As soon as their lips met, Cora felt a rush of emotion. She nearly sobbed with relief as it flooded in. Opening her senses and dropping her shields, she welcomed more of the energy that washis. His affection. His attraction. His emotion. He’d been acting so strange since the night in the tower, his energy muted and nearly impossible to read. But now it wrapped around her, infusing their kiss with a silent promise. She pressed into him, desperate to erase every inch of space that he’d so stubbornly tried to maintain with her these last couple of days. The way he held her now, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other clutching her body tight against him, stood in contrast to the cold, formal man he’d become. She wound her arms around his neck, wishing he’d lift her off her feet already?—
He stumbled back a step, breaking their kiss. She blinked up at him and found his eyes were closed, expression pained. Unlacing her hands from behind his neck, she palmed his cheek. Lightly, she ran her thumb just under the nearly healed cut on his cheekbone. “Teryn, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t have much time,” he said, voice strained. “He’s fighting me.”
Her thumb stilled. “Who’s fighting you?”
His body began to shake. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead. “Morkai,” he said through chattering teeth.
Terror ripped through her, muting her sense of his emotions. Or were they growing muted of their own accord? “Teryn, what’s happening? I don’t understand.”
His shoulders heaved with a shudder so violent, Cora was forced to release him. “No,” he ground out, eyes still closed. “Touch me again. Keep your hands somewhere on me. I can hold on a little longer if I can feel you. Hear you. Just…say my name.”
“Teryn,” Cora said, the word laced with panic. She reached for his hand, gripping it as tightly as she dared.
His tremors subsided enough for him to open his eyes. “Morkai has taken over my body using the crystal.”
“What do you mean, he’s taken over your body? And what crystal?”
He plunged his free hand beneath the collar of his jacket and lifted a leather cord from around his neck. As he withdrew it fully, Cora saw a large amber crystal tied to the end. Memories tugged at the edges of her mind, so potent they nearly overwhelmed her.
The crystal.
The gem that once topped Morkai’s cane.
The stone she took from the battlefield.
The object she’d tried—and failed—to clear. To break. To destroy.
Until she was trapped…in a realm of blinding white light…
Before she could remember anything more, he thrust the stone into her hand, closing her fingers around it.
“Take this, but don’t look at it. Just…just go now. Keep the crystal in mind and write this all down before it makes you forget. It’s been enchanted to be as indestructible as a unicorn horn. You must find a way to break it, but don’t let it come within sixteen inches of my body—” His voice cut off in an agonized shout. “Gods, he’s fighting me. I can’t hold him off much longer.”
Cora’s heart slammed against her ribs as she tried to take in everything he was saying. It was almost too much to comprehend. And what about Teryn? How the hell had Morkai taken over his body? It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. And yet she felt the horrible truth of it. Felt the dreadful possibilities hidden in the palm of her hand where the crystal pulsed with that strange energy.
“You have to go,” Teryn said, his voice barely above a whisper. He closed his eyes again and stumbled forward.
Her eyes went wide as they fell on a lock of silver hair beside his temple. No, both sides were now shot with a thick streak of white. “Teryn, your hair, it’s…”
He lifted his face, teeth bared in a grimace.
Cora’s stomach bottomed out as a crimson stream trickled from his nose. “Take this,” he said, squeezing his hand around hers and reminding her of the crystal once more. “Run. Write everything down. Find a way to break the stone as soon as you can.”
“I can’t leave you like this.”
His knees buckled, and he slid to the floor. “It’s all right. You can. You must. Just go, and know that I?—”
He winced again and tugged his hands from around hers, severing their physical connection. “Run.”
That was the last thing she heard before his body went motionless, slumped to the side on the floor.
Everything inside her wanted to go to him, to help him, to ensure he was still alive.
But his words rang through her head, echoed by the pulsing warning that blared from her gut. She had to do what he’d said. She had to run.
Biting back an anguished cry, she ran for the door and tugged it open?—
