She’s in pain, but begins chanting anyway. I don’t understand any of it—or maybe I do and it’s all just a blur because I can’t fuckingbreatheas I watch glowing light gradually replace the shadows swirling around Maven’s heart.
Just as she sways from the tax of the spell, Maven plunges the heart back into her chest. Her cry of agony cuts through my very soul before she collapses on the bed.
“Maven!” I shout, panic taking over.
I can hear the others’ alarm, too, but darkness claws savagely at my vision as my dragon seizes control once again. He pushes me toward that stupid fucking corner. I push back. I fight with everything in me, but I still lose as I’m suffocated in the beast once again.
Maven.
The spell has to work. She has to wake up. If I just lost her again?—
No. I barely survived losing her the first time. She came back from fuckingParadiseto reunite our quintet and have a future together. My mate is a damn demigoddess and the strongest person I’ve ever met. She has to survive.
I cling to that hope for all I’m worth until something pierces through the overwhelming control my inner dragon has over me. Shaking out of the beast’s grasp, I find that I’m tied by my leash to a desk in the corner of Everett’s room.
Crypt sits beside me on the floor. I’ve never seen the incubus look so downcast before, but he’s holding Maven’s etherium knife and clearly just cut my arm with it.
I rub my quickly-healing arm, disoriented as I look around the ice-covered room. Everett is pacing, leaving more ice with every footstep. Silas is rocking himself in the chair by the bed, clutching at his hair as he mutters to voices in his head.
My stomach drops and churns so quickly that I don’t know if I’m about to throw up or break into a thousand pieces as I look at Crypt.
“How long have I…how long hasshe?—”
“Two hours,” he rasps.
I look over at Silas, my heart struggling to beat. “Si. With the spell she did, how long is it supposed to take?”
He doesn’t respond as he continues to rock.
“Everett—” I try next, scrambling to get my stupid fucking leash untied.
“I don’t know,” he snaps, stopping his pacing to cover his face. He looks a breath away from shattering. “I just…I don’t fucking know.”
I’m immediately on the bed beside Maven, panicked as I look her over. The puddle of blood from Silas cutting her open has stained the foot of the bed, but they clearly repositioned her. Her head is on the pillow, hair carefully brushed aside, a blanket pulled up to her waist. The fresh injury on her chest has closed, and someone must have wiped up the blood, but my mate is lying so still.
So. Fucking. Still.
She’s not breathing.
As gently as possible, I press my ear against Maven’s twice-scarred chest, squeezing my eyes shut as I wait and pray to all six gods that they won’t do this to me again. Even they can’t be that cruel.
“You promised you wouldn’t leave me again,” I remind her quietly.
Seconds pass. Minutes. Almost another half an hour.
And then finally—fucking finally—I hear it.
The faint flutter of a renewed heartbeat.
PART II
THE BOUND
35
MAVEN
Ba-dum.
