Tendrils of fear snaked through her, rooting her in place, as a great cold seeped into her heart, her bones, her soul.
“There you are…Seraphina de la Croix…”the voice whispered directly into her mind again—an oily rasp that saw her clinging to Aldric all the more tightly, as if he could possibly save her from her own thoughts.
She didn’t understand.
What was happening?
This was like no vision she had ever received before. She was still in the moment. She could still feel the Crow, if only barely. The heat of his mouth against hers was all that kept her anchored. Grounded.
And yet even that could not keep her muscles from turning to water when that insidious voice whispered again within her thoughts,“You cannot save him, child. He is already mine.”
Nor when it added, oozing with triumph:“And before too long, you will be, too.”
Chapter thirteen
Aldric
“No!” his kirei screamed against his mouth, even though it had been she who had demanded his kiss in the first place. She who had insisted, though he had intended to spare her from that fate. She who had come alive beneath his touch with something he never would have expected from prim and proper Seraphina de la Croix.
Desire.
But with her shout came something else entirely—a sensation he had felt only once before:heatlike that from the Shepherd during his Truth-Reading. It scalded his tongue. It seared his lips.
A noxious wave of fear welled up inside him, hard and fast.
No. Not again. That heat had brought him low last time. It had sent him to his knees and made him vomit all over the floor. He refused to be humiliated in front of his men again.
With a wordless shout of his own, Aldric jerked away from the burn of Seraphina’s mouth. But there was only so far he could go. Her fingers were still tangled in his hair, holding him close. Keeping him there.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd as he stared up into his kirei’s wan face, trying to make sense of what was happening. But she wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was distant, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. Tremors wracked her form. Horror wrote itself over her features.
“Sera,” he whispered, his worry spiking. She looked just like she had that day in the throne room when she collapsed. He braced himself for that eventuality, his hand abandoning its hold on her necklace to catch at her elbow instead. “Sera, what’s wrong?”
His wife’s iridescent usuru appeared in the next moment, flying in fast and winding itself around her shoulders.
Sera’s dark eyelashes fluttered. Her eyes finally met his. “What?”
Lips still faintly parted, as if she desired another kiss, she stared back at him. Slowly, her horror melted away to leave only confusion in its place. And then, as her fingers within his hair loosened, as her gaze ticked toward their rapt audience, another emotion swiftly overtook his pretty wife’s countenance in time with the flush blooming upon her cheeks.
Mortification.
She recoiled from him as scattered applause rang out from the crowd. Someone even whistled. He recognized the sound at once as coming from his oldest Son, Leif. He shot the man a dark look in warning where he perched in the front pew with Rakon, Kyn, Calix, Sven, and all the other Sons, before returning his attention to his kirei.
She still looked on the verge of fainting, as if even the faintest breeze could bring her to her knees. But worse still was the way she was staring at him—a look he knew all too well.
As if he were some little beast.
A monster to be feared.
Frustration snarled to life within his chest. What reason did she have to be afraid of him?Shewas the one who had stabbed him a week ago.Shewas the one who had burned his mouth just now with a power only Shepherds should be able to wield. He still felt her touch there, smoldering on his lips.
As if she had just sought to brand herself on his soul.
As if she weren’t alreadyfrustratinglyembedded there.
Like a barbed arrow he so desperately wanted to dislodge.
Father Perero was saying something—probably presenting them to the people as man and wife—but he didn’t hear. All he heard was the shout that suddenly echoed from outside the cathedral. The crash that followed. The loud boom that shuddered against the now-bolted double doors.
