His words feel like the truth. They slither and hiss, whispering through my blood. Myblood. Is it even mine anymore?
“Solano!” My heart cries that name. But my blood says Eraldon.
“There is only me, nightling.”
I close my eyes as he relaxes his grip. He’s right. Whatever dream I was having, it’s over. Eraldon is real.
“I am your only one. Say it.” He moves his hips against me.
My body tries to heat. It can’t. There is no desire. Whatever spark I had for Eraldon when I first woke was just that—a spark in the dead of night. Gone now. I feel … nothing.
The glowing crown flashes again in my mind, along with a pair of warm golden eyes. “Wait.” I shake my head. “Wait, there was another—”
“There is no other!” Eraldon gnashes his teeth, his eyes swallowing me up. “There is onlyme. I am your mate, your king. Listen to your blood. What does it tell you?”
Eraldon,Eraldon,Eraldon. My blood says only his name like a fervent requiem.
He squeezes tighter. “Say it, nightling. Tell me who owns your body and soul. Say the words andbelievethem.”
The command soothes my wandering mind and reassures my heart. What was I dreaming? A king of sun? Nonsense. I hold his cold gaze. “You are the only king.”
He smiles, his fangs stained with my blood. “Do you want to please me, Emma?”
“Yes, my king.”
“You want to be mine, don’t you, Emma?”
I can’t look away from him, from the darkness that strokes me like silk in a cold night breeze. But I don’t belong to him, do I?
“You. Are. Mine. Say it,” he hisses.
“Yes, my king. I am yours.”
He stares down at me with those eyes of endless night. “You are mine.”
I think of nothing else. Of no one else. My blood obeys. Eraldon is my king, and I am his. I have always been his, and it will always be so. “I am yours.”
He strikes at my neck again as I say the words. He doesn’t drain me this time, but he helps me. He erases those troublesome thoughts, the images of a dream that will never come true.
When he offers me his own throat, I take it and relish the taste of my king. Eraldon is my life. My only one. There is no other.
8
Solano
My roar wakes me as sunlight pours off me in obliterating waves. I’m no longer in fae form, my feral taking over and voicing our agony.
I turn inward and search for that golden thread, the tie that binds me to Emma. It’s still there, still glowing in sparks of daylight, but it’s so much dimmer now. Withering, and the farther I follow it, the darker it becomes. Her heart is dying, our bond fading away as something shadowy and powerful takes hold inside her.
The bite. I saw Eraldon inflict it. His poison injected into her veins. And now? Now she’s a seeker. A cursed soul who is bound to Eraldon.
My feral roars again, and I match it. With a hard turn, I use my massive paw and destroy my bed, splinters flying and erupting into flames. My rage doesn’t stop, not until everything in my chambers is a smoking heap. Bursting through the doors, I trot down the long hall as my guards stare, agog at their king in lion form.
I need Emma. I need her so badly I can’t think. And the sensation that woke me, the feeling oflosingher—I can’t. I speed up, tearing through the stone corridors until I find the studio, the place where my beloved’s portrait was being done.
The doors go up in flames and turn to ash as I approach, and I pad inside. I keep going past brushes and canvases that never seem to end.
Until I find her. I stop, my haunches lowering to the warm stone floor as I become caught in her eyes, in her fiery red hair, and the knowing smile on her lips. My Emma. She’s here. The artist Brunilla captured her in a perfect moment. Emma’s bare skin is luminescent in the painting, just as it is in life.
