Even if this was all an illusion, my exhaustion was very real. Unable to hold my monster form, I shifted back and stumbled through the winding maze of bookshelves with legs as weak as Jell-O.
“Sterling.” His name in my throat was ragged with desperation.
I heard him before I saw him.
“Ruby?” The ancient vampire’s voice was as soft as silk and as weightless as moonlight.
I rounded a bookcase, and there he was. Tears flowed freely down my cheeks.
No matter how many times I saw him, I would never get over his haunting beauty. The male rose from the chair he’d been in lounging beside the fire.
He closed his book and set it on the dusty stack of tomes that made up his side table. I smiled through my tears. Even in his dreams, the eldest Knight prince buried himself in books.
“You read in your dreams?” I found myself whispering. Of all ways to start the conversation, of all things we had to talk about…. But right now, I just wanted a moment to escape all our problems and just come back to what I loved so damn much about him. What we loved.
The corners of his eyes wrinkled with his smile. “Yes. Of course. I can see in my dreams. My books are my second love, so I never miss the opportunity to enjoy them with my eyes.”
“And your first love?”
My heart skipped a beat seeing the warm expression that melted some of his icy physiognomy. “Do you even have to ask?”
I threw myself into his arms, and he swooped me into his embrace and fell back into the chair. I curled into his lap, feeling so at home as he took me into his arms and kissed me everywhere. My forehead, my cheeks, the tip of my nose. As his lips skimmed down the column of my throat, his slender fingers tilted my head to the side, exposing my marred throat.
“You felt so damn far away. But thanks to my, er, unseemly manners when I claimed you, our bond is strong. I can feel your every heartbeat.” He pressed his lips to my pulse point. “Every gasp. Every shudder.” As he said the words, he shuddered. He pulled me over, so I was sitting upright in his lap, his nails digging into the small of my back as he purred, his mouth in the crook of my neck.
“I could feel him inside you, Ruby.”
Lava shot through me, making me melt into a puddle in his lap. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Sterling muttered. My pulse ricocheted beneath his lips when his fangs scraped my flesh. “It kept me centered. It’s how I knew you were alive.”
“Hold me tighter.” His arms coiled around my body, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to be closer to him. “Tighter.Tighter.” I told him, repeating the word over and over.
“I’m here. I’m here, my darling.”
“I’m going to be home soon.”
He pulled back, relief flickering in his moonstone orbs. “How soon?”
“A couple of days here.” I worried my lip, recalling how Eros had explained the passage of time in Fairie. “So within the day for you. By the time I get back, we should have a whole twenty-four hours to search for my mother. I know it’s not long, but the storm glass needle’s blood thread wasn’t stretched too thin. So she should be close, right? Maybe we can find her in time to have her help us fight my father.”
Sterling leaned back in his chair. Shadows cut across his face, concealing everything but his ghostly gaze. “You have to prepare for the worst, love. She might not be—”
“I know,” I said on an exhaled breath, closing my eyes for a beat before leveling my attention back on him. “I still have to try.”
He skimmed his palm up my back to thread his fingers through the long side of my hair and wound the silky strands around his slender fingers. “No matter what, we will look for Sapphire once you return. But I don’t think we’ll need to enlist her help as a Helsing.”
“What? Really?”
“Really. In the short time you’ve been gone, we have acquired an army.”
My jaw fell open at the news. “Did the Elders decide to loosen their asses a bit?”
“God’s teeth, no. They are stubborn old fools. They know of your disappearance, and they believe you ran away with Feral of your own volition.”
“Fuck. That can’t look good, seeing as the trial wasn’t over.”
“No. Not good at all. I’ve convinced them not to join Thomas Knight’s ranks against us, but they certainly won’t aid us either.”
