Текст книги "In the Veins of the Drowning"
Автор книги: Kalie Cassidy
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
I staggered up the candlelit stairs. The Great Gods lining the banisters stared down at me and I steeled myself against their empty, searing gazes. Against the relentless, stabbing pain in my stomach. I scowled up at the uncanny statue of Panos, but there was something to be learned from all the Gods—my mother included. Something in their stoniness, in their implacability. Theodore had those qualities, but I… I was prone to dissolve in the face of my want, of my fear. It took all of me to not run back to Theodore’s side.
And alongside everything else, I was certain the Empress of Obelia knew precisely who I was.
At the top of the stairs my stomach clenched. I ran quickly toward the end of the hall and the door to Theodore’s chamber. Perhaps I should have gone elsewhere, but the palace was winding, and I yearned for the comfort of a familiar place. I twisted the knob and raced toward the washroom. At the basin, I heaved and heaved until I sweated. The retching settled, but not the pain. I splashed cool water over my burning face and peeled my filthy shirt from my body. Before I stripped my trousers, I carefully took the severing draught from my pocket and set it on the table beside Theodore’s bed.
It was as if a stone had been set on my chest where it gradually pressed down, cracking through my bone, pressing on my heart. I scrubbed with soap that smelled like Theodore. When I was clean, I wrapped myself in a towel and curled onto the tiled floor, waiting for the next roll of nausea.
The hinges of the chamber door squeaked. I rose quickly. Raced into the room. “Theo?”
Agatha stood in a lovely charcoal gown, her face edged with concern, and my eyes burned.
Gods damn it. I’d wanted it to be him. I wanted it to always be him.
“Lachlan told me everything.” Agatha’s look gentled.
“About how I almost killed him because I lost control?” I sucked in a shaky breath. “About Eusia, and Nemea?”
She gave me the barest nod. That look on her face slid too close toward pity. “At least you made it back in one piece.”
“I don’t think I did. I feel like I’ve been split wide open.” My voice snagged. “I think… I might love him.”
Agatha froze. Blinked. Nodded once. “Let’s get you dressed.”
Another painful twist of nausea moved through me. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.” Agatha pulled open Theodore’s wardrobe. A handful of dresses hung within that I recognized from the dressmaker’s cart. Agatha picked one in wine-colored silk from the rack.
“I’m just going to throw up on it.”
Agatha strode toward me, determined. “I don’t know how this is going to go, Imogen. I don’t even know what to think about it all. You might have to fight for him. You might have to let him go. But whatever will be required of you cannot be accomplished while you’re naked.”
A sad laugh bubbled up in my chest. I let her help me into a chemise and stays, pausing to dry-heave into the washbasin. She tugged on the laces at my back. “Tell me your plan.”
Plan seemed a grand word for the jumble of tasks that crowded my mind. “I don’t know… I have to find Eusia. We learned she’s a spell woman, or she at least possesses some magic, like a Mage Seer does. Theo said there were books on magic in a study here. I need those books.” I swallowed back a surge of nausea. “We need to unbind first. I’ll take the draught now—”
“Imogen?” My head snapped toward the open door. Theodore stood there, sallow, with a hand clutched at his stomach. His wide eyes bounced between me and Agatha. “You were going to take the draught?”
Agatha let go of my laces while they were still half undone. “I’ll go.” She gave my hand a quick, parting squeeze. “Call for me when you need me.” She skirted past Theodore to leave.
The pressure in the room changed. With slow steps, he came closer, and my sickness abated. His green eyes were pained, his voice gruff. “Answer me.”
“I was. You haven’t spoken to me in a day and a half. The empress…” I couldn’t find the words to explain our interaction. “And you and Halla—you’re so lovely together. It’s your engagement party. And I have my own responsibilities to see to—”
“I cannot even see her for the way you encompass me.” Emotion etched his face. “You fill my every sense. You stalk my waking mind. You make up the entirety of my dreams. I couldn’t speak to you after what Lachlan said because it shocked me—that he was right. About what I feel—”
“Theo,” I whispered, cutting him off.
He shook his head sharply. “It’s not the blood bond. We both know it’s not. There is something between us that that Godsdamned bottle of muck cannot sever.” He closed the rest of the distance between us, cupped my face in his hands. He spoke over my lips. “What I feel for you is beyond reason—beyond duty and desire. You have tipped my whole world on its side, and you are the one clear thing in the chaos.” His nose brushed the end of mine. “You. I want you.”
I closed my eyes at the impossibility of his admission, at the danger in it. Rohana’s words lanced my mind. It was no wonder he couldn’t see reason. For my soul was the water, shifting, wild, rolling through destructively, but Theodore’s had roots. They burrowed deep, held strong, and I had poured through their empty spaces—drowning him.
He kissed me then and every clear thought I had muddled. His lips were hot and soft, and they met mine with a desperation that cracked straight through my flimsy resolve.
I rose up onto my toes. I kissed him like he was air, like he was light, and I had spent my whole life gasping in the dark. He moaned into my mouth as his tongue swiped across mine. Hard fingers curled into the strands of my hair. He set his lips across my jaw, my neck.
“Don’t think me selfish,” I breathed. “Don’t resent me for this when I should be finding and reading those books. When I should be taking that severing draught.”
There was agony in his look. “If you are selfish”—he gave me a deep, luxurious kiss—“then I am a gluttonous, greed-riddled fiend for how badly I want you.”
If I thought myself weak when it came to Theodore before, I’d been wrong. I met his kisses with shameful abandon. He pulled at my half-loose bodice, dragging his mouth over my bare shoulder, over my collarbone. He grunted in frustration when he couldn’t get the bodice any farther down.
“Turn around.” He spun me, kissed my neck from behind as he walked me toward the bed. He pressed me over its edge, curling his body over mine as he undid the rest of my laces and set his lips and teeth and tongue over the expanse of my back. He set indulgent kisses over the skin that hid my wings. As he peeled my gown and stays and chemise off, his lips dragged lower, lower, all the way to the base of my spine. His words were husky, curling steam across my skin. “Too many clothes.”
Finally, they were a pool of fabric encircling my feet. Theodore made a low, smoky sound of approval as he took me in, bare and bent over the side of his mattress. With the softest touch, he swiped a few errant strands of my long hair away and placed the softest kiss upon my middle back. “Perfect,” he whispered, sending a shiver through me. “You’re beautiful.”
He set kiss after gentle kiss down my back, until he knelt behind me. I let out a shaky breath as his lips brushed slowly over the curve of my backside, as his fingers grasped and kneaded my flesh. He nudged my thighs wider. The first swipe of his tongue coaxed a moan from low in my chest.
The world narrowed to him alone, to the heavy spiral of heat that he sent through my belly with each flick of his talented tongue. With a forceful grip, he moved my knee up over the edge of the bed, and deepened his attention. That heat spread through me in a cresting wave. “Theo,” I called out, weak and high.
“Not yet,” he ordered, speaking against the soft skin of my inner thigh. He slid a finger inside me, groaning as he did. Then another. My hands clawed at the blanket, my hips bucked, but he pinned me still with a strong arm. With those fingers moving in and out, with his hot tongue set perfectly over the most sensitive part of me, it was impossible for me to wait any longer.
My cry filled the chamber. My entire body was beaded with sweat and pulsing, shaking under the fluid, sweet way his tongue, his lips, still worked at me. He rolled me onto my back, pushing my legs wide. He dragged his mouth over the inside of my thighs, biting and kissing me there. When I reached for him, utterly spent, he reared back.
He rested his cheek on my knee, gave me a wicked smile. “Did you forget that I’m greed-riddled when it comes to you?” He set his lips over me again—sucking, licking. “I’m not done yet.”
It wasn’t long before the candlelight guttered from euphoria, before I was moaning and arching against him again. I was splayed over the bed, limbs weak as sapling branches, and Theodore loomed over me wearing the smuggest smile I’d ever seen. “Do you need a moment?”
“You’re feeling very proud, aren’t you?”
He bent over me, that smile still on his beautiful face, and set his lips over my breast. “Mmm-hmm.”
I curved my back, urging him to take me deeper into his mouth. He obliged, flicking his marvelous tongue over me. “Take off your clothes,” I breathed.
He sat back on his knees and started on his buttons. I reached for his trousers with clumsy fingers, eyes stuck on the way his flat stomach and strong chest bunched and flexed as he removed his shirt. He was exquisite, shaped as perfectly as the statues that littered his palace. He watched me with dark, heavy-lidded eyes as I took him in. The curves of his muscles, the dark hair on his chest, the thin trail that ran down toward where my fingers hovered. I undid the fastening, pushing his trousers and underclothes over his hips.
I reveled in seeing him bare, in seeing his eagerness and the large, straining shape of him. I wrapped my hand around him, and he let out an aching breath.
“Lie down,” I said, my lips against his chest.
“You don’t have to—”
“Shut up.” I pushed him back into the pillows with my own self-satisfied smile curling my mouth. I set my lips around him, and elation fell through me at the hiss of air he pulled into his chest. His hand clasped the back of my neck, fingers gripping my hair. His head rolled back against the pillow, his swollen lips open in a quiet moan.
I was greedy too. I wanted to possess him completely, wanted to be consumed by him, wanted to string the memory of him through my sinew, my marrow, and carry it with me for as long as I lived. Finally, he gave a dark, frustrated growl and hauled me up into his lap.
He looked up at me with a warm, sweet emotion I didn’t bother to decipher. It would be hard enough to cut him from my blood, let alone from my heart. His lips were fervent, adoring, as they met mine, as they dragged to my neck, my ear. He guided my hips over his and watched with taut attention as he lowered me, so slowly, around him.
“Gods.” I gasped at the rapturous strain of being filled with him.
“Imogen,” he said against my neck. He adjusted himself, grasped my backside, and sank all the way inside me. “Immy.”
I didn’t breathe when he first guided me up and back down around him. He whispered his approval, his awe. Ecstasy was carved into his features, his heated gaze clinging to my every movement. A slow, replete smile lit his face.
“What?” I asked on a moan. He shook his head, hooked an arm around my waist. I squealed as he rolled me back and set a new pace above me. “Tell me.”
He stopped, breath heaving as his smile faded into an open, wondrous look. “I have never wanted anything…” He paused. “… the way I want you.”
My heart burst. He kissed me before I could reply, and we became a huddle of heavy gasps and trembling muscles and rapturous moans. He swept through every part of me on a rising tide, dissolving all lines, all rationality. Together we sank irretrievably into the sweetest, darkest deep.
The middle of the night was quiet and still. I dozed with my head on Theodore’s chest and a heavy leg thrown over his. My finger traced circles across his stomach. Over the weeks, I’d grown to know his mood by the rhythm of his breaths. They came soft and easy now. No tension pulled at his graceful muscles, no agitation splayed through his fingers, as it so often did.
He was at peace. And I envied it. My mind was an eddy of schemes, worries, and awful thoughts. It wove itself into knots trying to piece together some plan that would let me keep him, that would let me stay, but no matter how it twisted and spun it could not find one.
Theodore’s breaths were growing shallow as he slipped off to sleep. As his hand fell from where it rested in the narrow of my waist, a knock sounded. I raised my head from his chest.
“Your Majesty?” came a man’s voice from the other side of the door. “I got the books.”
Theodore grunted, then called out groggily, “Leave them.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” A thud sounded. “Night, Your Majesty.”
“What books?” I asked Theodore in an overloud whisper. I rose from the bed and padded toward the door, listening closely to make sure no one remained on the other side.
“You have too much energy after all that,” Theodore mumbled. “I feel like I’ve failed you.”
“No, I am wrung dry. Utterly spent. Delightfully sore.” I smiled at him over my shoulder. “I’m just too anxious to sleep. It’s like there are bees in my skull.” I pulled open the door. Close to a dozen small books, bound in old, cracked leather, were piled into a basket on the floor, a folded piece of paper laid on top. I dragged them over the threshold and scooped up the topmost book with the folded note that lay upon it.
Theodore watched me with dreamy, tired eyes, the barest smirk on his lips. “Beautiful.”
I gave him a coy smile. “As are you.” I unfolded the paper and crawled back into bed to read it.
Hermitess Vasili,
I have taken a wife. As a gift, I humbly request use of any and all of the Great God Jesop’s books that pertain to magic, the Mage Seers, and the like. As you say, the books belong to the realm of Leucosia. Please know that they will be used to aid, protect, and keep it.
Your King,
Theodore Ariti
Praise be to the memory of the Great Gods that you have found a wife worthy enough to kneel before. You were growing too old.
Here. Return in two days. Just as they are.
I snorted at the curt reply. Theodore chuckled as he looked over the note.
“She lives in the palace,” I said. “You should have said you’re ‘soon to take a wife.’ She’ll realize the wedding hasn’t happened yet and come after you with her stick.”
“The woman hasn’t left the basement in forty years.” He kissed my arm. “Besides, I meant you.”
“Oh.” My cheeks warmed. “What’s this mean?” I asked, my voice soft with overwhelm. “‘A wife worthy enough to kneel before’?”
“In Leucosia, a king or queen will kneel to their betrothed, and only their betrothed, as part of the binding ceremony.” His eyes were closed. He shrugged. “My father never did it. The hermitess must have remembered that, and stickler that she is, she’s likely trying to guilt me into honoring tradition.”
I remembered Nemea’s mountain the night I’d escaped. The howling wind, how terribly I shook, and Theodore dropping to his knees before me when I swore my oath of fealty to him. I set the book on the mattress, turned on my side, and swiped a lock of hair from his forehead. “You knelt for me.” The words were timid, laden with a question.
That dimple of his appeared and disappeared with a quick curve of his mouth. “And I’ll do it again later.”
I pushed weakly at his shoulder. “When we escaped Nemea’s.”
He opened his sleepy eyes, looked into mine, then closed them once more. “I’ve been besotted from the moment I saw you on that overlook in that ridiculous dress. It was easy to kneel.”
“You lie,” I said, breathless.
He shook his head, eyes still closed. He whispered through a crooked smile. “Besotted.” Theodore wrapped an arm around my waist, pulled me close. He gave me a long, slow kiss. Despite his heat, a chill crackled through me. He fell off to sleep, but I remained awake, my eyes on the bed’s canopy. Rohana’s decrepit voice ran through my head in a taunt.
You are a Goddess-queen.
Take what you want.
OceanofPDF.com
Sleep never came. I lay at the edge of the bed, propped on the pillow so I could read by the faint light of a single taper. With drooping eyes, I scanned over Jesop’s exacting scrawl. It was page after monotonous page of lineages, and tales of the Great Gods from when they were new. Marriages, and deaths, and births, and I found myself cursing Jesop’s power of long memory and wishing it had been a gift for fine prose instead.
The sun was sneaking up slowly, brightening the sky beyond the window in a wash of steely gray. I wanted time to stop. I wanted to pore through these books in a blink and find precisely what I needed, but with each useless page turned, my hope dwindled. Even if I learned where Eusia was, even if the exact spell I needed was written out in stark black and white, it would not give me what I truly desired.
I closed the book and looked at Theodore. He slept on his back—full lips parted, brow smooth. The entire world was stacked against us, but my body, my heart, did not seem to care. I had spent the whole of my life wondering what it might feel like to truly belong somewhere, and now I was starting to know.
I picked up the next book. A little blue leather tome with browned paper and a crumbling spine. With renewed urgency, I flipped through the brittle pages, one after the next, until my eye caught on a section title:
THE FIRST MAGE.
The blanket slipped from my body as I sat up straighter. Knees pulled toward my chest, I gripped the book’s case tightly and read on with wide eyes.
Spell magic was born of malice and jealousy, but I cannot say that it does not have its uses. Its merits are many. It can heal, can divine, can locate the blood through the sea or land or air. In some cases, it can do what Gods’ power cannot. There are recorded events of ships surfacing from the deep with the aid of spell magic. Of bodies rising up from their graves. But my warning must be stated clearly:
For all that spell magic can give its user, it will take from them more than double.
The temperature in the room seemed to dip. The grotesque memory of the loose, marled skin hanging from beneath Rohana’s milky-white eyes lit my mind. I thought of her bluish teeth and useless body. It was magic that had remade her from maiden into monster.
When the First Mage began her spell work, it was rumored that she wished to overshadow her sister, the Great Goddess Ligea, who was given immeasurable Gods’ power at her birth. The Mage was given very little. Her mind, however, was shrewd. By spilling her own Siren blood, mixing concoctions, making sacrifices, and reciting well-worded prayer, she was able to make a new kind of power. One that her sister, the Great Goddess, did not master.
My heart clanged like an incessant noontide bell. The room was brightening. Theodore roused, but only just enough to scoot closer. He pressed his sleep-warm body against mine, gave a low hum, then draped a heavy arm over my middle. I adjusted the book around him and read on.
The first spell performed was one of goodwill. The Mage provided a prophecy for a woman who was increasing with child. She used a single drop of blood, a round of the mother’s fatty flesh, and a potion of seawater and smoking herbs. The mother wished to know the child’s future and fate, as she had been suffering from portentous dreams. The Mage predicted the babe would be a great seer. The Mage called the babe Rohana and saw that she would advise and protect the Leucosian archipelago for a great many years.
But at that time, the Mage did not yet know that her new magic was wholly unlike the power of the Great Gods. The magic used for spell work has a limit, and a price. With time, the Mage began to weaken, realizing too late that she needed to find a way to replenish what her magic took. It ate her body away, and what had once been robust and vital grew small and feeble.
The Mage’s magic had earned her certain acclaim. She was known throughout the realm, just as the Great Gods were. Some feared her, some were awed, and others cursed her, unwilling to trust a rare magic they could not understand. As her health declined, so did her ability to perform spells. When her notoriety dwindled too, a madness set in. She began to seek out past payment from those she had served, and while some chose to pay her out of fear, many did not. For the price was steep.
There is a strange account regarding the mother to whom the Mage had given a prophecy. Based on the account given by the young girl, Rohana, this is what I know:
The babe had grown into a child when the Mage came to her mother for past payment. By now, the Mage’s body was so used up that she’d hired herself companions to carry her across the archipelago. They took her to the northern shore of Varya, where the mother and Rohana lived. She entered their small home without invitation. She left two days later with her muscles renewed of their vigor. Her body was once again whole, her clouded eyes bright, and her skin taut once more. Rohana’s mother was not seen again.
From then, the Mage consecrated the Sacred Holms as the ritual site for Varya’s magic. She tied herself to the soil and sea on a little island there and was able to sustain herself, beaconing seekers of her power to come to her, and conserving her meager energy. So has every island’s Mage created a sacred ritual spot to sustain themselves and perform their craft.
“Bloody Gods.” I raced to the next page, needing more, but it only gave me rules and laws pertaining to the Mage Seers and their magic. A long list of the divine lineages sat on the page beside. Rohana’s hut rose to the front of my mind. Bones had littered the floor, human and animal alike. I thought of Theodore’s story of performing the ritual of transference. He had not been able to take his father’s body with him from her awful, rotting hut. I understood why now—it had been payment.
“For the price was steep,” I whispered to myself, caught in a dark rush of thought.
Theodore stretched out beside me, a honeyed sound rolling through him. I let him pull me closer, desperate for the contact. Cold terror had seized me.
I glanced at the book once more. The page where the lineages were recorded resembled a web of soft black lace. Jesop’s writing was small and precise, the lines connecting the names penned in the thinnest threads of ink. I found the Great God Panos’s name first. He was the first in a line of two younger brothers and a sister, all created from the past generation of Gods of the earth. Panos’s line dropped down to Theodore’s father, Athan. The book was too old for Theodore to have been recorded in it, but his older siblings were. Three of them, and every one had passed before their tenth year.
I saw Ligea next. There were no delicate lines dropping from her name, but there was one line that jutted to the right. A younger sibling.
My body jerked when I read the name.
Eusia.
Eusia. My mother’s sister. The First Mage. The monstrous thing that fed on my power and hunted my kind had been the First Mage of the realm.
“Theo.” I shook his shoulder. “Theodore, wake up.”
His fingers curled into my side, and he gave a sleep-thick groan. “What’s wrong?”
“I found something. Tell me of the First Mage’s execution. Didn’t you say she was killed?”
He blinked, rubbed at his eyes. “I think. If I remember my lessons correctly, she was disemboweled and thrown into the sea off the coast of Anthemoessa.”
“Anthemoessa?” I shook my head. The Sirens’ home island was far west and now it was uninhabitable due to blight. “She made Rohana’s island on the Sacred Holms her ritual spot. How would she have gotten to Anthemoessa?”
He shook his head sluggishly. “I’m sorry, Immy. I don’t know. Maybe Agatha would.” He pressed a trail of slow kisses over my shoulder, down my arm, but even as his touch poured an indulgent heat through me, I couldn’t give myself over to it.
“Eusia is the First Mage,” I whispered. “She was—is—Ligea’s sister.”
Theodore froze. His hand rose to the side of my face and forced me to meet his eyes. “Imogen, that’s impossible. She was killed.”
I shook my head. Held up the book. “It’s in here.”
“How?” His gaze darted, thoughts seemingly frantic. “How are you supposed to kill something that is already dead?”
“Magic.”
Theodore’s brows lowered in question.
“Magic,” I repeated. The thought of it sent a sick feeling racing through me. “I was going to have to use a spell to break our bond in the first place. I can use a spell to find her. One to unbind us, and one to end her completely.”
Tension began to build in his body and his fingers gripped my hair frustratedly. “No. One spell is entirely different from three, Imogen. You know what magic does—you’ve seen Rohana.”
“She’s used magic for hundreds of years. Three spells won’t—”
“No.”
“If Eusia remains tied to me, then the Sirens continue to die,” I said. He pressed his forehead to mine. “If Eusia and I remain tied to one another, then you and I…” I swallowed back the rest of the thought.
Theodore gave me a searching look. “Then you and I what?” There was panic behind the heat in his eyes. I felt it too. The outside world was coming for us with a chisel and hammer, ready to knock us apart, to crack us to dusty pieces. In a breath, we locked in a frantic kiss, both of us desperate from fear. He tugged at my hair, baring my neck to him. “You and I what?”
“Nothing.”
He used his other hand to reach between us and spread my legs. He caressed me until I was slick and gasping. “Tell me.”
“It’s impossible.” The blood bond I shared with Eusia was not the only thing that would keep Theodore and me apart. But the contracts and the marriage and the prophecy all fled my mind as he settled his hips above mine, positioning himself.
He looked at me like I were as precious and faceted as a jewel. “You think we’re impossible?” My fingers bit into his shoulders as he filled me in one frenetic, claiming thrust. I moaned and his lips met mine. He tried to beat back the terror of what we faced with that kiss. His lips were scorching, purifying, but a darkness lurked at the edges of my mind. It pressed against my flushed skin—a threat cold as death. “You’re already mine, Imogen,” he said against my cheek. “Mine.”
The rising sun gently lit the lines of his muscled body. It filled his eyes. I tried to lose myself in him. Tried to let his words settle over me like it was our very own prophecy, like it was a blessing.
Through our heavy breaths came a clicking sound. We froze. The lock I’d turned over last night was being undone by its key. The door flew open just as Theodore pulled away and jerked the blanket up and over our naked bodies.
Lachlan strode in, eyes on us for a second before he looked straight down to the ground with a curse on his lips. Beyond the threshold, Agatha stood frozen out in the hall, hands at her cheeks in mortification.
“Out,” Theodore bellowed.
“I’m sorry. I am.” Lachlan dropped to a knee, awkward gaze stuck on the ornate rug. His voice was flat, but I didn’t miss the downturn of his mouth, the harshness of his words. “The empress is up and in a piss-poor mood that you never returned to the engagement party last night. She’s insisting that you accommodate her and the princess’s ceremony on the beach. They want the wedding and the war blessed today.”
Theodore’s gaze on Lachlan smoldered like embers. His fist turned white where he held the blanket around us. I set a mollifying hand to the middle of his chest and his heart raged beneath it.
“Lachlan.” My voice quivered with embarrassment. “Leave. Please. We’ll be right out.”
He dipped his chin and rose in flinty silence. “Lady Imogen.” He spoke my name with unsettling formality. “You spent the night doing exactly the opposite of what you told me you would.”
Theodore’s eyes flashed. “Get out.”
Agatha cursed at Lachlan from the threshold, but Lachlan ignored her and met Theodore’s glare. “As your commander and right hand, it is my responsibility to advise you. After the Obelian ceremony, it’s best that you and Imogen follow through with the severance.”
“I’m the fucking king—”
“If you refuse, I will set the severance to a vote with the council.”
“The council has no say in my personal affairs.”
“No, but your blood bond is, for all intents and purposes, the catalyst of this war. And it has the potential to create more problems with the empress.” He tipped his chin up in a challenge. “We have a say when your personal affairs compromise the kingdom.”
Agatha’s voice was unfathomable. “Lachlan.” His head snapped in her direction, an incredulous look straining his face. She shook her head, brown eyes wide and wounded. “You cannot force them. You cannot do to them what was done to us.”
Lachlan’s mouth fell open. “Agatha.” His voice turned imploring. “Agatha, this is different.” The way Agatha shut herself away, so thoroughly and efficiently, made Lachlan rear back. “Agatha—” He rushed after her, slamming the door behind him.
Everything was crumbling. Theodore and I lay twisted in the blankets, silent and stunned. His eyes fell shut as he pulled away from me and moved to the edge of the bed. His strong shoulders stooped. Guilt rose in me like bile. I understood so keenly now why Theodore had not been able to abide my lack of duty, my selfishness, and my cowardice. They were calamitous, and he had fallen headfirst into their depths.
The blood bond in my stomach rioted like I’d disobeyed it. I had caused him harm. My gaze slid to the severing draught on the side table, next to my ring. “Theo,” I whispered. “There was another line to the prophecy that I didn’t… I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. The last line was ‘What they have made will decimate the order of all things.’” Theodore didn’t move. “What Ligea and Nemea have made—me. I will ruin everything… I already have—”
“That’s enough,” he said softly. The shuddering silence stretched as Theodore rose from the edge of the bed. He retrieved clothes and dressed himself, face stern and body tense. Wrapped in a sheet, I pulled myself off the bed and made for the washroom with my head slung low. As I passed the side table, I reached for the severing draught.
