Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Ican’t focus on anything but the inferno spit-roasting me from the inside out. It’s like every nerve ending is dipped in acid, every muscle calcifying and disintegrating. I claw at my chest, desperate to dig out the ember before it reduces me to ashes.
“Verily? Verily, look at me!”
Falcen grabs my wrists, pinning them above my head with one hand. The other hooks under my jaw, keeping my eyes on his.
“Let it happen,” he says.
“It hurts,” I sob, stiffening against him. “Make it stop, please!”
“I wish I could.” There’s a flash of regret in his eyes, there and gone. “This is your magick. Your soul-weapon trying to break free.”
The excruciating storm crests, threatening to sweep me away. I scream again, the sound torn from my very foundation. “Make her stop! Please make her stop!”
“Her?”
Falcen’s forehead pinches before my vision goes white. Pressure tightens around my throat and wrists, Falcen putting his full weight into restraining me.
“Breathe,” he orders.
I can barely hear him over the rush in my head. The pain is fierce, blotting out everything else. But Falcen’s steady voice, the certainty of his touch, compels me to obey.
I suck in a shuddering breath, then another. Slowly, the fire in my blood recedes. It doesn’t vanish entirely, but it becomes bearable.
Falcen’s thumb strokes along my jawline, an oddly tender gesture. “Keep breathing.”
As the pain fades, other sensations filter in. The cold press of the bookshelf against my back. The coppery taste of blood on my tongue. And the all-encompassing heat of Falcen’s body aligned with mine, his thigh wedged between my legs.
I’m acutely aware of every point of contact, every place where his skin meets mine. It’s too much, too overwhelming in the wake of the torment I just endured. I need space, distance. I need...
The ember rouses, sending a fresh inferno through my body. But this time, it’s not pain that floods my senses. It’s power.
Pure, intoxicating energy that rushes through my veins like liquid lightning. It gathers in my center, shrinking tighter and tighter until I feel like I might explode once it decides to unleash.
Falcen’s eyes widen. His grip on my wrists loosens. “Verily...”
His voice is distant, barely audible over the thrumming inside my skull. But I latch onto it like an anchor in a storm.
“Let me go,” he rasps.
I stare at Falcen, uncomprehending.
Let him go? When he’s the only thing keeping me grounded and from flying apart at the seams?
But then I feel it. The darkness inside him, beating in time with my own heart. It beckons.
Without conscious thought, I reach for it. Not with my hands, but with the magick rushing through my limbs. It leaps from my skin to his, a crackling arc that makes him suck in a breath.
Falcen’s pupils blow, swallowing all that gorgeous gold and blue. A look of shocked understanding dawns on his face. “No. Don’t.”
But it’s too late. I’m diving into him, my ember seeking out the corruption that festers in his soul. It squirms when she touches it, made of scales and malice.
This is what they put inside him. I’m sure of it. That clotted ichor leaking from his eyes and mouth when he was tied to that table, decaying his veins…
This is what’s been eating away at him and poisoning him from within. The source of Falcen’s coldness, his savagery. The evil he can never quite escape.
I wrap my magick around it and pull.
Falcen shouts, his hold on me weakening. His eyes flash with a maelstrom of emotions—shock, fear, rage. But beneath it all, a glimmer of desperate hope, like he’s been waiting for someone to see this hidden rot within him, to try to draw it out.
His hands clench around my wrists hard enough to grind bone.
“Stop,” he grits out through clenched teeth. Sweat beads on his forehead and the slope of his cheeks. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
But I can’t stop. I won’t. This curse has haunted Falcen for too long, twisting him up inside. If I can remove it, maybe I can find the man who held on to me in the Void, who protected me, who I...
I grit my teeth and yank harder at the inky vines entwined with his soul. They resist, clinging to him like a vicious fungus. Falcen jerks, a hoarse shout escaping his throat.
“Release me,” he snarls, “or I swear by the Void I’ll—”
“Let me help you.” My voice comes out choked and dry. “I’m taking away the thing they put inside you—”
“It’s not that fucking simple!”
Falcen wrenches himself away from me. The sudden loss of contact makes me gasp, my ember snapping back into my body like a rubber band pulled taut and released. I slump against the bookshelf, my legs almost boneless. The world spins dizzily.
Falcen stumbles, one hand clutching his chest. His breathing is uneven, his face ashen. When he lifts his head, his eyes are wild, feverish. Molten gold threatens to obliterate the blue.
“You foolish, reckless farm girl,” Falcen rasps. “Do you have any idea what you just tried to do?”
Not even a little. All I know is that for a second, I felt the vileness inside him, the decay of his soul. And I wanted, needed, to draw it out, to free him from its corrosive grasp.
“I felt you,” he pants. “Inside me. Touching the worst parts.”
I nod, unable to vocalize. My blood feels like it’s carbonated, fizzing and popping with pent-up magick that begs for escape. My tongue darts out to wet my cracked lips. The taste of blood and sweat and something headier fills my mouth. “I was trying to help you.”
Falcen barks a laugh. “Help me? By tearing me apart from the inside?”
He takes a staggering step toward me, then another. His movements are jarring, uncoordinated, like a puppet with its strings cut.
This is Falcen laid bare, his iron control shattered. Because of me. Because of what I did to him.
I straighten, meeting his wild gaze head-on. “I was taking away the corruption.”
“And replacing it with what?” Falcen fists his hands. “You have no idea the forces you’re meddling with. The balance you could upset.”
I bristle at that, at the dismissal in his tone.
The little flame inside me ignites, a spark catching tinder. It flares hot and bright, flooding my body with liquid fire, urging me forward, toward Falcen.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” I say, my voice low and throaty, unrecognizable to my own ears.
Falcen stills at my tone. He takes a half-step back as I push off the bookshelf, but I match him, stalking forward on legs that suddenly feel steady. Invincible.
“Verily...”
There’s a warning in the way he says my name, but also a question.
“I felt it,” I murmur, closing the distance between us. “Whatever is inside you. It called to me. It wanted me.”
A muscle jumps in his cheek. “It calls to a lot of people.”
I’m close enough now to feel the stress radiating off his body, to spot the pulse beating in his throat.
My gaze rakes over him, lingering on the breadth of his shoulders, the corded muscles of his neck and forearms and the unsettled spurts of his soul-forged tattoos, like he’s trying to restrain his magick from leaping for me.
Falcen raises himself to his full height, but doesn’t back away, his eyes locked on mine, wary and wondering in equal measure.
“What are you doing?”
I tilt my head, considering him through half-lidded vision. “What I should have done a long time ago.”
My hands come up to rest on his chest, feeling the thundering of his heart beneath my palms. The heat of him bleeds through the fabric of his uniform, stoking the pyre inside me to new heights.
Falcen’s breath hitches. “This isn’t you. You managed to take some of the corruption. It—changes you.”
“Does it?” I drag my nails down his chest, relishing the way his body tenses and jumps under my touch. “Or is it simply me finally embracing what I want?”
Falcen’s eyes widen fractionally as my fingers trail lower, skimming over the hard planes of his abdomen through his tunic.
His breath comes faster, harsher. But he doesn’t stop me.
He wants you. He wants us.
My hands slide around to his back, feeling the bunched muscles there, the barely leashed strength resonating beneath his skin. Falcen remains still as a statue, only the rapid rise and fall of his chest betraying his thoughts.
I rise up on my toes, bringing my face level with his. This close, there is a clear war raging behind his eyes, lust and longing battling with mistrust and alarm. Concern over what I’m doing to him. Of how badly he wants to let go of his composure.
“We can’t,” he says, his voice scraping against his throat.
“We can,” I breathe against his lips.
And then, before he can protest further, I close the mere inches between us and seal my mouth over his.