Chapter 19 Rune #2
It was too much.
Too fast.
No!
The word screamed in my skull as my body buckled.
Fear swallowed all rational thought. Basilisks were strong. We were resilient. We could heal from almost any injury, but not this. Not decapitation. That was shadow demon territory.
My head was barely hanging onto my neck. My magic faltered, failing to catch on the raw, gaping edges.
I couldn’t swallow, and breathing felt impossible. Tendons popped like snapping ropes, so loud they filled my ears.
My jaw slackened as my vision doubled, then tunneled black at the edges.
I slammed my eyes shut as genuine fear struck me.
Please don’t let this be the last thing I see, I thought to the Fates.
“Rune!” Dimitri’s scream tore from somewhere far away. “No!”
As I cracked my eyes open, he was already in front of me, air whizzing around him from how fast he’d run.
His hand shot out and cracked the siren’s neck with a wet snap, and his foot sent her body skidding across the cavern floor.
“Fuck, Rune.” He wrenched the sword from my throat in one clean, horrible pull.
My vision blotted out.
I was in Dimitri’s arms before I even knew I was falling.
He caught me easily. “Cover us!” he shouted.
Around us, our team closed in, a tight circle of bodies and magic keeping the rest of the sirens away. Even Brynn fought beside Mara, protecting us.
The warm tingle of my magic knitted my throat back together. It had healed me slower than it had ever worked before.
My watch blinked red as it pinged three times.
MAGIC RESERVES: 11%
“Fates, Rune, you scared the shit out of me,” Dimitri’s voice cracked, raw and frantic. His fingers smoothed over my throat, thumbs checking the now-together skin.
Everywhere he touched sent my nerves alight with desire.
“Thank you,” I croaked, my voice shredded and wet-sounding. Fear and adrenaline pumped through me, making the world tilt and shiver. “If you hadn’t—”
“But I did,” he cut me off, eyes burning red with panic and something else hidden behind it.
I blinked past him, and the world tunneled to a single, lethal point.
Dimitri’s back was wide open as Brynn was knocked to the side by a male siren. Another siren had slipped through her gap.
The siren held a blade heading for Dimitri’s ribs, angled in a perfect thrust to pierce his heart.
It glinted wrong.
It was enchanted, maybe?
Or something else.
I didn’t think.
I moved.
I slammed into him hard enough to shove him away, twisting us mid-motion.
“Rune, what—” He stumbled back, eyes wide.
Hot-white pain roared through me again, somehow worse this time.
The sword carved through my reinforced uniform as if it were a simple fabric, splitting through the enchantments with a single, clean rip.
Tourmalyke.
Of course it was tourmalyke.
The blade plunged deep into my back, the icy edge sliding clean through until I saw its crystal tip burst out of my stomach.
My magic screamed.
The tourmalyke’s effect was immediate. My venom glands spasmed, leaking uncontrollable drops that hissed against the stone floor. The taste of copper and rot flooded my mouth as my immunity was stripped again.
This wasn’t right.
Heat seared outward from the wound, spilling down my legs through the suit, sticky and wet as I clawed for the blade.
The siren yanked it out with a vicious twist.
Blood poured from my mouth in a hot flood as I stumbled forward.
Ominous's shadows snapped behind me with a sound like tearing cloth.
The siren’s head separated from her shoulders and rolled across the ground. Her body collapsed.
“No!” Dimitri’s scream shattered something inside me. His face was a mask of pure horror, fangs bared, red eyes burning with a feral edge I’d never seen in him before. “Rune!”
I tried to answer, but blood bubbled in my throat, and the only sound that escaped was a wet, broken gurgle.
The tourmalyke’s effects began to fade as my immunity came back. It was a small, bitter blessing. I felt my venom pathways coming back under my command.
I coughed, spraying red onto the stone just before Dimitri dropped to his knees, catching me and pulling me tight against his chest.
His hands trembled where they held me, but they never let go. “Why—why would you—” His voice fractured.
“I couldn’t let you be stabbed,” I wheezed.
“That was a tourmalyke blade,” he whispered, and the simulation shook. “Wasn’t it?”
“Definitely.” Each heartbeat slammed a fresh wave of agony against my ribs. My vision grayed at the edges.
“It’s gone!” Ominous shouted, shadows curling. “The sword that broke your uniform—it’s gone!”
I excreted a healing potion into my mouth, and I swallowed hard.
Warmth tried to bloom over the wound, knitting flesh, but it was weak, too slow.
My hands shook.
Everything around me tilted. My skin felt like it was sliding off my bones.
“Rune,” Dimitri said with emphasis, and I forced my eyes open again, not even realizing I’d closed them, because his hands were cupping my face. His pupils were blown wide, and his breath was almost more ragged than mine. “What do I do?”
“Venom,” I rasped. “Yours. Please. If you can’t…if you don’t want—” My lungs rattled as a wave of dizziness hit me.
He didn’t even blink.
He caught my wrist, eyes locked on mine. Need and fear sparked between us.
“Tell me to stop if—” His voice broke. “If it hurts.”
A broken laugh spilled out of me. “Your venom doesn’t hurt me, overachiever.”
His mouth lowered, and his fangs slid into my skin.
Pain spiked high and sharp, and then pleasure crashed over it. My magic seized what he gave and drank it, his venom fueling my reserves and my magic funneling through my veins, pushing my healing into overdrive.
My breath rushed back into me so hard stars exploded behind my eyelids.
A moan escaped me before I could stop it, my back arching into him as his venom burned, soothed, and healed me.
My watch beeped again.
MAGIC RESERVES: 63%
I sagged against him, trembling, every nerve still singing from pain and his venom and the terrifying, electric knowledge that I’d almost died, actually died, and that he’d been the one holding me when I didn’t.
He pulled his fangs free and licked his lips of my blood. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said in a relieved whoosh of breath, but need flooded me worse than any aphrodisiac I’d ever had.
He helped me up, and it took everything in my power not to rub up against him.
Cora broke the surface with the relic in her hand. It was a pale shell, no bigger than her palm, webbed with hairline cracks. “Got it!”
Zara surfaced beside her, blinking water out of her eyes.
“Everyone close!” Ominous shouted, his words bouncing off the walls. “Now!”
“I can’t!” Mara was separated from our group by the rest of the sirens. Her wings expanded from her back, and she leapt into the air, flying out of the cove. “I’ll meet you all back at—”
A water-torpedo punched up from the pool, exploding like a harpoon from the ocean itself.
The blast hurled Zara and Cora out of the water, their bodies slamming wetly onto the stone beside us.
But the water kept arching upward.
Mara was in the air, wings spread wide as she glided almost out of the cove.
But it was too late; water hit her dead on.
There were sounds that branded themselves into the tissue of your brain, sounds no spell or enchantment could scrub away.
This was one of them.
The tearing shriek of her flesh splitting, the wet crack as her spine caved under pressure, and the impossible, sickening rip as her body came apart in two.
She didn’t scream.
The simulation didn’t censor it. Blood misted down in the cove like rain. Both halves of her hit the sea with separate hollow splashes that reverberated through my chest, like my ribcage had been struck with a hammer.
I couldn’t move as raw shock riddled through me.
A mouse scurried close and jumped onto Zara’s leg, which I only passively noticed was Jonas.
My body felt glued to the stone, staring at the air where Mara had been only seconds ago. My throat closed, bile burning its way up.
“We have to go!” Ominous barked, his shadows swallowing the rest of us.
Dimitri’s hand found my lower back, and the cavern shredded around us until the simulator’s four walls were around us again.
Seven green words popped up above us, saying the same thing.
PASS.
All of us were looking around the simulator in confusion.
Only one had a red FAIL word above them; Jonas.
Drecken formed in front of me and cupped my face. “Are you uninjured?”
“I am now,” I rasped, leaning into him as my desire spiked from his touch. “Didn’t you have that—”
“Meeting with the human liaison and our communication specialist?” he finished with a raised brow. “After what I felt from our bond, that can wait.”
“Dimitri saved me,” I murmured softly. “The simulation is fucked up. Can you look into it?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“I’ll be okay,” I promised. “That meeting’s important. Go. Dimitri’s here.”
His blue eyes flicked toward Dimitri. “That’s not comforting.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Dimitri promised.
He hesitated. “I’ll tell Jesper you’re okay. He called me as soon as your pain burst through the bond. He was on a mission but is rushing back.”
“Go,” I urged him but tip-toed and pressed my lips to his.
Desire and attraction bloomed low in my abdomen as I moaned against his lips.
He lingered, kissing me hard, before vanishing into a portal below him.
“Mara has been eliminated,” Jarvins said gravely, ignoring Drecken’s intrusion. “Unfortunately, it’s common to lose aspiring agents at this point in training. Her body has already been relocated for her family.”
My body warred with the desire to puke and be fucked from Dimitri’s venom.
It was a horrible cross of emotions, to be honest.
“That quick?” Jonas squeaked.
Jarvins looked at me. “And you were stabbed twice. You almost died.”
“Yes.” My body was louder than my voice.
“You understand what being an agent means, so why were you turning yourself into a pincushion?” He frowned, and it didn’t look like he was scolding me. He wanted an answer. “Only tourmalyke can break the suit. How did yours rip?”
“The simulation glitched on me twice. Like I told Drecken, the simulator is being fucked with.” My spine straightened as heat waves washed over me from Dimitri’s venom. “You should watch the feed. The siren flickered. Additionally, there was a tourmalyke sword that impaled me and vanished.”
He didn’t bristle, but he frowned. “I’ll review the feed and bring this to the attention of your father. I’m sure Drecken will also keep tabs. Jonas, don’t be a coward, or I’ll expel you. Everyone else, great job. Keep your watches with your suit. Dismissed.”
Dimitri was beside me, and he was the only thing keeping me grounded right now. “Rune,” he whispered. “Can I take you to one of your other mates?”
The softness of his tone cracked me. “Please.”
He swooped me up carefully, and my body buzzed with need. My arousal soaked the air.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go with her?” Brynn interjected, annoyingly. “Don’t you have a mate?”
I flinched like it physically struck me.
The pain in my chest doubled.
“Shut the fuck up, Brynn, oh my Fates,” Cora hissed under her breath.
Brynn’s mouth dropped as she rounded on Cora.
“I can take you both to Slater,” Ominous said, and his shadows wrapped around us, bringing us into the academy’s corridors, in front of Slater. “Here’s your girl and a vampire.” He winked, disappearing into the darkness.
Slater’s gaze snapped to my face, then to Dimitri, who was holding me tightly. “Put her down,” he growled, his demon form seeping out.
Dimitri didn’t argue. He set me on my feet slowly, hands lingering a moment before Slater slid under my arm and lifted me up. “This is the last time I will reap the benefits of your venom,” he told Dimitri. “If you’re serious about her, you take full responsibility for your bite.”
Dimitri flinched.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I rasped and hated the wobble in my voice. “Not this time. I asked him to. Please, Slater, help.”
Slater’s glare didn’t soften, but he held me closer. “Always, venom baby,” he muttered, mouth near my hair. “Dimitri, take me to her room.”
Delirium set in on me.
We walked across campus, but Darian stepped in front of us just as we reached the house.
“Rune, you smell like my cousin, that crazy fucking warlock, and the vampire, and you’re horny. I can smell it. It’s never smelled like that before. And now, a chaos demon has you. What the fuck is wrong with you?” he roared, shifting into his icedrake form in an instant.
Ice glittered around his massive icedrake form, but I couldn’t focus on him.
Snakey grew to the size of a basilisk and hissed at him.
“I will put you down,” Slater growled.
Snakey struck, biting his leg.
Darian shifted back, roaring as his scales formed and dissipated from the pain of the bite. “You fucking demon!”
Jesper ran over to us from the wayfaer crystal, and my bond pulled toward him.
“Drecken called me. He can’t get out of something happening with the council right now.
He was scolded by your mom for leaving until he told her he felt your pain the same as I did.
By the way, your parents know about your mating with Drecken now.
I got here as fast as I could. What happened? ”
“Simulation glitch. Stabbed twice. Venom. Need Slater,” I mumbled, desire burning my skin.
I needed to be naked with Slater’s cock inside of me.
“I’ll handle Darian, honey drop.” Jesper’s gaze softened on me before flicking to Slater. “Take care of her.”
“Plan to.” He winked, but it was stiff.
Jesper growled and grabbed Darian by the collar of his suit and dragged him away as Darian groaned in pain.
Dimitri led Slater to my room in the house. He pivoted, opened my door, and stood aside so Slater could carry me over the threshold.
“I’m sorry,” Dimitri whispered before locking the door and pulling it shut as he stepped out.
“Tell me what you need,” Slater murmured.
“You,” I moaned. “Fuck, Slater. I need you.”