Chapter 10
Ten
Iscoot closer to Falcen, my palms hovering uncertainly over his ravaged chest. After wasting precious time pep-talking myself into just doing it already, I lay my hands on his distressingly cool, clammy skin.
Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and reach for that precarious ember inside me.
It responds sluggishly at first, reluctant and tired.
But gradually, it builds, spreading honey-sweet warmth through my veins.
The magick gathers in my palms, wisps of light flowing along my forearms.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Channel the energy. Direct it to knit torn flesh and mend cracked bone.
Falcen sucks in a sharp breath, and I take that as a good sign, even if he still doesn’t wake up.
Heal grumpy man?
Yes, I answer the foreign voice in my head, not entirely female, but not entirely male, either.
Beneath my palms, Falcen’s tendons undulate under his skin, muscles and sinew knitting back together. The sight is so gruesome that I squeeze my eyes shut, but continue to hold my hands out.
Falcen hisses, his body going rigid. But as the seconds tick by, as my magick seeps into his wounds, he gradually relaxes, losing that ragged, wet rattle that frightened me so badly.
I risk a peek through my lashes. His gorgeous musculature is almost back to normal, with defined abdominals I could trace with my tongue, and that sharp, carved V leading down…
Sudden lust crashes through me, dizzying in its intensity. I sway, white spots crowding my vision, but I don’t dare stop. Not until every last wound is sealed shut.
Distantly, I feel Falcen’s hand come up to hold my wrist.
“Veilbreaker,” he says, voice rough but clearer than before.
I ignore him, pouring more of myself into the healing. Just a little more. Just until I’m certain he won’t bleed out in this dank cave and leave me in the middle of nowhere.
I need him to fuck me.
A strange voltage flows through me in staccato tremors, each one crashing into Falcen and illuminating his soul-glyphs.
They blaze to life across his bare chest. Not tattoos, I realize now, but scars.
Dozens of raised silver lines, carved in repeating patterns I don’t recognize.
Circles broken by slashes. Vertical cuts crossed by horizontal ones.
They trail down his stomach in deliberate rows, disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers, and everywhere my magic pulses, they glow from within like veins filled with blue fire.
But beneath the glow, I see something else.
His soul.
It burns at the center of his chest—golden, fierce, and blinding, just like the others I’ve seen.
But it’s not alone. Dark tendrils coil around it, slick and slow-moving, like living serpents.
Yet they’re not attacking his soul. They cling to it.
Wrapped so tightly I can’t tell where he ends and they begin.
One of them shifts. Rises away from the others. Like it senses me near.
Spread legs?
A tiny, sobering part of me is mortified at such a question coming from inside me, even if it isn’t quite me … but it’s one I don’t want to deny.
What would his skin taste like? Would he be hot or cool as he ravished me? Rough or soft? Imagine kissing those lips, arching beneath him, and trembling as he slides his cock in…
“Verily!”
Falcen’s sharp voice snaps me back to the present. I blink hazily, struggling to focus on his face. When did it get so close to mine?
He cups my cheeks, his eyes mirroring mine. Dark and hungry. “You need to stop.”
I blink rapidly, trying to clear the lust-addled fog. But it only seems to intensify the throbbing between my thighs. Falcen’s hands scorch my skin, his calluses igniting sparks across my face.
“I can’t,” I moan, leaning into his touch. “I need...”
That magickal voltage rushes through me again, stronger this time. It reaches for Falcen, twining around the black threads woven through his soul.
Strange, I think. I didn’t notice anything like this in the other souls I’ve come across.
A queer resonance hums between us, my light to his dark, pushing and pulling at each other.
Falcen’s pupils blow, eclipsing his stormy blue. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, transfixed by the sight of our souls merging between us, blurring the line where I end and he begins.
It’s thrilling, this synchronicity. It feels ... right. Like two halves of a whole finally slotting into place.
But there’s an undercurrent of corruptness, too. A dissonant note that jangles like a warning bell in the back of my mind.
HURT.
My chin drops, and I cry out at the sudden, pained scream from my little ember. The dark filaments in Falcen’s soul sharpen in defense, eager to consume mine.
They taste of ashes and bone-deep chill, a yawning void that wants to embrace me whole.
I wrench away, gasping. The connection between us snaps like a taut wire, the backlash stinging my skin. Falcen grunts, his face contorting into a grimace.
“I’m sorry,” I stutter, my voice scraped and shaking. “I didn’t mean to...”
But what exactly did I do? Peer into the depths of his soul?
Brush against a wickedness I have no business touching?
The memory of those snake-like tails slithering within him sends revulsion down my spine, even as some traitorous part of me yearns to feel them again.
To let them curl around my own essence and pull me under.
Falcen rubs his temples, though whether it’s in denial or to clear his head, I can’t say.
“It’s not your fault,” he says.
Isn’t it, though? I’m the one who insisted on healing him, on pushing myself past my limits. And now I’ve gone and done ... whatever that was.
Nox below, as if our situation isn’t complicated enough.
I can still feel it, the kinship humming beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. It pumps in time with the quiver between my legs, a needy, insistent rhythm that scatters my thoughts and boils my blood.
As soon as I notice the tent in his pants, my mouth waters.
Falcen’s hand shoots out, capturing my wrist again. For a breathless moment, we’re both still, the air between us charged with possibility. With a low growl, he pulls me against his bare chest.
His groin rubs against mine, teasing and demanding. I respond immediately, pent-up desire exploding in a rush of heat and need. Falcen watches it ripple across my face. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, tasting of blood and something forbidden, perfect.
I moan, pressing closer, thirsting for more contact. Falcen’s hands roam my body, leaving flame trails in their wake. He grips my hips, grinding me against the hard length of him, and stars burst behind my eyelids.
But as the kiss deepens, my blood runs cold. My energy begins to drain away, pulled into Falcen’s endless hunger. Fear doesn’t claim me this time, though. No, a perverse thrill races through me. The danger only heightens my arousal.
“No!” Falcen shoves me back, hard enough that I sprawl backward onto the cave floor.
“What—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“This is why Soulren don’t get close to anyone,” he snarls as he rises, his voice rough with self-loathing.
Sadly for him, whatever it was that has me in a lust-spiral doesn’t relent. “You seem to frequent brothels just fine. How am I any different from fucking?”
He throws a hand up against the cave wall, his shoulders slumping. He responds tiredly, “I was never at the brothel.”
That gives me pause. If he wasn’t at the brothel, then where was he?
Desire nags at me, like an itch just out of reach.
“Where were you, then?” I ask softly.
He surprises me by answering. “Hunting.”
“Hunting what?”
“Something I sensed beyond the town’s wards. Void-touched.” He finally looks at me. “It’s the only act that quiets the hunger. Killing things that are corrupted.”
I think of the black strands around his soul, slick and clinging. The way his kiss pulled at a vital part of me.
“You were starving. The hounds’ dark souls weren’t enough,” I realize. “That’s why you left the inn so suddenly.”
His shoulders tense, and I know I’m right.
“How long can you go? Without feeding?”
“Now? Long enough to get you to the academy.” He pushes off the wall, finally turning. His face is carved from the same stone that surrounds us, but his eyes are hollow.
“Falcen…” My voice trails off, uncertain. “What I felt when I was healing you, there was something inside you. Dark, and cold, and…”
And suddenly, I’m no longer in the cave.
Instead, I’m standing in a dank chamber, the air thick with the stench of death and decay. Flames dance from iron braziers along the walls, casting a play of light and dark that makes me want to shrink into myself.
A stone altar sits in the center of the room, stained rust-brown. And there, sprawled across its flat surface, is a body.
Falcen.
Naked, his dark hair damp with sweat, and his arms and legs splayed out and chained. His head lolls to the side, and his eyes catch and hold mine. Or so I think. Once a vibrant blue, they now stare sightlessly toward me, glassy and dull and so close to death.
A cloaked figure stands over him, holding a wickedly sharp athame that’s carving the glyphs into his skin—