Nicole
NICOLE COULDN’T STOP STARING.
Shetried, she really did. Forced her eyes to where Callum was sprawled on the luxurious couch. Picked at the leftover finger sandwiches and drank the tea. She chewed and swallowed mechanically, even though she hadn’t sat down. She couldn’t with Kyan in the same room.
Some huge protective concern inside her relaxed now he and Callum were here. She hadn’t realised how much both of them had taken up a corner of her mind, and couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that Remi was elsewhere.
Kyan’s tension hadn’t receded though, and he hadn’t taken a seat either. If it weren’t for the way his gaze ran over her skin with a frisson of heat, she would have thought their moment in the Heaven Room had been one of her fevered dreams.
Then the topic of last night’s attack came up.
Kyan’s eyes raked down her arms, searching for any injuries. ‘Your transformation was all right? You healed okay?’
‘Yes. It was – better than last time.’
Last time, when she’d been out cold for hours in his arms. It had been so intense, his presence rewriting her mind and body to feel comforted, safe, and relieved after such pain and fear.
In a few short days, he’d changed her entire perception of what a Wake-bound Empyreal could be.
‘What type of Banshee was it?’ he asked, voice rough as he crossed his bulky arms, spine stiff where he stood in front of the unlit fireplace.
Nicole explained.
‘Sounds like—’ began Callum.
‘It was a Ban-Sìth,’ Dylan interrupted.
There were a few variations of Banshees thanks to centuries of cultural differences. A Ban-Sìth: who relied more heavily on their scream and often sensed death – hence her foreboding final words to Bells and Nicole. And the more seductive, blood-drinking ones: the Baobhan Sìth she’d been in Estwood.
Nicole found herself infinitely pleased that the blood-drinking and seductress elements of her transformation weren’t witnessed by anyone but Kyan. Especially considering she’d woken in the night after it, still transforming slowly back, but cravingsomething she didn’t have a name for. Not until she’d found Kyan on his way to her, bringing her blood to alleviate the worst of the lingering Baobhan Sìth urges. How she’d kissed him, licked his mouth, wrapped her legs around his waist—
Heat bloomed in her cheeks when their eyes connected.
She tried to swallow, refocusing on her father’s words. ‘The one that hunted you last night must have been drawn to the scream of her lost cousin, and the scent of supernatural deaths around Estwood. Then they were likely waiting for a moment to get through the wards.’
‘I checked them,’ Verin said, standing by the piano behind her. ‘When Elisabetta came back, she unknowingly let the Ban-Sìth slip onto the grounds.’
‘That’s a relief,’ Bells said. ‘That means the Wake didn’t send her.’
Callum’s head turned towards Kyan, and Nicole wasn’t the only one noticed it.
‘What?’ Dylan asked.
The bleakness in Kyan’s eyes chipped a piece of armour she hadn’t realised was there. Some deep sense of security she’d carried with her since she was a child and her father had taken them from the site of her mother’s death.
His next words, though, ripped it away and left her raw.
‘The Wake know about you. They want me to bring you in.’
A terrible silence filled the library.
A weight began to bear down on her chest.
‘I don’t understand,’ Nicole began softly, heart thundering as a slip of terror dragged her stomach to her feet. ‘We were so careful, we—’
‘What did you tell them?’ her father asked in a voice so low and threatening it drew Nicole from her shock with a prickle of warning.
Kyan explained in a monotone the two missions they’d offered him: a Druid or Nicole.
