Chapter 38 Dayn
DAYN
The recoil is like a physical violence. My consciousness slams back into my body with the force of a thunderclap, the sterile gray void replaced by the scent of stone and smoke.
My hand is still on her neck. The skin is warm, the pulse beneath it steady, but the connection—the golden thread that let me follow her into that soul-rending abyss—is gone. I had no choice but to let go.
A curse, vile and ancient, coils in my gut. Esther. That meddling, power-hungry ghost. And Anees—that scheming, patient bastard—whose timing is so impeccably infuriating it could only be born of a millennium of treachery.
Blythe is staring at me, her face pale, her eyes wide with a nervousness that has nothing to do with the trial. The chamber is trembling, dust sifting from the ceiling. A distant, percussive rumbling vibrates through the floor, a sound I know in my bones. Dragonfire.
My thumb glides over the skin at Esme’s nape, and for just a moment the world contracts around the sensation.
The give of her skin, the stuttering pulse beneath it.
.. I want everything else to fall silent.
I want the void, the fire, the chaos above us to disappear until there’s only her, under my hands, breathing for me.
I want to scoop her up, carry her to the deepest, most fortified hole in this gods-forsaken institute and stand guard over it myself.
But the chamber shudders again, and I know with sickening certainty that right now, the safest place for her physical body is here, in this magically shielded tomb, with the old warden. Up there is hell.
But I cannot leave her like this. Not to that ghost. Not while I go to war.
Before Blythe can react, I move. I snatch up the ceremonial dagger from the altar and draw it across the pad of my thumb. Blood, thick and dark and flecked with the gold of my bloodline, wells instantly.
“What are you doing?” Blythe’s voice is sharp, her body tensing to intervene.
I don’t look at her. I don’t need to. “Touch me, Warden,” I say, the words a low, lethal vibration in the trembling air, “and I will burn this chamber to slag with you in it.”
She is smart enough to freeze.
Gently, I slide one arm beneath Esme’s shoulders and the other under her knees, lifting her from the cold floor. She is a weightless thing in my arms, all sharp angles and fragile strength, her head lolling against my shoulder. I cradle her closer, the scent of her a desperate anchor in the chaos.
I sit in the Warden’s empty chair and bring my bleeding thumb to Esme’s lips. They are parted slightly, pale. “Drink, my Esme,” I whisper, the words for her soul, wherever it is trapped. I brush the bead of blood against her lower lip, smearing a golden-black line across the skin.
For a moment, nothing. Then her brows draw together, a slight, disturbed frown creasing her forehead. A flicker of struggle from within. Her lips part further, and on pure instinct, she latches onto my thumb.
The sensation is a lightning strike to the base of my spine.
A soft, wet pulling that is both innocent and devastatingly intimate.
It is the most exquisite torture I have ever known.
She has wanted this, craved it, and now I give it to her while her mind is a battlefield I cannot reach.
I can feel the soft scrape of her teeth, the gentle, rhythmic suction that speaks of a need deeper than consciousness.
The innocent reflex nearly undoes me. I want her awake for this.
I want to see the desperate hunger in her eyes, to feel her hands in my hair as she takes what is hers.
But this is not for pleasure. This is a weapon. A tether. An anchor of my fire in the heart of her grandmother’s ice. I let her drink until the small frown on her face smooths, until I feel the hum of my own power begin to circulate within her, a quiet counter-melody to the trial’s discordant song.
I hope it’s enough. I pray to all the gods that it will be the difference between her soul returning whole or in pieces.
Carefully, I stand and lower her into the chair in my place. My thumb still bleeds, the edges of her lips still faintly marked from it. I look at her one last time, a warrior asleep on the eve of the apocalypse, then turn and walk out of the tomb without a backward glance.
The hell above is waiting. And I am going to give it a king’s welcome.