Chapter 45
ELIVANDER
What is wrong with me? Besides being cursed and an eternal mistake…
Something is really fucking wrong. And it’s getting worse by the hour.
Yesterday it was a buzzing inside my blood, an annoyance I couldn’t wrap my head around.
It was enough to make me want to take my knife to the throat of anyone who breathed in my direction.
But that was only the start of it. Unimaginable images have taken over my thoughts, acts of violence, death by my hand. And I crave it all.
To top it off, I’m needier than ever before.
The urges are stronger than the desire that pounded through me when Kelter and Never were first linking, which made her sleepy state over the last day borderline torturous.
If I can’t have her again soon, I’ll end up killing someone. But now she’s awake. And in my lap.
I only lasted seconds trying to keep my hands off her.
We sit alone in the shadowy woods—except for the corpses—chest to chest, my legs folded under us, hers wrapped around my waist. Light tremors in the ground replace the sudden wind she brought on.
She doesn’t feel them yet. But I do. They match her heart, our hearts.
She looks up at me with such defiance in her eyes, refusing to be afraid even though my hands are begging to take a life. Hers, at the moment.
What are you all panicky about? Kelter asks, easily pushing past the wall I try to keep up. Compared to my shoddy attempts at privacy, he has better control of accessing the connection… and blocking it.
The urge to kill floods me, and I can’t tell if it’s because he pisses me off to the point of wanting to strangle him, or because it’s his urge I feel. I drop all efforts to keep him out and open my mind to him, exposing myself completely. What are you doing to me?
His tone shifts. Get away from her.
Stop hiding shit and tell me.
“Maybe you should be afraid of me,” Never says, toying with my curls as though I have no desire to crunch her bones up and watch her last breath, which is at complete odds with every other part of me. She reaches down to pluck a blade of wildgrass and pokes it into my chest.
Put her down and run before you can’t stop yourself, Kelter begs.
I can control myself if I know what I’m dealing with.
I shove Kelter into the most unreachable corners of my mind when he doesn’t answer. Jerk. I don’t need him, but blocking him fully is impossible. He’s wound around every thought, his feelings and urges always present. I still try.
Then I take out my knife. Evening moonlight reflects off the blade.
Not taking my eyes from hers, I align the tip below her ear and drag down and down her neck, slowly splitting the surface of her skin.
A beautiful red line chases the steel. Her fingers dig into my bicep, and she shivers and rolls her head to the side, inviting more.
If only she knew what goes on in my head, the hundreds and thousands of men who came before me all chiming in with feelings of their own.
“You bleed so perfectly for me,” I say. So raw and real. So alive. I could take every drop.
She exhales, melting into me, sealing our skin together with her warm blood. Her cheek moves against my chest with her whisper. “You remind me I’m still alive, even after all the deaths.” The ground beats below us.
“I don’t know where life ends and death begins,” I confess, “but I know my life didn’t start until I met you.”
She pushes back to look at me and smiles, her eyes bright. The moons mirror the light she gives off, illuminating the night with an indigo hue as calming as it is intense. “I may have a thing for fucked-up men. One in particular.”
No, you don’t. It’s my fault for saying things like that, for revealing the truth.
I clamp down tight on her heart with my control and snip all threads of affection.
Not in hundreds of thousands of lifetimes have I found a heart like hers, one so fierce and stubborn that it would beat on with mine through death.
The darkness returns, the moons dimming as the light drains from her eyes. I scrape the edge of my blade down her neck, smearing the red line and capturing new drops of blood. She’s deathly still as I speak, steel to her throat. “I may be the worst thing to ever happen to you.”
Only her lips move, but the stars rearrange in the sky. “Yet I still want more.”
I lick her blood off the smooth metal and tuck the knife away before I drive it through her heart. I can already see the gush of red, feel the weakened last beat.
This has to stop.
I tell you to run and you put a blade to her neck? Kelter explodes, blasting a hole through the barricade I built.
His anger spikes my blood. Running is not an option, coward.
It only gets worse!
What does? I yell into his mind.
Fine, he seethes. I blocked you out when I told her, but I’ll tell you now, for her sake. Our mother sent me away because I crave connection—
What does that mean? How did I not overhear this?
Let me finish. I crave connection in the form of taking a life, he says slowly. Being in Caldera dampened it through my childhood. I thought coming to Sonnet and linking would fix everything, but it’s only stronger.
You’re passing me your cravings to kill? How could you not warn me about this? My grip tightens on Never, my arm pulling her closer, my fingers stabbing into her side. She hums with pleasure. My own demigod… she has no idea what I could do.
Because I have ways to control it. Kill, fuck or drink fresh blood, Kelter says, as if every fucker and their mother had the same problem. I had it handled.
You spent days in a room with Never hiding that you wanted to kill her?
It wasn’t as strong then. I had blood to hold me over.
So what’s the problem now? Zandrite’s low on blood?
Can’t find another Half Link in the Underbroke that can stand the sight of you?
Not my problem. I kiss her throat, right up the line I made.
Her blood coats my lips. The evening around us is distant.
The trees feel as far away as the moons, the cold air non-existent.
She’s all I can see or feel, the only life I can breathe… the only death I crave.
Fuck.
She puts a hand to the back of my head, another on my side, pulling herself closer. “Eli.”
The desire in her voice goes straight to my cock.
And into the ground, apparently. It rattles.
She must feel it now, because she startles and holds me tighter.
I lean her back and lick her neck, slipping my tongue back and forth, tasting her.
I try to ignore the way I want to cover her mouth, her nose, the way I want her to squirm until she goes limp in my arms—those aren’t my desires. They’re from Kelter’s sick mind.
His rage slams through me, and the wet exploration of my tongue on every inch of her neck, the devouring kisses, end in an instant. I bite her throat. The ground cracks open next to us. Her delicate skin breaks, enough that I taste her perfect blood again.
She cries out, more of a needy moan than anything else, then bites my shoulder and claws at my face in retaliation. She’s the only one capable of penetrating my skin with her bare hands. Her nails easily rip open my cheek, and she lets her magic loose. “You sweet fucker.”
I have to smile at that, even as I stiffen and groan, pain ravishing every godsdamn nerve until she pulls back her attack.
She smears my blood over my cheek in slow circles as we stare at each other.
Our heavy breaths overpower the sounds of the woods around us.
She leans closer and closer, moving so slowly that I’m frozen, waiting to see what she’ll do.
Her lips reach my neck, smacking kiss after kiss, one side to the other.
I don’t know what to do with the softness of it, the tenderness.
Finding someone to be with would not be an issue if I weren’t chained to a wall in Zandrite’s chamber! Kelter yells, finally working up the balls to voice the fury that led to my own outburst toward Never—my teeth sinking into her throat.
I take in the fresh trickle of blood on her neck. Look what you made me do. Not that she minded…
I thought you had control? Kelter accuses.
Of myself, not you. And you’ve been lying. You got yourself locked up again and need saving?
No. His alarm punches my chest. And I hate the way it makes me care. Don’t come for me. She’s not safe around me. Or you. He sighs. We’re not good for her, Eli.
We’re going back to the Underbroke to kill Zandrite once the others are back and we have a plan, and we’ll save your pathetic ass too.
“What do I taste like?” Never whispers into my skin. Her voice carries over my entire body, the touch of her soft lips rolling through me. She’s a seductive little thing.
“Like you’re mine” I say, touching any bit of her I can, finding it harder to control my strength with every inch I cover.
She’ll be fine without me, he insists.
She would, but… maybe I’d rather my brother live. I mean to only think it to myself, but nothing is my own anymore. A warm rush comes from him and wraps around my heart like a serum gone bad. I didn’t mean that, you sentimental sap.
I know, he lies, for my sake. Let her go, brother, before you slip up and trigger the second half of the curse. I don’t want to lose her.
I will never let her go.
Dammit, Eli. Then at least satisfy yourself so you don’t give in and kill her. The blood helps too.
I slide my hands inside her shirt and cup her soft tits. That, I can do.