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It wasn’t that I was poor. I’d made a lot of money in the last year forging magical weapons—turns out, that was a pretty hot market. But after ten years of not having many possessions and fighting to protect what little I’d had, owning many things wasn’t attractive to me. Having more meant protecting more, and it was clear that neither I nor Mrak could protect even me.
“I tried to step in as soon I saw those men leave the bar behind you.”Mrak’s voice was closer now, and I felt his presence settle in beside me. There was a sensation of him holding my hand as best a not-fully-corporeal entity could.
“Well, you didn’t,” I said.
“Icouldn’t. I was blocked.”
“Blocked,” I echoed. “I’m grateful you healed those wounds, but you left me to suffer them in the first place. They wanted information about Leif and that sword he wanted commissioned.”
I’d purposely left out the diagram page. I had a feeling none of what had happened last night was about some diagram in an ancient book Leif had ripped a page out of. It was about that sword. Specifically, those runes. Maybe even the nightsteel specifically.
And also the symbol that Mrak and those men seemed to share.
“They had your symbol on their daggers,” I said. “Although I suppose you saw that.”
Mrak’s touch shifted until it felt as though he’d wrapped his arms around me. Lips pressed against my forehead. My cheeks. My lips.“I did. I think… the line they’d drawn through it, maybe it kept my presence away. Like a ward. Aisling, I’m so sorry I failed you.”
A ward? Why would those men have been carrying around a ward that happened to magically keep my entity away? How would they have known about my shadow monster in the first place?
Maybe they hadn’t. It could have been a coincidence.
Even I didn’t believe in coincidences, though.
“It’s okay.” Itwasn’tokay, really. None of this was. But I hated the guilt in Mrak’s voice. I’d never heard it before, and I never wanted to hear it again. “You healed me.”
“I stopped them,”Mrak said as I experienced the feeling of thumbs making soft, comforting circles on my cheeks.“When you melted the dagger, it removed the symbol and therefore the ward. I was only able to step in then.”
“Step in?” I asked, but then I remembered. “I blacked out.”
“Yes. Aisling, I had to take over. To fight them off. With you unconscious, it was the only option.”
My head spun with thoughts of last night and the implications of Mrak’s words. Our pact was for him to help me live. To protect me.
Mrak, I realized, had had no choice.
“I wouldn’t have gone against your expressed wishes if there’d been another way.”Mrak’s words were punctuated by kisses again. Searing touches of ethereal lips that sent electricity and attraction right to my core. He’d always had that effect on me. Like every sensation was amplified because I couldn’t see him, only feel him.
I relaxed back into his touch. “I understand.” It was as if he were there, holding me so that I wouldn’t fall backward. It was always weird to have his ethereal form hold me like this, especially if I caught sight of us in a mirror. Seeing myself arched in pleasure against nothing was both hard to sometimes wrap my mind around and hot as hell. “In those cases, yes, do what you need to.”
“I will.”His barely-there touches curled along my sides, like grasping hands sliding up my stomach to my chest. I exhaled a shaky breath as his tendrils curled around my breasts underneath my clothes. Like I was always naked before him.“You should clean up.”
I glanced down and was reminded again of just how much dried blood I wore. A lot of it was mine, at least from the chest up, from my broken nose and the wound on my neck—both of which Mrak had healed. But the rest…
“They’re dead, aren’t they?” I asked. “Those men?”
A moment of silence, and then,“Yes. I removed them.”
That should have scared me. Or at the very least, it should have made me pause. But I’d lived in a violent world for ten years, and I knew Mrak wasn’t human. That he was some sort of demonic monster. Coupled with our pact, it didn’t bother me that he had killed for me—at least when it came to people who’d deserved it.
I smiled. “Good.”
I moved toward the tiny bathroom in this studio apartment attached to my workshop and started a hot shower. The bloodied sight that greeted me in the mirror might have shocked someone unused to seeing blood on their neck. Instead, I stared and wondered what it might be like to finally see Mrak actually beside me, his shadow pact. For me to see my monster. Protective and seductive andmine.
When steam filled the room, I peeled off my clothes and stepped into the warm water, sighing with relief. The hot torrent fell against my back, smoothing sore muscles and releasing any leftover tension from the night before. My body relaxed and I breathed deeply. This was all I needed in life. A safe place to sleep, a warm shower, and Mrak.
I quickly shampooed my hair and lathered soap all over my body, removing any trace of last night’s scuffle outside the bar. I kept washing until long after the water stopped running red just to be sure, and even then, didn’t stop until I felt Mrak’s presence join me in the form of those loving tendrils curling up my sides again.
Sometimes he could manifest familiar touches—hands, fingers. Other times, it was these tendrils that slid across my skin, leaving caresses and raised goosebumps along the way. They spun around my breasts now, hitching my breath and sending me teetering forward at their touch. I pressed a hand against the shower wall to steady myself. “Mrak.”
