If any other person told me they’d seen a painting move, I’d be the first one to offer alternative explanations. It was the light. It was an underlying image the artist had painted over. It was stress or tiredness. You were going blind. You were going crazy.
ButI’dseen it. And I knew it wasn’t any of those things. (Except possibly the going-crazy one.) I’d barely been at Briarwood for ten days and already I’d discovered I was a witch, attempted to deal with the murder of my parents, battled the fae king who turned out to be my father, become sexually and emotionally involved with all the castle’s inhabitants, and started to enjoy drinking hot tea. It might be enough to make anyone start seeing things.
You’re not crazy, Maeve.A voice, soothing and musical, danced through my head. I pressed my hands to my ears, but the words kept flowing through my consciousness.I’m here. I’m right here.
Don’t do this to me. Go away.
I flung myself away from the portrait and rushed down the stairs, my head whirling. I’d always been able to trust the evidence of my eyes and my mind, I’d always known that I could rationally look at the world. But now I was hearing voices and seeing paintings move, and I couldn’t explain it. That terrified me more than Daigh and his fae.
A light shone from the library.Of course, Corbin’s still awake. I could do with some of his empathy right now.
I quickened my pace, peeking around the corner of the door, expecting to see Corbin hunched over his desk, dealing with hisinsomnia the only way he knew how – by burying himself in his books.
To my surprise, the figure hunched over the desk wasn’t Corbin, but Blake.
“Greetings, Princess.” He looked up as I hovered in the doorway.
“How did you know I was here?” I stepped into the room. Something in Blake’s eyes drew me in, moving my feet of my own accord. The ache inside me – the one I thought Flynn and Corbin and Rowan had very much sated – flared to life, deeper and more urgent than ever. That seemed to happen whenever Blake was nearby.
“I smelled you.” Blake placed a bookmark in the open volume in front of him and snapped the book shut. “You have a hot, spicy scent that’s utterly intoxicating. It trails around the castle like a ribbon, and when you’ve been shagging those boys of yours, your musk is unmistakable.”
“So you’re saying I stink?”
Blake stood up. I was pleased to see he was no longer wearing the black linen clothes of the fae. He’d borrowed something off of Flynn –baggy black cargo pants and a green shirt that made the silver flecks in his eyes glimmer.
“I’m saying you’re a welcome distraction.” Blake trailed his fingers off the end of the desk, then raised them to my face, drawing a sizzling line along my jaw. “Why are you down here? I thought you were curled up with the weird one.”
“I was with Rowan but…I couldn’t sleep. What areyoudoing here? Something tells me that Corbin didn’t give your permission.”
Something in Blake’s expression when I’d caught him coming back into the kitchen made me wonder if he was up to something. But there wasn’t exactly much hecouldget up to. Hewas in just as much danger as the rest of us. If he wanted to save his own skin, he’d have to work with us.
“I’m researching our powers. Corbin doesn’t want me touching his precious books, so I took the rare opportunity after you finally conked him out to look at some of the more interesting volumes.” Blake withdrew his finger from my chin, sending a sharp pang of disappointment through my stomach. He patted the large volume on the desk. “They have a lot to say about you.”
“Me? But you’re the anomaly here – the human spirit witch raised by the fae. You can already do so much more than I can.”
Blake snorted. “Hardly. I have a tenth of the power you possess, if that. It’s humming in your veins right now, released by all the shagging you’ve been doing tonight. Can’t you feel it?”
I stared down at my wrists, turning my attention inward. He was right. Heat hummed through my veins – tingling along the inside of my skin, an effervescence rising to the surface.
“You’re one of a kind, Maeve Moore. Daigh created you deliberately. Half spirit witch, half-fae. There hasn’t been one like you for centuries.”
“So there was another like me?”
Blake nodded. “There’s nothing about her in these books except for shadows and hints, but all the fae told stories of her. She was a mighty warrior. It was she who led the fae in the ritual to raise the Slaugh.”
“She…” Of all the things I’d expected Blake to say, that was not it. “She helped kill millions of people?”
Blake shrugged. “If it helps, at least half of them probably deserved it.”
I rubbed my temple. “I can’t deal with this right now. I just heard a voice inside my head. Out there in the hall.”
Blake flipped through the pages of the book. “There’s some stuff in here about spirit users hearing voices, but it’s usuallyconcerned with talking with the dead. And trust me, if you could talk to the dead, you’d know about it. Spirits are everywhere and they never shut up?—”
I pressed my lips to his.
For the first time, Blake looked surprised.
He recovered quickly, though, and responded to my kiss, his lips hot and raw against mine, his tongue insistent. Inside me, the power that had been awoken by my other carnal activities roared to life, rushing through my veins to converge on my lips.
