He seemed to reflect on the same things as his ebony brows rose, and he watched the darkness slithering beneath my arms.
“How did we get here?” I asked, my brows pinching.
His lips pursed, and he shook his head. “We got curious. Dug a little too deep,” he replied. His lips quirked to the side as he chuckled.
A laugh snorted out of my nose, and I rolled my eyes at the Death Scholar joke.
“Good luck,” I signed.
Drystan’s gaze cut to Kellan, and with acrack, he was gone.
I heaved a breath and turned to Kellan, my brows narrowing as I scanned his pale face against the Votruvian war paint. Thepads of my fingers rubbed against my thumb, the thick paint dry now.
Tiberius clomped back to the edge of the cliff, and I pulled a rag from my pocket.
Kellan’s dark eyes were soft as I reached up to wipe the twin lines of blood dripping from his nose into his short-cropped beard. I caught them before they pooled over his full lips, dabbing the rag a few times.
“I heard what your mother said. What is the cost, Kellan?” I asked, my voice quieter than intended. “When you give power to others… what do you give up?”
I frowned, angry with myself, with the fact I hadn’t even thought it might take a toll on him. What was wrong with me? After two years of being exposed to greater powers, I knew there was a cost. There always was. Why hadn’t I considered there would be one for the Conduit? Did I really think the Starlings would be immune? That their status as demigods would mean their powers needed nothing in return?
Beads of blood reformed at the base of his nose. I lifted my rag once more, and he caught my hand in his. I dragged my gaze from his lips to his hooded eyes.
The marbled gray seemed darker than usual tonight, like rivers lost in the night. His warm hand wrapped around mine, and he pressed a kiss to the center of my palm. His fingers twined in my own, and our joined hands fell to our sides as his other moved to the side of my face. He brushed a thumb over my cheek as he blew a sigh through his nose.
“I lose…” He paused, his eyes shuddering. “Whatever tethers me here, to this realm. A bit of my humanity, my mother thinks. A bit of my soul.”
I sucked in a breath, my pulse seeming to still as the words sank in. A sick, plunging feeling sucked in my gut, and I swallowed.
“What do you mean, ‘your soul?’”
Kellan shrugged, the black tattoos shifting on his muscular neck.
“Whatever remains after we die,” he murmured. His hand tightened around my own.
“Like the souls in Tynan’s Hell. What remains after they pass through the Abyss.”
Kellan dipped his chin in confirmation. “I suspect so.”
I squeezed his hand back, narrowing my brows.
“What about when you take some back?” I asked, pressing my palm against his, as if I could force my power into him. “Does it save some of your soul? Can you stitch it back?” I asked, my voice cracking.
Kellan’s eyes softened, and his brows tilted up as he shook his head. “I don’t know, Bonscaíh.”
A vice wrapped around my chest at the same moment a burning formed behind my eyes.
“Then take some back,” I urged him. “Take some of your power back, take some from me, just in case.”
Kellan’s lips tilted into a sad smile.
“Don’t ask me to weaken you, my love, because I won’t,” he murmured, shaking his head softly. “Especially not before a war.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Kellan’s hand slid to the back of my neck and his lips crushed against my own. A desperate urgency drove him, and I opened my mouth for him as his tongue slipped against my lips. His head bent over mine as he pulled me closer, and I dropped his hand to wrap my arms around his neck.
His arm hooked around my waist, and my boots lifted from the ground. My eyes closed as my lips memorized every curve of his, the fresh reality of our situation hovering just beyond. The bond between us tightened, the weave’s lovely, freshknots looping and twisting into precious promises. The kiss strengthened it with its own sort of unbreakable oath.
His arms hardened around me, and his mouth moved faster, not in a lustful heat, but in a fierce, drastic protectiveness, as if his kiss placed a line of daggers around the love we held between us. A promise to defend against anything and everything. A promise to never turn back, to do whatever it took to come back to one another.
