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“Well…” I looked down at my hands. “All right,” I said at last, sliding off his lap to put a little distance between us. “I’ll tell you.”
58
“My mom had cancer,” I began and told him, as I had told my coven-mates, about the pain she’d been in and how none of the medicines the doctors had given her helped.
“It hurt so much to watch her hurting and not be able to do anything about it,” I told Griffin, still looking down at my hands as I sat beside him on the couch. “I felt like I had to do something to release the emotional pain I was feeling or I was going to go crazy. So…I started cutting.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw him nodding thoughtfully.
“I thought it might be something like that,” he murmured. “But I sense there is more to the story.”
“There is,” I said and told him how I had discovered that by cutting I could take my mother’s pain for a little while. “It was like a transfer,” I said. “The pain poured out of her and into me and then she was able to rest.”
“It must have been agonizing,” Griffin said softly.
“It hurt but it wasn’t nearly as bad as seeing her in pain and not being able to do anything about it,” I said. “Me being able to cut for her made a huge difference in those last few months. For both of us, I think. It was the only thing I could do for her and I would definitely do it again.” I lifted my chin defiantly. “Even if it was Blood magic.”
“Ah, yes,” Griffin murmured. “Blood magic—the most forbidden kind of magic a witch can do.”
“It seems to be the only kind of magic I can do,” I said glumly. “I used it when I shame-marked Sanchez and again when I kicked Winifred Rattcliff out of my head when she tried her truth spell on me. I haven’t found any other way to let my magic out so far. I thought for a while that I was somehow blocked but I don’t know now—maybe this is the only way I can do magic.”
“Maybe it is.” Griffin shrugged. “What of it?”
“What of it?” I asked, frowning. “Well…it’s forbidden, like you said. Avery says it’s like using the nuclear option every time.”
“So? Who does it hurt if you use the ‘nuclear option’?” Griffin asked. “Just as who does it hurt if we break the Edict? Why should we abide by the laws of a group of Elders who are simply passing down dusty traditions from our ancestors?”
I personally thought he had a point but I doubted the rest of the magical community would agree.
“It was my own ancestor, Corinne Latimer, who came up with the Edict in the first place,” I pointed out. “And she’s the one who outlawed Blood magic too. Even though Avery told me rumor is she used to do Blood magic herself.” I frowned. “Why would she outlaw her own magic?”
Griffin shook his head and winced, one long white hand going to his throat.
“I don’t know. Excuse me.”
He got up and went over to a small sink set into one wall of the caboose. There were no other kitchen appliances—I supposed because as a Nocturne, he had no need to cook anything.
Griffin drew himself a glass of water from the sink and drank it thirstily in long swallows. Then he drew another and sipped it more slowly.
I looked at him anxiously as he put the glass away and came to sit by me again.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said, a bit too dismissively, I thought. “The thirst is…especially bad tonight. The water helps some, though not nearly as much as I would like.”
I knew why his thirst was so bad tonight—it was because being near me was, as he had described it, sweet torture. My very presence and the scent of my skin and the blood pumping under it made things harder for him—so much harder.
I tried to imagine what it would be like to be with someone you wanted so badly and cared for so deeply and yet to know that having them near you would cause terrible pain.
What an awful thought.
“I should go,” I said, standing up reluctantly. “This is too hard for you, Griffin. Being so near me for so long when you’re so thirsty…”
“I don’t care about any of that,” he said, frowning. “I just want to be with you, Megan. It’s all I’ve wanted from the first moment I saw you.”
“But your thirst—” I began.
“Has been unrelenting for the past fifteen years,” Griffin said firmly. “I refuse to let it rule me—I will not let it drive you away.” He reached for my hand and pulled me back down to the couch with him. “Stay with me, Megan,” he murmured. “For just a little while longer.”
