your mates were quite concerned.”
“You zoned out mid-conversation, dude. And then you wouldn’t come around. Plus, there was all the…” Winnie waves her hands around her head to signify some kind of swirling motion, which makes no sense to him. Maybe that’s the sedative?
“Thirty minutes,” Finn says.
“Long enough for me to get here and for my friend to join us.”
A short man in a cobalt velour tracksuit appears from behind her, the kind that screams eccentricity. His gold chain is thick and unapologetic, and his bald head shines like a blessing.
“This is Sasha Lekarev. He’s the Florida Guild’s foremost Healer. He’s devoted to his calling, and he lives close to the hospital.”
He doesn’t respond, just rests his hand gently on Ansel’s head. Grayson watches as a cooling blue light flows from Sasha into Ansel.
Grayson wants to watch the Healer work, but Rowan nips his leg again.
The ache from the BBS, compounded by the sedative Finn added to his IV, makes it nearly impossible to resist the ever-present lure of The Plain. Sasha’s healing blue light is mesmerizing.
It takes so much energy to keep himself on this side—to protect Nix—and when his defenses are down, it’s hard not to simply release the valve and follow The Plain’s flow straight to Nix, straight to their soul.
It seemed like forever that Nimue had shown him how to control the flow with a visual manifestation of the clamp; she’d wanted him to place it between Nix and Grayson, with The Plain on Grayson’s side.
But that wasn’t right. He and Nix are one soul. So if he needed to slow the flow, it would have to be with The Plain on the other side of the clamp.
It meant that sometimes he couldn’t feel it very well.
But now…he needs it. Feels it calling. So this time, he lets go.
Releasing the clamp, Grayson lets the magic fill him until it overflows every cell. It connects him to Nix, even over the distance.
Suddenly, he can feel Nix’s relief at being with Jay, how they are on their way to the hospital.
His soulmate is surprised to feel the heavy flow of magic, but he’s not hurting.
The power forces back the worst of Grayson’s Broken Bond Syndrome — had he exacerbated the symptoms by clamping himself off from The Plain?
