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What does that mean?
His expression doesn’t change, but something inside him folds around the answer before giving it to me.
It means I am running out of time.
My insides strangle. And I’m thankful no sound comes out because I don’t think I could make a sound that wouldn’t betray me.
The room sways. My hand curls in the sheet as my own pulse kicks up, panic spreading from ribs to throat to eyes. Valentin’s attention comes down on me instantly. Rowan’s too.
Two powerful beings. Different species. Same awful precision.
‘Do not,’ Valentin says aloud, voice low.
I look at him.
Do not what? Panic? Care? React like a normal person when the ancient vampire I may be falling catastrophically in love with announces via a cursed mirror that his supernatural death-clock has sped up?
His eyes flare.
Crap. He heard me through the blood bond. I did not mean to send all of that.
But… fuck, from the way his face stills, I absolutely sent enough to damn me for a very, very long time.
Rowan watches the exchange with unnerving quiet.
Then she says, softly, ‘You’ve been spelled for a long time.’
And for whatever life I have left in me, I can’t summon denial or snark or even a clever little shield for my mouth to hide behind.
Because yes. Of course I have.
I’ve been spelled in one way or another for six years, maybe longer if fear counts. By survival, a powerful witch’s cunning disguised as bristled kindness; by a name I buried and a life I built on the grave. I’ve worn Eira Cross like armour for so long that the woman beneath it may have become a ghost before I noticed.
Valentin’s head turns slowly towards Rowan. ‘Explain.’
‘I think she carries layered work,’ Rowan says. ‘A structure designed to keep one thing dominant and another suppressed.’
The young witch may still be scrambling in the dark but she’s close enough to the truth to make my skin turn cold.
Lovely. Wonderful. Extremely normal thing to hear while lying in a vampire’s bed with his blood in my mouth.
Valentin’s voice drops. ‘Can you remove it?’
‘I can attempt to separate the layers. I can’t promise the result will be clean.’
His face becomes lethal. ‘Make it clean. But you will not harm her.’
Rowan gives him an unimpressed look. ‘Because you want to give yourself that privilege or because of something else you’re actively hiding from?’
‘Because it is absolutely none of your business. Just do as I command.’
‘Commanding delicacy does not produce it.’
His fangs flash. I lift two fingers weakly from the sheet and point at him.
Behave, vampire.
His gaze snaps to mine, the command clearly shocking him.
