“Easy, my heart,” I murmur against her shoulder. “You endure this, and you are free.”
The dagger finds the center of the sigil and her breath catches in terror, anticipation, then surrender.
The blade sinks only a fraction but it is enough.
Light explodes along every line of the sigil.
The creature thrashes, screaming through her mind, her nerves, her bones.
My mind, my nerves, my bones.
I cut again, a precise ritual stroke along the top curve of the mark.
Elara’s body bows, her throat stretching in a silent scream. Her nails claw the sheets.
Magic crackles, wild and unchecked.
“Come out,” I hiss, voice shaking with fury. “Face me.”
The creature lunges through her, a wave of psychic force meant to overwhelm. To blind or to use her pleasure-softened body as its escape route.
But I’ve fed, drunk so deeply from her vein her blood rides me like lightning.
Her magic threads my own and I reach in, seize what I can of the creature in the realm where thought becomes form.
It writhes and it fights and like fucking hell, it tries to take her with it.
“No.” My voice is the quiet between heartbeats. The death between stars. “Absolutely fucking no!”
I rip the tendrils of the parasite I grasp free.
Magic detonates through the room, blowing out half the candles and sucking the air from my lungs.
Elara screams, then collapses completely, boneless, unconscious.
Remnants of the Shackle-Soul shrivel in my grip, more smoke than tentacled substance now. I release Elara onto the pillows, and I capture as much of it as I can a death-grip. Let the dagger sink deep into it. I watch as the accursed blade drinks it in, the steel hissing as a part of it dies.
I watch, horrified as too much of it disappears back into her spine.
Fuck.
It may be weakened but…I failed.
Silence wraps around us, except for my ragged breathing and the weakening flutter of her heart echoing ominously in my ears.
I toss the fading smoke away, reach for my love. “Elara.”
I gather her into my arms, the dagger falling forgotten to the floor.
She is burning with fever.
Her magic is in chaos.
But she lives.
“I have you,” I whisper into her hair. “You’re safe. I have you.”
For a breath…just one, I let myself believe it.
