Page 21
What in Netheris’ sweet fucking fires happened?
I snarl when she moves. ‘Do not come closer.’
She stops and her eyes flash. ‘Fine. Good. Love the gratitude. Next time you collapse on top of me, I’ll leave you there and send flowers.’
A ghost of amusement attempts to move through me but dies beneath hunger.
I want her close. I want her far away.
Need my mouth at her throat again, tearing through every spell between us, drinking until the hidden secrets in her blood have nowhere left to hide. I want to lock every door in the Tower, slaughter anyone who looks at her, and drag her beneath me until there is no difference between blood and sex and oath.
The desire is not clean. It is not entirely mine. That is the first cold fact I can hold.
Something in me has opened. The curse, the mark, the blood-bond, the old ruins of Morrighan’s design. Whatever slept beneath five centuries of discipline has raised its head and found Eira’s scent.
No.
Not Eira’s.
The thought hovers, dangerous and unformed.
I refuse to give it shape. ‘What happened?’ I ask.
The chamber seems to exhale. Malachi looks at Aaron who looks at Eira.
Who folds her arms. ‘You drank from me, made a sound that will haunt my nightmares for the foreseeable, lit up like a cursed chandelier, cracked your magical mirror, blacked out the Tower, locked the room, ordered your murder squad not to harm me, then went very dramatically unconscious.’
Luca murmurs, ‘That is accurate.’
‘What else?’ I demand.
No one answers fast enough.
My temper surges, but beneath it is fear. Not of death. Death is an old concept, an eventual inconvenience for immortals, lately sharpened into imminent threat by Morrighan’s curse, yes, but not something I have ever cowered from.
This is something else.
For the first time since my making, I had been unreachable inside my own flesh. Awake in fragments, conscious in pieces. Able to feel, sense, command in brutal flashes, but not rise. Unable to open my eyes or protect what my blood had decided must be protected.
Eira Cross.
Vulnerability sits foul on the tongue and I despise it.
‘We think you entered curse-stasis,’ Aaron says carefully.
I shake my head, gritting teeth at the agony that rips through my head. ‘Impossible.’
‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘And yet.’
My gaze moves to him. He does not flinch. Aaron rarely does. ‘How long?’
‘Minutes,’ he says. ‘Intermittently. You surfaced twice. Issued commands. Then passed out again.’
My hand goes to my chest before I can stop it.
The mark burns beneath my palm, no longer contained to its original seat over my heart. One branch has reached my throat. Another curves towards my back. I feel the filaments beneath the skin, alive with a slow, gnawing pressure. ‘How far?’
Malachi answers, voice rough. ‘It spread visibly after you drank from her.’
