“You’ll be safe here,” I try again.
The barest nod.
“I’m sorry. I know I'm an ass. I swear I’ll get a fire started for you and warm food and?—”
“You kept the scar the lich gave you on purpose,” she says quietly.
That was the last thing I expected her to say, and it makes me slow to a stop. My injury is on fire. Between that intense pain and the need to hold her close, breathing is torture.
Maven reaches up to gently trace the scar on the side of my face again, sending shivers down my spine.
“I’m curious. Why didn’t you have Silas heal you?” she asks.
“He couldn’t.” He was too far gone.
“Someone else could have.”
“There was too much going on.”
That’s an excuse, and she must know it because she raises a brow expectantly. I swallow hard, turning my chin so she won’t have to look directly at my new face.
“I know it’s hideous. But I…I deserved it.”
For many reasons, but mostly because I failed her and deserved every reminder of it. Besides, it’s not like my so-called pretty face ever did my keeper any favors.
But if my keeper hates how I look now?—
“Hideous, my ass. It’s annoyingly sexy.”
I’m so surprised that I blink down at her, warmth rising into my cheeks. There's no way I didn't just mishear her.
“W—what?”
“And I thought you couldn’t get any more gorgeous. So fucking unfair,” she mutters almost under her breath before fixing me with a glare deathly enough to actually make me flinch. “Put me down before you bleed out.”
I steel myself, the crisis alarms still going off in my skull. “Not happening.”
“Fine, then I'll?—”
“You’re back, Commander?” a surprised voice interrupts.
It’s a vampire approaching down the hall—one of the mercenaries working under Douglas’s command. Protective panic washes over me, and I angle my body so it will block his view of Maven. With how infamous she’s become, she’ll be too easily recognized, and the last thing I need is more idiots spewing my keeper's name every chance they can.
“Send Douglas to my old office.Now,”I order. “He needs to heal someone, and he needs to come alone.”
He agrees, salutes, and darts away with vampire speed to fulfill orders. I’m about to march Maven to safety, but another sudden wave of empty dizziness hits me so hard that all at once, darkness swallows me whole.
8
MAVEN
When I setout to reunite with my elemental, I didn’t envision having to drag his stubborn, beautiful, unconscious ass down a ridiculously long hallway with an audience of ghosts watching the entire damn thing.
I pause outside his old office and blow hair out of my face. Even with the grueling soreness plaguing my limbs, I must still be physically stronger than average, because I’ve dragged Everett this far without too much difficulty despite my injured ankle. I'm not sure if that's due to my godly side or thanks to all the irreversible experiments my body was put through over the years.
I'm just glad I'm not doing this while still wearing those fucking ice cuffs. I loathe restraints. They bring back too many memories of the Nether. Just feeling them around my wrists was enough to make me start disassociating.
I wipe my brow and glance at the specters that have been slowly accumulating around me ever since we entered Everbound.
