I bared my teeth in a snarl, the words of power on the tip of my tongue, ready to consume whatever creature deigned to touch me when I was like this, but a calming, firm voice cracked through the cloud in my brain.
“Rohak!”
The cry was just enough to halt my command, and I skated my gaze from the fingers around my arm up, up, up to a pair of dazzling hazel eyes. There was a depth to them—a pain reflected deep within that called to the broken pieces of my own soul. A kinship. Beneath the pain, though, there was something else.
Understanding, acceptance.
And what looked like utter devotion.
I’d seen the same expression painted on the faces of sycophants as they worshipped Lord Alois d’Refan, and even on the face of my parents and brother as they prostrated themselves in the temple at the base of the statues of the gods.
But never had I seen that expression directed at me.
Who was this creature?
Some other part of me, the part not consumed by my bloodlust and rage, recognized her, knew her as well as I knew my own self.
Tentatively, the woman reached out her other hand and gently brushed my lips and beneath my nose. Her touch—bare skin against bare skin—sent flames dancing across the surface of my flesh, the sensation fighting for dominance with my magic.
“Stop,” she mumbled, her voice swallowed by the hold of my magic. “Stop, please.”
There were fat tears rolling in earnest down her cheeks, and I cocked my head as I watched them fall in rapid fascination.
“Please.” Her chest shook with each inhale, and she winced as my magic brushed against her skin. Still, she didn’t pull away, didn’t retract her touch.
“Come back, come back. I’m here,” she said.
I was loathe to do anything against this fearless, despondent woman’s wishes. With an effort greater than anything in my past, I pulled my magic back beneath my skin, hissing at the sheer force of will it took to lock it away.
With sweat on my brow and the grit of my teeth, I wrestled for control of my consciousness with thethingthat lived inside my Destruction Magic. The harder I pushed, the more the haze receded, revealing details that I knew to be true.
This was my office.
Faylinnwas the woman in the room with me.
Faylinn’shand was on my arm.
Faylinn’sfingers were gathering blood as it coursed down my lips and chin, splattering against the floor to mix with the infinitesimal shards of glass at my feet.
Faylinnpulled me from the ledge.
Without her, I would have certainly lost myself to the throes of my magic, pulling and using until there was nothing left of me, surrendering my body and mind to sickness that lived inside.
I gasped as I released the last vestiges of my magic, the sounds of the world rushing back in—the mingling of both mine and Faylinn’s breath as we panted, the crunch of glass beneath my feet, the drip of blood as it pattered against the floor.
“Faylinn?” I rasped and watched as tears ran anew down her face. Faylinn heaved a guttural sob that wracked her entire form, and I could do nothing else but collapse on the floor. The reality of what I almost didagaincrashing down with me.
I almost killed her again.
“Rohak,” she said through hiccupped sobs, her grip still tight against my forearm as she followed me to the glass and blood-strewn floor. I sat heavily, shards of glass pressing into my ass and thighs through my pants, and Faylinn quickly followed, unceremoniously climbing into my lap before wrapping her arms around my neck and legs around my torso.
She clung to me desperately. Like if she let me go, I might fade away into nothing. Like she could lose me. Like I was something precious to her.
With a low keening sound, I returned her embrace, tightening my arms around her back and pulling her body flush with my own, needing to feel every inch of her. To assure myself that she was okay, that she was here, that I didn’t kill her.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I gasped into her ear, my palms working to rub her back and smooth her hair in tandem.
She said nothing in response, just sobbed into my shoulder, her tears wetting my tunic and back.
