She stopped. She felthot. Fever-hot. But there was something else: a feeling. An emotion that didn’t belong to her. Deep, incandescent joy. Like she had met someone she had been waiting for her whole life.
Then it was gone. It happened so fast she thought she must’ve imagined it.
“Mortal,” Vale prompted.
Ivy blinked hard. Her vision fuzzed, sweat breaking out across her cleavage, sending fat drops of gold-dusted sweat into her dress.
“I—” Ivy said, and stared down at the gold dust in fear. “What is this going todoto me?”
“I do not know,” Vale admitted, irritated. “I have never seen its effects on a mortal before.”
He ran his tongue distractedly over his fangs, and for a strange moment, Ivy was entranced. She wanted his tongue on her, around her,insideher?—
Vale picked her up. He did it so easily, just like before, and Ivy had to stop herself from gripping his big arms and squeezing. What waswrongwith her? Why was she suddenly lusting after a monster?
“Where are we going?” she slurred as the Skullstalker set off through the forest.
“To my nest,” Vale replied.
Three
Vale had not used his nest in a long time.
He required so little sleep, after all. And the void kept him eternally busy. If bushes didn’t part for him to walk through, he would not be able to remember where his nest was.
“This place is wonderful,” Ivy mumbled as yet another bone-bush moved out of the way for them. “Scary. Butwonderful.”
Vale ignored her. He stepped past the bone-bush, eyeing it curiously. The void had not been soresponsivein centuries. Last year—or possibly several years ago—he had fallen off the top of a tall tree, and nothing had moved to break his fall. Now everything twisted and snapped out of his way like it was easy.
Ivy’s head lolled against his robed chest, all the fear gone from her scent. Courtesy of the heatbloom, Vale reminded himself as she smudged her flushed, pollen-streaked cheek against his robe. He could already smell it taking effect, hot desire rising off her skin. At least she was doing her best to ignore it, none of the moaning or begging that he had expected.
Perhaps it did not affect mortals as much as it did demons or other paranormal creatures who took the pollen recreationally. The last thing he wanted was a heat-struck mortal in his void.
“Did that rose have feelings?” Ivy asked suddenly.
Vale did not know what a “rose” was. He assumed it was whatever mortal plant the heatbloom had transformed into to lure her in. It was gone by the time he showed up, using the cover of gold pollen to retreat into the undergrowth.
“Feelings,” he repeated.
Ivy nodded, her eyes half-lidded with pollen fever. “I felt this incrediblejoywhen it sprayed me. It wasn’t mine; I could tell. Was it the rose?”
Vale frowned down at her. He had assumed she was delusional from the heatbloom pollen. But this sounded like something else. Something he previously thought was impossible.
“Everything in this void is connected,” Vale admitted grudgingly. “Do you still feel it? The emotion that does not belong to you?”
“No,” Ivy sighed. “It was so odd. Like I was…connectedto something.”
Another bush moved out of the way, its bony leaves clacking. Vale glared at it, waiting for an explanation. But nothing pulsed into him—no whisper, not even a fleeting emotion. Once, he was so attuned with the void they were practically one and the same. Now it was communing with thismortal? Even his long-dead light-mote assistants had lived longer than mortals, who died within the century. What was the point?
Another hot flush of desire rose from Ivy’s skin. Vale closed his mouth, trying not to breathe it in. He could not afford to get distracted.
Ivy struggled against his grip, panic seeping back into her scent. “I can— I can work. You said something about… bone thickets?”
“The eastern rib-thickets,” Vale agreed. “They have been extremely unwieldy.”
“Extremely unwieldy,” Ivy whispered. Then she giggled, and the noise reminded Vale of a noise the light-motes used to make when they were happy. He had forgotten.
“They didn’t say you would be like this,” Ivy mumbled. “Said… said you were only knowledgeable when it came to killing. You sound like a scholar.”
