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But with Quill, I have a chance at forever.

I grasp it with both hands.

My mouth clamps against his wrist, and I drink for the life I’m leaving and the life I’m stepping into. All semblance of pain dissipates like smoke clearing. In its place is a warmth that spreads all over as I guzzle down his heady, intoxicating blood, lapping at his skin. My core throbs, and I want to take him right here on the altar. I want to feel him moving inside me. I shift my legs to straddle him, grinding into his hips. Desperate for friction. He extricates his wrist from me, and two dangerously sharp fangs protrude from his delicious mouth.

Yes, I want to feel those too.

He runs his tongue along my wrists. I watch in amazement as they slowly stitch themselves shut from the inside out, lacing up into two thin scars.

My eyes flutter at the sensation as dizziness takes hold.

“Bite her now, Quill.” Carver’s voice is panicked. “Death calls on her.”

Quill ignores him, but I do not. I can’t stop myself from glancing at this male, at the severed head dangling from his fist, then back at his face. “I am terribly sorry for your window.”

His answering grin is sly. “I’ll tell you what… Wake from the Embrace, and I’ll let bygones be bygones.”

“What’s the Embrace?” I ask.

“There’s no time to explain. I need to drink from you,” Quill says, gently turning my gaze back to his. “My blood isn’t enough to bring you back from the cusp. The Embrace… It’s the only way.”

I lick my lips, tasting the surreptitious sweetness of his blood. “Will you be there when I wake?”

“You are mine,” he growls. The declaration flares in my chest. It rattles the very ground below us. “So long as you wish it, there will not be a time where you wake when I will not be by your side.”

His mouth seizes my neck.

Gasping at the abrupt pressure, I resist the urge to moan, even as twin pricks of pain blaze, as his teeth sink into my skin. Everything dissolves into molten warmth. My hips rock against his as he holds me flush against his chest, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other smoothing circles across my back. It is exhilarating and magnificent as colors spark, vibrant and bright. I exhale in pleasure, wanting to⁠—

“Quill,” Carver urges. “You must hurry.”

He bites down harder. In the wake of pleasure is only pain. It burns as fiery as a shooting star falling from the night sky. I resist the urge to scream as the burning blazes through me, as I go boneless in his arms. He moans against my neck. Dying in the arms of someone beautiful is a much lovelier way to go than the death I had been promised since birth.

Suddenly, his fangs retract from my neck, and he pulls away, mouth a mess of blood.

“Close your eyes, love.” He caresses my hair, my cheek. “It’s time to swim among the stars.”

As he peppers crimson kisses across my lips, my jaw, my neck, darkness claims me.

Chapter 15

QUILL

Travel to the Shore of the Damned is swift, and yet it doesn’t feel fast enough. With Rory’s body draped across my arms, I close the distance between us and the candlelit hollow down the shore.

Everything about this is wrong. She’s too light, too pale, too quiet, too dead.

With every step, the sugared taste of her blood is everywhere all at once, all consuming in a way drinking straight from the vein has never been before. During those final moments on the altar, I tasted all her memories, lived through all the suffering she endured as her family groomed her to embrace her role as Adelphi’s Sacrifice, to embrace Death. Every hope and dream and hidden desire, every quiet moment stolen in the dead of night, and every tear she cried in secret made me want to sever heads and pulverize spines.

I nearly lost control. How could anyone harm her? Or touch her without her permission? Even now, the onslaught of feelings and their intensity linger, ranging from enraged to wrathful. By some fucking miracle, I managed to leash my anger and get us the hell out of there while leaving her cold-hearted family alive. The only reason I didn’t slaughter them and everyone else who wronged her was because if my mate craves revenge when she awakens, she will have the opportunity to seek it herself.

Because she will awaken.

I don’t care if I have to rip her from Death’s clutches myself.

The balmy, ocean breeze is a blessing to my fever-hot skin as I draw to a stop across from Eivor and Risna. They stand beside an achingly familiar plot that has been left unused for hundreds of years.

It’s where Godrick buried me for the Embrace, and it’s where I’ll bury Rory.