Rhen watched it with an attention he could not justify. A spy might have performed concern, but the woman before him had nearly destroyed herself to save a male whose name she had barely known.
“What do you remember after that?”
“Pain. Your blood. Something speaking through me.” She swallowed. “Sule.”
Rhen’s fingers tightened around hers.
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing.” Fear entered her eyes as she searched her own mind. “I don’t know why I said his name. I don’t know what bargain it meant.”
The answer frustrated him because he believed it.
Her free hand moved toward the center of her chest.
“I can feel you.”
Rhen’s body became still.
“Explain.”
“I don’t know how.” She closed her eyes briefly, concentrating upon the strange awareness between them. “You are angry, although that is hardly useful information. Beneath that, you are afraid.”
Rhen’s expression hardened.
“I am not afraid.”
“Then whatever I feel from you has chosen an unfortunate disguise.”
Her quiet defiance should have provoked him. Instead, something dangerously close to recognition moved beneath his irritation.
The woman opened her eyes again.
“The pain has changed.”
“How?”
“It no longer feels as though the storm is killing me.” Her breathing deepened as another sensation moved through her. “Now it feels as though something is unfinished.”
Rhen understood exactly what she meant, although he wished he did not.
The connection tightened whenever she looked at him. It had begun drawing heat through his body, sharpening his awareness of her scent, her mouth, and every inch of skin concealed beneath the sheet.
He had spent the final hours of her transition refusing to mistake magical need for consent.
He would not begin now.
“What you feel may come from my blood,” he said. “It may come from the witchcraft surrounding you, or from whatever Diablo Levélle intended when they sent you here. We do not know whether acting upon it will strengthen the connection, complete it, or make it impossible to sever.”
Her gaze searched his face.
“And you still feel it.”
“Yes.”
The admission emerged like something dragged unwillingly from him.
“Do you want me?”
