He flinched, knowing why I’d offered myself up.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured as the sweet liquid splashed into my stomach.
I braced against the violent rejection but...all seemed well.
“I...feel okay.” I smiled tentatively, taking another sip.
For ten glorious seconds, everything was totally fine. The sweetness from the watermelon. The wetness from the juice. Sweet and tasty and normal.
Until it wasn’t.
My body spasmed as viciously as it had when it’d rejected the apple a few days ago.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, eyes watering as I fought the urge to heave, but it was too late. A wet, choking cough ripped out of me. Black blood and watermelon juice spilled between my fingers, staining the white blankets.
Well...shit.
I had no idea who thought that. Him or me. And my other power—the one that allowed me to commune with the dead, even while surrounded by the living—flared loudly.
I stiffened as a million souls bombarded me.
Bones in the soil, spirits on the wind. The potentiality of using the strings of death to twist time and change our future...
Come join us, be with us, stop fighting us—
“Rook?” Lucien shoved the entire tray off the bed with one violent sweep as I collapsed.
Porcelain shattered and food splattered across the antique rug as his arms snapped around me—broken bones be damned—crushing me to his chest. “You’re alright. Just stay with me.”
I flopped against him, twitching with a seizure as my useless muscles spasmed with living and death. Living and death. My ears rang with their song. They beckoned me to let go, to leave—
Be free with us, be lost with us, come with us.
“Rook. Don’t you dare.” Shaking me, Lucien interrupted their melody. “Talk to me. I’m right here. Neither of us is abandoning the other, got it?”
His pain swamped the bond, giving me something to focus on.
“You shouldn’t move so...m-much.” I coughed again, spraying my chest with blackened blood.
“Don’t you get it yet?” He bent over me, nuzzling his nose with mine. “I’d break every bone in my body if it meant I could save you.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I looked up from where I lay in his trembling arms. Licking away the blood still staining my lips, brutal truth slipped free. “We both know we’re dying, yet...we keep convincing ourselves it’s not true. That we can reverse it if we just hold on a little longer. But what if we’re deluding ourselves?”
“Wecanreverse it.” His face turned angry. “Everything is fixable if we try hard enough.”
“Our bodies are breaking.” I swallowed hard as the room spun. “My parents condemned us by trying to give us immortality, andthe ironic thing is we would’ve lived so much longer if they hadn’t.”
Rocking me gently, Lucien pressed a kiss to my sweaty forehead. “I know I’ve asked this before but are you sure there’s nothing we can do? Nothing you remember from your parents’ files?”
“The only way to know for sure is to go to the lab in Iceland.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go.” He hugged me so hard, his pain became a third entity between us. “We’ll look through every record, every note. I don’t care what it takes. You’re never allowed to leave me. Ever.”
His head dropped, pressing his lips to mine.
He kissed me—desperately, fiercely.
I tasted black blood on both our tongues as I kissed him back just as desperately, pouring everything I had left into him.
