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Ancestors below. Her blades were still in their jeweled scabbards, but she could slice through me just the same.
“Why don’t you want to train, Veyka?” I ground out. I was suddenly so fucking tired of managing for the both of us. I just wanted her to be honest—with me and with herself.
“I am powerful enough without this cursed magic. I was always powerful enough.”
“Yes, you are,” I said without hesitation. But from the way her throat bobbed, from an instinct borne of months spent getting to know one another, getting closer and loving her, I knew she didn’t fully believe it herself.
“You are strong, and you are powerful. And every realm should be trembling at the strength of the new High Queen of Annwyn,” I said, closing the space between us. I stopped just short, leaving her that space to come to me. “I know I am.”
She stepped closer, her eyes widening as if she didn’t quite understand how it had happened. But I did. That same compulsion existed in my chest.
Her gaze softened fractionally. Her expression shifting to something else—the desire that had couched our anger and hate from the beginning. But there wasn’t hate in her eyes anymore, now—
Her eyes were glowing.
For months, I stared into her eyes and wondered why they didn’t glow for me, when I knew that mine burned so damn hot for her. I’d learned the answer—her lack of power.
But Veyka had never truly been powerless and here was the proof.
Her pupils were ringed in a glowing blue that should have looked icy, but instead was hot and demanding. She looked at me and I couldfeelthe possessiveness. The match to my own. The mating bond.
“Train with me, Veyka,” I said, reaching down to that tether that connected us. “Push past the fear.”
I knew she could see the burning black fire in my own eyes, my desire for her shoving its way to the surface. Hate and lust were close bedfellows; but I didn’t hate her anymore. I loved her so much it fucking hurt. And I would do anything to protect her—including pushing her to train a power that clearly scared the hell out of her. Including using that bond between us, that sexual connection that long predated the Joining, to convince her.
Her lower lip trembled. She caught it between her teeth, punishing it mercilessly. “I am not afraid,” she said.
And I knew I’d lost.
But she reached out, trailing a hand down the center of my throat, nudging apart the tunic I wore to reveal the uppermost branches of the tree tattooed across my chest. She traced the lines of my Talisman with her fingernail, digging it in while she dragged her gaze lower and lower.
Then she lifted her fingertip to her mouth and sucked it between her lips.
“Come find me when you cannot stand it a moment more,” she crooned, swaying her hips provocatively.
Ancestors damn it all, I hated to give her the last word. But if I stayed in the room a second longer, I was going to bend her over the Round Table.
19
ARRAN
I would never be warm again.
Cold, so cold.
Cold in my chest, in my soul, dousing my magic. No, sucking it away. Feeding on it. Leaving nothing but cold, cold, cold.
A scream rent the darkness. Veyka.
The tether in my chest was an explosion of pain, demanding I save her. I couldn’t see her in the darkness. Just like that night in the Tower of Myda. I couldn’t see her.
But I could feel her.
I followed that tether, the ache in my chest I’d felt long before our Joining.
Close—I was so close.
“Veyka!” I tried to cry out, but the words were swallowed to nothingness.
