Page 8 of The Truths We Hold

“Promise me something else,” she says against my mouth.

“Anything.”

“Promise me that if he reads your fire and finds me in it, you won’t apologize for it. Don’t tell him it was a mistake. Don’t let him turn what we have into evidence.”

I hold her face. Firelight and shadow-light catching in her eyes — the amber and crimson mingling in her pupils the way they mingle in the bond.

“If Raziel reads my fire and finds you,” I say, “he finds the best thing that has ever happened to me. And I will tell him so. To his face. With my fire burning at full strength and your shadows in my flame and not one word of apology for any of it.”

The grove holds us. The dome of shadow. The fire-warmth. The two bodies on the moss finding each other through the bond that carries every touch until the distinction between his fire and her shadow dissolves into something that is both and neither and entirely theirs.

Afterward. Her head on my chest. My fire banking to embers. Her shadows settling into the patterns that mean safe — the arrangement that only appears when Ashley is fully at rest, the independent intelligence standing down its watch because the body it protects is being held by someone it trusts.

“Three weeks,” she murmurs.

“Two and a half now.”

“Close enough to be terrified.”

“Close enough to be ready.”

Her shadow curls around my hand. The crimson tip warm against my palm. I hold it the way I hold everything she gives me — carefully, completely, knowing that what I’m holding is irreplaceable and that the being coming to judge it has been destroying irreplaceable things for centuries.

Not this one. Not while my fire still burns.

I will be there. Whatever comes.

I will be there.

CHAPTER FOUR

ashley

Bael’s fangs are out before I’ve finished taking off my coat.

Not aggressive — ready. The distinction matters with vampires. Aggressive fangs carry tension in the jaw, the baring of teeth that means threat. Ready fangs are relaxed, extended, the natural position of a predator who has assessed the situation and determined that what comes next requires the tools he was born with. Bael’s fangs are long and pale and gleaming in the grove’s shadow-light, and the sight of them sends a pulse through the mate bond that lands somewhere between my stomach and considerably lower.

“Tonight’s ritual is different from the blood exchange we performed last semester,” he says. He’s standing in the center of the grove with his wings folded and his shirt removed, the pale expanse of his chest catching the faint crimson glow that my shadows cast through the dome. The symbols he drew on the moss last time are gone — washed away by rain and winter. Tonight there are no symbols. “The exchange overwrote your shadow signature temporarily. A mask. This ritual integrates my blood into your shadow at a deeper level. Not a mask — a second skin.”

“How deep?”

“Deep enough that Raziel’s light will read vampire characteristics woven into the fabric of your shadow rather than layered on top. The difference is the difference between wearing a costume and having the costume become part of your body.”

“And the method?”

“Blood. Exchanged through the mate bond at volume and intensity significantly beyond what we’ve done before.”

The way he says volume and intensity makes my shadows curl tighter against my skin. The blood exchanges we’ve shared have been intimate — Bael feeding from my throat while the mate bond carries the sensation of his mouth and his fangs and the ancient pull of his hunger through both our bodies simultaneously. Those exchanges were powerful. They left me shaking. They strengthened the bond each time until the connection between us became the deep, structural thing it is now — the gravitational pull I feel every moment of every day, the awareness of his location and his emotional state running beneath my conscious mind like a river beneath a road.

What Bael is describing tonight is not a river. It’s a flood.

“I need to explain what will happen,” he says, “so that the intensity doesn’t break your concentration.”

“You’re worried about my concentration?”

“I am worried about your ability to maintain the selective truth we’ve been practicing while your body is processing a volume of ancient blood that will fundamentally alter the way your shadows interact with light.” He pauses. “And yes. I am also worried that the mate bond’s response to the exchange will be significant.”

Significant. Bael’s word for overwhelming. Bael’s word for the last time we did this you lost the ability to speak for several minutes. Bael’s word for this is going to feel like being turned inside out by someone who loves you.