Chapter Twenty
“I REALLY DON’T THINK WE SHOULD.” Lucien’s soft voice sounded croaky and gruff as we sat cross-legged facing each other on the bed.
We’d woken a little while ago—lying side by side like twin corpses. It’d taken us an embarrassingly long time to get up the energy to sit upright, and an even longer time to get up the courage to try to eat, even though we knew what would happen if we did.
My head throbbed in time with my sluggish heartbeat. Every breath was too shallow, and my bones ached with a deep, grinding pain that had nothing to do with the frequency weapon, and everything to do with the fact that they’d drained me within an inch of my life.
I finally had firsthand knowledge of how Lucien felt the entire time he’d lived at Cinderkeep.
My eyes met his and my heart fell all over again.
No wonder he’d acted so warily around me back then.
I’d been utterly oblivious to how much I’d meant to him or how my arrival had given him such hope. All while that hope had tortured him.
“You look as bad as I feel.” I smiled, fearing it came out more like a grimace.
He rubbed his neck self-consciously. His skin didn’t hold a single glimmer of golden fire. His eyes no hint of a scarlet ring.
We didn’t speak as our gaze drifted to the silver tray loaded with food on the white coverlet. Food clearly chosen for blood replenishment with thick slices of rare steak, honey-glazed pastries, dark chocolate, orange segments, grapes, and watermelon juice boxes.
Sugar and iron and salt. All things that my body absolutely craved.
Every instinct told me to dive in face first, but...we stared at the feast like it might bite us instead. We already knew what would happen if we ate but...
Bracing myself, I plucked a juicy grape off its stem.
“Do you think it was a fluke what happened back in Brimstone or will we truly never be able to eat or drink again?” My empty stomach clenched as I rolled the grape on my palm.
“Because the thought of never being able to enjoy another meal is too sad to contemplate.”
“I don’t know,” Lucien gruffed. “I hope not.” His eyes narrowed on the feast. “We should’ve died from thirst by now if we were normal.
However...after we tripped into the dreamscape, the hunger pangs stopped.
They’re back now though...” His exhausted eyes heated.
“Along with that insatiable need to be with you.”
I blushed as matching lust kindled between my legs.
The longer we were awake, the more intense the desire became, but...
I felt ridiculous wanting sex when we could barely sit upright.
It didn’t make sense, yet I couldn’t deny I needed him on a deeper level than just an orgasm.
“Are you saying sex has replaced food? That we could heal ourselves like last time if we got a little...frisky?”
He chuckled, wincing as he did his best not to move. His constant agony from the numerous broken bones throbbed down the bond.
“I’m sorry you’re in so much pain,” I whispered. “Even if we could find our way back into that snowy, dreamy place, you’re not up to doing anything—let alone making love to me.”
“I could be one heartbeat away from a grave, and I would still have the energy to pleasure you, Rook.” He tensed as more pain echoed. “And...I actually think we’re being driven to have sex because it might be the only thing keeping us alive right now.”
“Really?”
“Why else is my entire soul craving you?”
“Because you lost your virginity late in life and want to make up for lost time?”
His eyes narrowed, not appreciating my little joke. “Or because the moment I slipped inside you, you became the only thing I needed to exist. Come here.” He groaned as he lifted his hand then dropped it back to the covers. “Let’s experiment.”
“And they say romance is dead.” I smiled but my heart hurt for him.
He smirked. “Alright, strip off your clothes, lie on your back, and let me have my wicked way with you before I pass out again. That work?”
“Behave, my fluttering heart.” My fingers strayed to the filthy nightgown. “How could I refuse such a wooing?”
“You can’t.” He winked, paying for it with another wince.
Holding out my hand, I wriggled my fingers. “Touch me.”
His eyebrow rose but he didn’t ask questions. We shivered as our fingers grazed and—
Nothing.
I slouched in disappointment. “I hoped the second we touched the illusion would appear.” Sighing, I forced my blurry gaze to sweep around the bedroom we’d been locked in, searching for a hint on how to enter a dimension I wasn’t entirely sure was real.
At least this prison was better than the last one.
The smell of old money clung to the brass light fixtures and damask wallpaper. Heavy crimson curtains were half-drawn across the huge windows, allowing meagre moonlight to slip inside.
Night again.
How long had we been unconscious this time? Just a few hours or a few days?
Clenching against misery, Lucien reached for a watermelon juice box.
Stabbing its tiny plastic straw into the silver hole, he flashed me a wry smile.
“If we can’t figure out a way to fall into the dreamscape, then...
I guess we better try eating.” His gaze hardened.
“And if I’m going to kill them next time they come for us, I need to find a way to at least get strong enough to do that. ”
My hand balled around the forgotten grape.
The thought of him in yet more pain...
Snatching the juice box from his hands, I wrapped my lips around the straw and sucked.
He flinched, knowing why I’d offered myself up.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured as the sweet liquid splashed into my stomach.
I braced against the violent rejection but...all seemed well.
“I...feel okay.” I smiled tentatively, taking another sip.
For ten glorious seconds, everything was totally fine. The sweetness from the watermelon. The wetness from the juice. Sweet and tasty and normal.
Until it wasn’t.
My body spasmed as viciously as it had when it’d rejected the apple a few days ago.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, eyes watering as I fought the urge to heave, but it was too late. A wet, choking cough ripped out of me. Black blood and watermelon juice spilled between my fingers, staining the white blankets.
Well...shit.
I had no idea who thought that. Him or me. And my other power—the one that allowed me to commune with the dead, even while surrounded by the living—flared loudly.
I stiffened as a million souls bombarded me.
Bones in the soil, spirits on the wind. The potentiality of using the strings of death to twist time and change our future...
Come join us, be with us, stop fighting us—
“Rook?” Lucien shoved the entire tray off the bed with one violent sweep as I collapsed.
Porcelain shattered and food splattered across the antique rug as his arms snapped around me—broken bones be damned—crushing me to his chest. “You’re alright. Just stay with me.”
I flopped against him, twitching with a seizure as my useless muscles spasmed with living and death. Living and death. My ears rang with their song. They beckoned me to let go, to leave—
Be free with us, be lost with us, come with us.
“Rook. Don’t you dare.” Shaking me, Lucien interrupted their melody. “Talk to me. I’m right here. Neither of us is abandoning the other, got it?”
His pain swamped the bond, giving me something to focus on.
“You shouldn’t move so...m-much.” I coughed again, spraying my chest with blackened blood.
“Don’t you get it yet?” He bent over me, nuzzling his nose with mine. “I’d break every bone in my body if it meant I could save you.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I looked up from where I lay in his trembling arms. Licking away the blood still staining my lips, brutal truth slipped free.
“We both know we’re dying, yet...we keep convincing ourselves it’s not true.
That we can reverse it if we just hold on a little longer. But what if we’re deluding ourselves?”
“We can reverse it.” His face turned angry. “Everything is fixable if we try hard enough.”
“Our bodies are breaking.” I swallowed hard as the room spun. “My parents condemned us by trying to give us immortality, and the ironic thing is we would’ve lived so much longer if they hadn’t.”
Rocking me gently, Lucien pressed a kiss to my sweaty forehead. “I know I’ve asked this before but are you sure there’s nothing we can do? Nothing you remember from your parents’ files?”
“The only way to know for sure is to go to the lab in Iceland.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go.” He hugged me so hard, his pain became a third entity between us. “We’ll look through every record, every note. I don’t care what it takes. You’re never allowed to leave me. Ever.”
His head dropped, pressing his lips to mine.
He kissed me—desperately, fiercely.
I tasted black blood on both our tongues as I kissed him back just as desperately, pouring everything I had left into him.
The switch from here to elsewhere was instantaneous.
My heart jerked as if it’d been yanked through a tear, and the familiar snow globe manifested around us. However, this time, no snow fell. Golden auroras shimmered in the clear starry sky, and a single blossom tree rose up from the centre of an ice-glittering meadow.
Lucien pulled back just enough to catch my eyes.
We didn’t speak but we knew.
The last time we’d fallen into this place, we’d somehow tripped out of it feeling so much better than before.
The pleasure we’d shared had healed us.
Fire and ice had returned...buying us a little more time.
If this was the only way to buy more days together, then—
Lucien groaned, tipped up my chin, and kissed me.