I was rabid, farther than Lethea with desire. No other vorakh fight had ever left me this full of lust, this starved for warmth.
“Tristan,” she yelled. “Gods.”
I groaned, slamming into her now, over and over again, my hips setting a bruising pace.
Too much yellow. Finish what was started. I’ll still get you.
“Tristan,” Naria moaned. Then she yelled. “You’re—ah!” She shivered. “You’re ice cold. Fuck.”
I knew I was. But I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t slow down. Couldn’t be gentle. I needed to fuck Naria until I could forget, until I could no longer remember.
Until my body warmed.
You’ll regret it when he grows. When you see inside his soul like I have. When you learn what he is!
I thrust again, and again. But I couldn’t shake off the shivers wracking through me. Couldn’t shake the monster’s words. Couldn’t forget the fear in the vorakh’s eyes when her vision was over and she’d looked at me.
Right at me.
My body tightened, ready to come undone.
The vorakh’s face flashed in my mind. The one from tonight. And the one from my past. They were melding together, features shifting and combining. One with a beauty mark. One without.
When you see inside his soul like I have. When you learn what he is …
Their voices united, taunting me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my fist slamming into the wall as I came. My stomach clenched almost painfully with a final shudder, and I set Naria down, before I stumbled to the bed, grabbing hold of my stave, my body trembling.
Naria grimaced, but opened her closet door and reached for a spare blanket, tossing it on top of me.
“I’m going to take a bath. A hot one,” she said, and slammed the door.
I chanted, seeing my breath in the air, as I summoned flames, pointing at every torch and candle in her room.
And only then, alone and freezing while surrounded by fire, did I realize why the cold tonight was so unsettling. Why the memory had been so vivid, so real. So hard to shake.
It hadn’t been a memory.
I knew this cold because I knew how to hunt it. I knew how to find those who possessed it. Knew how to stop it.
My guts roiled violently and I leaned over Naria’s bed, heaving up everything I’d drank tonight, and all I’d eaten. I coughed, nearly choking on bile, sweat coating my skin. My sick was all over the floor as the realization settled inside of me.
The vorakh that killed my parents had never said those final words. Had never saidI’ll still get you.And yet they’d been so clear in my mind. Like I’d been there. Like I was there still.
I’d been trapped in my memories before, but never like this. Never to the point where I’d forgotten my surroundings. Where I’d endangered myself. Where I’d closed my eyes in front of a Godsdamned threat.
And the memory had never shifted, not once in all the years I’d had it. There’d never been any new additions to my nightmares, to my dreams.
I curled my knees to my chest, still shaking with cold, as the realization hit me with a bruising force.
What I’d seen tonight, what I’d felt—it hadn’t been a memory.
It had been a vision.
CHAPTER TWO
RHYAN
