Chapter 51
My eyes flickered open to the sight of a warm fire and a bed in a tent under the stars.
The last several hours flashed through my mind. Auron helping with the fire and checking my temperature. Quinn bringing tonics.
Pushing up on my forearms, I started to stretch my sore, aching muscles. My shoulders were the worst, wrenched from hanging by my wrists. Some of the healing and pain-numbing substances had begun to work, so it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. In fact, each moment I felt stronger.
I could feel Blake’s presence behind me before I turned.
“Blake?”
“Shh,” he soothed, climbing into my bed alongside me, curling against my back. “How are you feeling?”
The vision of Edith flashed in my mind, and I shook my head, swallowing hard. Tears sprang to my eyes, and he stroked my hair, shushing me gently.
“Shhhhh, shhhhhh. It will be okay. I’m so sorry.” He pressed a kiss to my temple, his tenderness making my chest ache.
“Blake, we need to—”
“No, Rubi,” he cut me off. “Rest. Please, we can talk in the morning.”
I looked down where his arms encased my body and saw him close his fist. Hiding the black Mark.
I wondered if he’d been hiding it from the others, if they knew or had seen that our Soul Pairing had failed.
Maybe someone from one of the other dominions had experience with the black Marks, would know what we’d done wrong.
I knew we needed to deal with that failure, but something worse was pressing on my chest.
“They have Edith,” I whispered, unable to stop the quiet sob from pulling free.
“What?”
Blake turned me gently to my back, careful not to wrench my already taxed muscles.
He loomed over me, eyes shimmering in the low firelight.
I felt small then beside him, and part of me wanted to burrow into his chest and close my eyes, pretend I could turn back time and somehow keep Edith away from all of this.
I felt myself falling into the panic of the vision. My breaths came fast as I saw Edith, bound, and myself powerless to help her. Tears streamed down my face and I rolled away from Blake, into a ball as the sobs wracked me, my already raw throat throbbing.
Hope is eternal.
As though Blake, too, could hear Edith’s voice, he rubbed my back, commanding softly, “Breathe, Rubi. Just breathe.” He continued rubbing my back and repeating those words, like an incantation, until my sobs slowed.
Eventually I could take a deep, shuddering breath. I lay there, drained, in his arms.
Blake gently rolled me to face him and wiped the tears from my face with the pads of his thumbs. “Tell me what you mean. Who has Edith?”
“A demon. Something worse than a Thirst demon.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw it. She was bathed in this pulsating light,” I said, pushing myself up gingerly to a sitting position. “Ire showed me—”
“Ire?” Blake gritted his teeth. “What do you mean?”
I met Blake’s eyes meaningfully. “Ire wasn’t working alone, Blake. He had…more power. I could sense it. And he said the Serpent Lord had given it to him.”
Blake hissed, his fists tightening over the sheets. “They were working together.”
I nodded. “He said they had a deal.” Then I explained the vision he’d shown me, describing the demon as much as I could. “I’d never seen one like that. Or heard of it. Do you know what it is?”
Blake exhaled sharply. His gaze dropped to the ground, shoulders tight.
“It’s the Starved.” His voice was raw. “The demon from the Annihilation. The one that killed Zayden,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“The one that—” His voice cracked. He swallowed hard and tried again.
“The one that ate the Red princess’s soul in front of me. While she screamed as she was dying.”
My heart stopped. The Starved had Edith—all I could see was her soul being ripped away while she writhed in agony, and me, too late to stop it.
His whole face had gone pale. He looked haunted. “They say the Serpent Lord was experimenting. He wanted stronger demons. So he used a hungry ghost as the base.”
He paused, chest rising and falling too fast. Then, quietly: “He succeeded.”
My stomach roiled. “Hungry ghosts can never be sated.”
His voice was grim. “At least they’re incorporeal. Somehow the Serpent Lord made it into flesh, a powerful demon that consumes and consumes, yet the more it eats, the hungrier it becomes. It is impossible for it to feel satisfied.”
I shivered. “Unless it gets this woman of prophecy. Ire didn’t just show me Edith, Blake. He told me—”
My words died off and I bit down on my lip as I considered the words Ire had spoken. The words from my dream.
“What, Rubi? Tell me.” Blake sounded desperate, his usual cool composure shattered since I’d been taken.
“He told me a prophecy. He recited it to me—but I’d heard it before. As a song, in my dreams. I sang it once, to Edith.” I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. “The Serpent Lord wants me, in exchange for her. I think they believe that I’m—”
I stopped, breath tight.
“They think you are the one from this prophecy?”
Nodding, I parted my lips and sang the song I’d heard in my dreams.
“Born of passion and the silencing queen,
A light shall rise where none have been.
Through her, the dawn will banish night,
If the dragon’s heart grants her might.
Should the hollow one consume her power,
Darkness will reign in the final hour.
Let the serpent’s heir stand by her side
And storms shall rage and kingdoms die.”
As I finished, I gazed up to where Blake now sat beside me with his arms crossed, his Mark still hidden within his fists.
I studied him, the tightness around his mouth, the flicker of something troubled in his eyes. “Have you heard of this prophecy?”
Blake shook his head, but his expression told me everything. He was thinking the same thing I was.
They’d taken Edith. It didn’t matter if I was the woman of the prophecy. The Serpent Lord believed I was.
“The demon would let her go,” I whispered, my thoughts tumbling over each other. “You could repair the Anchor and everyone would be safe.”
Blake shook his head, his energy surging wildly through the Paired bond that still linked us, frantic. “Everyone except you! Rubi, whatever you’re thinking—”
I blinked back tears as I looked up at him. I uttered the words he was silently begging me not to speak.
“If my life is the price—”
“You can’t.” It should have been a command. It sounded more like a plea.
“Blake—”
His voice cracked like a whip, sharp enough to steal the breath from my lungs. “Absolutely not, Rubi. I forbid it.”
Metal screeched around us, our weapons rattled in their sheaths.
He was beyond furious. He was rage incarnate.
And he was terrified.
“Rubi…” His voice broke. “Please.”
I wanted to rage, too. I wanted to scream and break things, but my body was aching, my muscles drained, and I didn’t want to fight with him.
“Please, Blake,” I whispered. “We can discuss it tomorrow. Just…come lie with me. Let me hold you.”
He leaned toward me as if my voice were a siren’s call he couldn’t resist.
“Please,” I whispered, opening my arms.
“Always,” he said softly, pressing a kiss to my thigh, stomach, and up, until he pressed against my heart.
The serums and healing tonics must have worked well because despite my exhaustion and my recent trials, my body responded to the weight of him. The strength of him. I tested, moving my hips beneath him, and felt no pain. He huffed a breath when he felt what I was doing.
“Rubi, you’re hurt. You can’t…We can’t—”
I cut him off with a kiss and another tilt of my hips. His body betrayed him.
The bedding was soft and warm beneath us as he shucked his pants and undressed us both with gentle care. He pressed me into the furs, whispering soft words as he took me slowly, until I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began.
Afterward, he wrapped me in his arms and we slept, him still inside me, desperate for the connection we’d failed to achieve with the Soul Pair.
It didn’t matter. My soul was his. No Marks were needed to prove that.