Nothing happened.
Blake dropped my hand. My skin burned. I turned to him. My mouth hung open, trying to form words. But the pain was too great. Blake pressed his fingers to his own temples, and the look on his face told me he hadn’t succeeded in whatever he was trying to do.
“It’s not working,” he breathed, the edge of his mouth twisting.
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“What’s a Sherlock?”
“Never mind.” The pain in my limbs started to fade. I bent down, fumbling around the long grass from my sword. “We need to get out there.”
“Let me try one more time,” Blake grabbed my hand again, yanking me to my feet. “I have an idea. Do you trust me?”
“Not yet. But I’m getting there.”
“Good enough for me. We need a burst of power.”
Before I could ask what he meant by that, Blake pressed his lips to mine.
CHAPTER SIX
MAEVE
Holy shit.
The kiss stole my breath away. The fire in Blake’s lips tore right through my body, becoming part of the pain that still coursed through me, transforming it into hot pleasure. Fire flared from my lips right down to my toes, lighting me up like a supernova.
The battle around us disappeared. I forgot about my friends, about the fae shooting arrows at us, about the pressing need to close off the gateway. All that existed was Blake’s soft, full lips and his body pressed against me and the feeling of his tongue wrapped around mine.
Blake pressed his hand against the small of my back, his fingers seeking the heat of my bare skin as his body sunk into mine. His hardness dug into my thigh, and the ache inside me pulsed with want of him.
Through the fog of my desire, a rational thought surfaced.
This is ridiculous. There’s a battle going on and I’m kissing a guy I’m not even sure is on our side.
As much as I knew that to be true, my body refused to listen to my head. It wanted more, more, more. It wanted to fall intoBlake, to become part of him. Blake’s lips moved against mine, and I realized he was chanting something.
The heat grew and grew inside me, part of the ache and yet, also separate, like twin pillars of fire burning me up. The second pillar consumed me first, blazing with a new kind of energy – a heat that tickled the inside of my skin, that prickled in my fingers and burned behind my eyes.
Blake’s fingers grazed the edge of my breast and the heat rose into my skull and burst out. The pain flared through my body, worse than before – a thousand daggers piercing my skin. The heat of Blake’s body took this pain, and transformed it so that it became part of myself, so I owned it, embraced it,relishedit.
And then, like a great sigh, my body convulsed, and all the pain flew out of me, taking me with it.
My eyes tore open, but I wasn’t inside my own head anymore. Even though I could feel Blake’s lips on mine, his head wasn’t in front of me. Instead, I was on the other side of the field, pressed against the edge of the sidhe, watching Corbin leap on top of a fae named Hefeydd, who for some reason I felt a stab of sympathy for.
My eyes stung from the smoke of the fire. My fingers were wrapped around something hard. I looked down. I was holding a bow. I had no idea how to use a bow, and yet…and yet, my fingers moved instinctively, drawing back the string to my shoulder, as though I’d done this a million times before.
At the same time, I was on the grass in front of the sidhe, locked in a wrestling match with Flynn. His usually-sweet face was twisted in an ugly scowl, and his fingers dug into my shoulders as he tried to throw me to the ground. I wanted to help him, and I also longed for him to die already.
And then I was somewhere else again, my bone sword crossed with Arthur’s, my arm shuddering against his weight. Then I was looking at Arthur from behind as he sliced througha fae’s chest. Then I was running across the field, sword at my side, aiming for two figures standing on the low wall.
One of the figures turned, and I was looking into my own eyes.
There was this itching in my fingers, faint but persistent. Jumbled thoughts pressed against the inside of my head – a hundred voices all shouting at once, commanding me to act. To slice, cut, loose the arrow, help my friends, kill the witches, kill the fae.
It was like trying to remember something, but as soon as I thought I was approaching it, the memory slipped away again.
I was supposed to thrust the sword in my hand through the girl on the wall. Into my own gut. Only it wasn’t me. Or it was me. A different me.
