Instead, he captured her face in both hands and kissed her. The second their tongues touched, the magic between them ignited.
Her hair was torn free of its pins as wind whipped through it.
She could feel him in her skin—under her skin.
Their magic was a molten torrent gushing between them.
Edwina couldn’t help shifting into him, yearning for more. But he drew away with a shaky breath, his eyes holding a promise.
Later.
And for the first time, she knew there would be a later. It was inevitable: As inevitable as falling for him had been.
“Are you ready?” he asked, sounding like the old Sterling. Cool, crisp, professional.
“Ready,” she replied, taking the ring and placing it in the center of the circle.
Chapter
Nine
“Spirit rise and answer my call,” Edwina said, her voice echoing through the room. She sent a pulse of magic through the ring.
Anger reflected back at her. A psychic screech of rage.
Edwina shivered as Sterling’s fingertips squeezed her own.
“It’s going to fight you,” he told her. “It’s more powerful than I’d imagined. However she died—” And they could both tell it was a she. “—it was painful and unexpected. I’m picking up hints of distrust.”
So am I. She squared her shoulders. “I ask you twice,” she called, sending power through her words. “Spirit rise and answer my call.”
The ring began jittering across the floor as if something violent shook within it.
Edwina brought all her will to bear on the object. She could do this. She’d been fighting to prove herself for years, and no mere spirit was going to defy her.
“If it’s not going to obey you,” he said, “then you need to shatter its hold on the ring.”
The spirit lashed back at her, screaming, screaming in her head?—
Edwina held on grimly, squeezing tightly, clenching her will like a vise.
And it hurt, because she was one with the ring and the spirit, one with the curse.
A flash of image went through her mind’s eye. A girl with tangled dark hair on her knees, holding her head in her hands and screaming.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Tell me your name.”
No. The spirit was fury and rage, twisting viciously beneath her hold.
But she’d expected malice and viciousness, not….
Fear.
It stole her breath. Stayed her will.
For she suddenly realized that whilst she could crush the soul with her will and shatter its hold over the ring, she owed the spirit more than that. She owed it peace.
Someone had murdered this girl.
