Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Castle Vitis
Silt held Kosmina as she slept, moving not a muscle, wanting her to rest and heal.
As if it promised all the answers, he stared at the ceiling above the bed. He’d memorized every inch of that expanse, had watched as minute cracks appeared after a rumble, only for sorcery to repair them.
Despite ceding his blood streams to Kosmina over the last six days, his body grew stronger. Despite partaking, she might be . . . weakening. When they’d trained together tonight, had she lacked her usual stamina?
He refused to believe that. Her eyes weren’t getting redder, and her wound hadn’t worsened. He told himself his blood tamped down her illness and would forever.
He told himself this a lot. Seemed lying was all he did these days.
Apparently, Silt could abandon revenge. He might even be able to forsake smoke. But he could never jeopardize his own survival to go with her—even though he’d told Kosmina he would.
Why did she keep believing him?
Because a sheltered young female like her was no match for a deceiver like him.
He wasn’t the only one wearing a figurative mask. Kosmina joked about her illness, but earlier he’d seen her glance at the mirror and avert her gaze with a look of disquiet. Another time he’d caught her on the balcony, staring with foreboding at the ghoul’s mountain, visible in the distance. She’d quickly recovered and donned her stoic expression. . . .
Though everyone in the castle knew about Silt’s ruse, somehow they’d kept the secret from her, and it weighed on them all. Enti, Xodin, and even Pearl had looked guilty whenever the princess accompanied Silt on his arm to dinner.
Enti’s irises no longer swirled when she was around Kosmina. Was it because the sorceress refused to read the mind of one so doomed and betrayed? Or because Enti herself was weakening?
Weirdly, Silt’s lie weighed on him—the Oathbreaker—the most.
Each time Kosmina expressed delight with him in bed.
Whenever he forgot their situation and found himself laughing with her.
Every hour they spent training, her with her sword and him with his floundering sand, for a trip he would never make.
Would she feel embarrassed or enraged once she discovered he’d duped her? He had a lot of time to think about this. He held her whenever she slept, wanting to be there if she woke amorous or thirsty. He always sent her drifting back to sleep with a satisfied sigh, “Adham.”
Though their bed play continued to astound him, he hadn’t taken her fully. The glimmer of an oasis on the horizon grew closer, but she withheld the last of the mystery from him. . . .
Now as he held her, his musings tangled: the pleasure of her in his arms versus the torment of his thoughts. He himself slept little.
She’d told him that whenever he did, his sorcery spilled out over into the room. So why couldn’t he channel it while awake? He felt as if a dam of silt blocked his sorcery, the way he’d once choked that crystalline river. How to explode the floodgates when he was awake?
If his powers returned to full strength, could he take on a hive of ghouls and a primordial to save this female from her fate? He gazed at one of his hands, willing it to light. Sputter.
With a silent curse, he returned his gaze to the ceiling. A builder like him recognized the stress fractures above as a systemic issue. Didn’t he suffer the same?
At dinner last night, he’d asked Enti, “Have your scouts uncovered anything about those immortals who entered Nightside?” If the two had somehow survived, they might have information or unexpected powers to help with Kosmina’s situation.
“The pair escaped the revenants, but then the hellhounds descended upon them in numbers unseen before.” Seeming saddened, Enti added, “Some beings simply aren’t meant to survive out there in the wasteland.” More reason to stay here.
Kosmina sighed in her sleep and nestled more closely to him. He pressed a kiss to her hair before he’d even meant to.
Damn it, no union could be more hopeless than his and this female’s.
And yet . . .
A former Inferi didn’t belong with a princess. The King of Sand didn’t belong with a vampire who could never behold the desert sun.
And yet . . .
Even if they surmounted all the odds against them, her family would never allow them a future together.
And yet— no, no, no. This was all moving too fast. He’d known Kosmina for less than two weeks.
He’d confessed to her at least some of what he’d learned here: Dorada’s agenda.
Kosmina had said, “I’d decided I wouldn’t use the ring anyway. Short of that, what could cure an illness that can sicken even an immortal?”
“Somewhere out there, an answer exists. We’ll escape this place and comb the worlds for it. Your brother will expect you to persevere.”
Had Silt played the role of caring lover so deeply that he was becoming one?
To a point. But he still wasn’t leaving with her.
Fuck. Even he hated Silt Harea.
Waking to streams of sunlight must be like this.
A glow bathing her eyelids roused Mina. Before she opened her eyes, she luxuriated in the sorcery surrounding them, experiencing it as a warm embrace.
Adham—she couldn’t refer to him as Silt any longer—only slept an hour or so a night, but when he did, he dreamed. As his eyes darted behind his own lids, the light from his palms would illuminate the room, while the sand from his ever-present pouch levitated above them to form images from his reveries.
Tonight the quartz glittered as it formed sand spheres to populate a floating galaxy. Then the shimmering sands crested and danced like the dunes of his childhood.
No wonder he longed to reconnect with his beautiful power. Yet during the day he struggled to move even a grain. He’d told her, “Maybe I extinguished my conscious control of it for good. I’ve met other Sorceri who’d sublimated their mastery and never got it back.” But that didn’t stop him from training hard with it.
In between their mission preparations, they treated themselves to decadent bed play. He’d made no secret of wanting to claim her, but she’d somehow resisted.
They released a measure of the sexual tension between them, yet they couldn’t alleviate it. That force continued to grow, like a volcano waiting to erupt—like this realm waiting to quake.
He hadn’t pressed again for her to drink him—probably didn’t want her to discover all his many secrets — but he repeatedly dripped his lifeblood into her mouth and urged her to heal. Those streams had seemed to quell the worst impulses of her plague. She hadn’t bitten her wrist once as she’d slept. Progress!
Deep down, she knew it wasn’t a cure though, and she had moments when despair set in. But she had a goal in mind—a way to have everything she’d always wanted—and she would try to accomplish it.
Silt had told her about Dorada’s plot against Morgana, but Mina had already decided not to use the ring. With no blood cure and no wishgiver on the horizon, every night here lessened the odds of a favorable outcome. Mina needed to be out searching for a solution, but the chance of more with him beckoned her.
Though she and Adham rarely spoke about the future away from Nightside, she often pictured their existence together. What would her family and friends think of him?
Ellie and Balery would welcome him, but Mirceo, well versed in decadence himself, would never bless whatever was between her and Adham. And Mina feared her uncles would react . . . violently.
If she presented Adham as her male, Viktor would give a bellow and target the sorcerer’s head for a mounting on his wall. Coolheaded Trehan would tell her something like, “Your aim in this area lacked accuracy; recalibrate,” then strike Adham. Stelian would say nothing, drink more, then secretly hunt the sorcerer as if he were a trespasser across Dacia’s boundary.
She knew this, yet her feelings for Adham continued to deepen—despite all the currents she’d detected around him. Was he shady? Very. But Mina came from a land of shadows. She could handle shady.
She glanced down at her chest. Her vampiress heart beat for him alone. He’s mine.
A wave of pain made her arm ache. She could imagine an existence with Silt all she liked, but unless they escaped, her existence would end. She no longer believed her brother would arrive to save the day. He would have been here by now. Her worry that he would reveal himself to humans remained, but she figured the Gaolers had stopped sending new prisoners here—for a reason.
Mina had heard others in the castle whisper that two or three immortals used to arrive every night. None had made it here over the entire last week, and that absence seemed to be affecting the sorceress and all the beings here.
Any laughter in the halls felt forced, the sounds of pleasure rote. Even as morale was abysmal, everyone pretended otherwise.
Uneasy, she lost herself in the sand eddying overhead. In time, she drifted to sleep once more, hoping to dream about Adham showing her a moonlit desert.
Instead, nightmares arose of leaping atop him, wrestling to get to his jugular. Her fangs dripped, sharper than they’d ever been. She snapped them greedily.
He yelled, “Kosmina!” trying to startle her out of her bloodlust. “Kosmina!”
When she opened her eyes again, she was atop Silt, her nightmare a reality.