Page 34 of Binding His Fated Mates

Both of the twins scowled at that, trading a dark look.

Then the golden glow of my magic subsided, the light of the Sword of Helios stabilizing. I forced myself to take a deep breath and wrench my gaze from the twins, turning my attention back to Robert’s now-illuminated aura.

I immediately saw that it was all wrong.

A healthy human aura was a shimmering field of color that extended several feet from the body. But Robert’s was barely there and it lacked any color at all. It was a faint, grayish film, extending perhaps six inches past his skin, and so thin it was almost transparent. It reminded me of a spent candle guttering in its last moments, right before it burns itself out.

And there were tears in it. Three of them, each about the size of a grapefruit. One over the throat, another over the heart, and the last over the solar plexus. They were ragged, dark-edged holes in the very fabric of his life force.

What could possibly do this?

“What is it?” Reed asked, his gaze locked on me. “Is this magical?”

“I think so. His aura is almost gone,” I said, my voice strained. My words sounded as if they came from far away. The room seemed to distort around me, becoming almost cavernous. A chill twisted through me, and I began trembling.

With effort, I forced the words out one after the other. “No magic has ever been done on him directly—no spells, no curses—they’d show up like sigils in his aura. But there are massive tears. That’s not normal.”

I lifted my left hand to gesture at the wounds in his aura, then immediately replaced it before I could sway on my feet. The dizziness would pass. Probably.

I added, “Given how diminished his aura is, something consumed his life force. Through the throat, heart, and solar plexus, it looks like. Whatever it was, it had the ability to leave permanent wounds in Robert’s energetic body.”

Fighting through my dizziness, I narrowed my focus. At the edges of the wounds, there were specks of what might’ve been some kind of residue. It was dark and oddly viscous. “There’s a trace. Whatever did this left something of itself behind.” I glanced up at Reed. “If I can capture it, I can do a locator spell to find the monster.”

He nodded approvingly.

Hunter and Lee both shot him dark, angry looks that he seemed not to notice.

I turned and, steadying my weight on the table with one hand, I fumbled in my messenger bag with the other, my fingers feeling numb and useless, and pulled out an empty glass vial. Then I turned back to Robert, holding the vial up to the tear in his aura at the heart center.

I began moving the residue with a muttered spell under my breath. Coaxing a foreign energy signature out of an aura was delicate work, akin to extracting a splinter with tweezers without breaking it. The dark, viscous substance resisted me, clinging to the wounds in Robert’s energy field, and every second I spent pulling at it cost me more power than I wanted to think about.

But, at last, it came free. A thin, oily strand of darkness, drawn from Robert’s tattered aura, poured into the vial. I capped it with trembling hands. It looked like inky-black smoke, frozen mid-swirl.

“Got it,” I said, turning to the others with a triumphant grin.

And then the room tilted sideways.

My legs buckled. The floor rushed up to meet me.

Hunter caught me before I hit the ground, breaking the circle. His arm went around my waist and he hauled me upright, my back pressed against his chest, his grip like iron on me. I somehow managed to keep hold of the vial in my hand.

“I’m fine,” I said automatically.

“You’re not fine!” Hunter snarled, close to my ear, his warm breath causing me to shiver. “You’re barely standing!”

“I’m—”

Lee took one of my arms and slung it over his shoulder. He and Hunter carried me over to the nearest booth and sat me down. Hunter’s hands lingered on my shoulders for a moment longer than strictly necessary before he stepped back.

I tried to protest again, to tell them I was okay, but I swayed in my seat. My vision started to go gray around the edges.

Oh.

Oh no.

Yeah, I was going to need to lie down.

As if Lee had heard my thoughts, he shouldered Hunter out of the way and helped me lie down on the bench. Then he stripped his jacket off and folded it up.