Because in my chest, my connection with Severin burns, even though I try to push it away. And I have a sneaking suspicion that no amount of rest or tea is ever going to help it.
I wake up sometime later to Poppy and Lyra bringing me tea and vegetable soup from the dining hall. I don’t feel like eating, but Lyra forces a few spoons down me before finally giving up; she’s kind of scary in mother-hen mode, and if she does choose to have children one day, I think I’m going to fear for them.
Poppy is softer, as usual. She sits beside me, hand on my leg where it’s buried under the blankets. When I finish the peppermint tea she made me, she says, “If you need anything, just ring your bell.” She nods toward a little bell she put on my bedside table, and I smile. That issoPoppy.
“I will,” I say around the roughness in my throat.
She and Lyra leave then, and I turn over in bed, trying to find a better position. But no matter which way I turn or how I arrange my blankets and pillows, I can’t get comfortable.
Because apart from my cold, the real pain is coming frominsideme, right beneath my sternum, where my connection to Severin aches. It thrums in time with my heart, reminding me it’s there with every breath I take.
With a groan, I curl deeper into my blankets, pulling them up to my chin as I press my face into my pillow. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to will myself to fall asleep. It’s so much easier to sleep through pain than it is to be awake and have to face it with every second that ticks by.
I toss and turn some more. Isis eventually gets fed up with me and slithers away, probably so I won’t squish her with all my thrashing.
Time passes in hazy moments of sleep and wakefulness. At some point, the girls come up to the loft, each settling into their own bed and drawing the curtains so they can sleep.
I’m drifting in that liminal sick state when there’s a sudden tug in my chest, sharp and impossible to ignore. My eyes open in the darkness, and I suck in a shallow breath as a sensation washes over me: heat tickling my skin, the distant crackle of a fire, something bitter and metallic at the back of my tongue.
And I know that it’shim.
My hand inches toward my chest, curling into the soft fabric of my night shirt, which Poppy insisted I put on when she brought me tea earlier.
Severin is awake. I know it without a doubt, know it like I know my own magic and the pulse of it beneath my skin.
Restlessness—his restlessness—seeps through the connection. It feels like he’s pacing, and a rough thirst claws at the back of my throat.
I turn my face into my pillow and cough, trying not to wake the others.
Then another wave of emotion washes over me, like rainwater from a black sky: Frustration. Barely contained restraint. A loneliness so potent that it makes everything inside me feel hollow.
Without me calling on it, my magic manifests.
Sparks dance along my skin, and when I lift a hand, I have to wince away from the brightness of the white-blue electricity leaping between my fingers.
Immediately, I stifle the magic, sending it away.
It hasn’t acted like this since I was a young witch first learning how to control my powers. And it’s all because ofhim.
I thought distance was supposed to kill this connection between us. Severin hasn’t fed on me again—and now he never will—yet the thread tying me to him still lingers, raw and taut but there nonetheless.
And I know he feels it too.
Outside, the winter wind howls, rattling the window in our loft. One of the girls sighs, and another turns over in bed. It’s like every other night we’ve spent in this dorm together.
But inside me, everything feels different. And I don’t know what to do about it.
I turn over again, pulling my blankets up, tangling them in my trembling fingers.
As another faint echo of Severin’s hunger trickles through the connection, a thought hits me.
What if this never goes away? What if he’s wrong and we’ve already established a permanent connection, only to wound it the way that we have?
I swallow hard, trying to banish the phantom taste of blood in my mouth.
Closing my eyes, I try to drift off, but sleep doesn’t come. Only my storm and Severin’s suffering, still lingering in my blood.
Chapter 50
