Is it still there? Did we break it?
I can’t tell if this crushing sensation is magic or panic.
Aching everywhere, thirsty, and groggy from passing out, I scan the small clearing for my clothes. They’re discarded right where I shed them when I stripped down for Julia.
So she built a fire, left her cloak, but couldn’t be bothered to gather my clothes while I was unconscious? Or freakingstaywith me?
I bite my lip to keep from screaming.
Sheleft.
The minute she drank her fill of my essence and the spell presumably broke, she abandoned me, unconscious, naked, still wet between my thighs.
Hot fury roils inside me. Not just at Julia, but at myself for being so desperate. For feeling powerful in my surrender, for feeling chosen, for confusing magic with desire. For spending even half a second thinking what happened was meaningful, even though Iknewwe only did it to break a spell.
My cheeks burn with humiliation. I’ve never felt so used. Whatever that sex meant or didn’t mean, I deserve better than to be left on the forest floor.
My hands shake as I pull on my clothes, fury building with each jerky movement. The fabric is rough against my oversensitive skin. Every muscle and every inch of skin aches from what we did, from how thoroughly she claimed me.
I leave her cloak on the ground and storm through the trees toward Elizabeth’s house. Branches catch my hair and claw at my skin, and I welcome the pain because at least it’s real and mine, not tangled up in her magic or her touch. My body is still singing with the aftershocks of what we did, and I hate it. I hate how good it felt.
The trees blur past me. My feet pound harder against the frosty ground. My breaths rasp so loudly I can’t hear anything else. I want to find her to scream at her, to make her look at what she did and see me as something more than a convenient body to feed from. I want her to feel even the tiniest shred of remorse, if she’s even fucking capable of that.
At last, I burst through the front door, my pulse pounding in my neck. I pause, listening.
A thump comes from upstairs. Then, a choking sound.
I race up the stairs two at a time.
Julia’s voice prickles my ears, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. I follow the sound through an open door into a dimly lit guest room.
Julia stands between the four-poster bed and the ensuite, a stride away from Rebecca, her outstretched hand crackling with magic. The invisible force pins Rebecca against the bookshelf without a touch. Rebecca’s feet dangle, her eyes bulging as she claws at the unseen noose suspending her. She’s dressed in nothing but a long blue T-shirt, clearly hauled straight from bed.
“Final chance to help me,” Julia snarls.
Seeing her hair neat and her body clothed while I was lying naked on the ground a moment ago makes my face burn even hotter.
“Julia!” I shout, my voice hoarse with anger.
She spins. Her expression is wild, her eyes dark around the edges. Her magic flares when she sees me, darkening her fingers before she controls it. Then she casts me that wicked smile I’m beginning to hate.
“You’re awake.” Her tone is maddeningly casual, as if she didn’t leave me for dead in the woods.
“Next time you want to abandon someone after fucking them unconscious,” I snarl, “know that wrapping them in your cloak doesn’t make you less of a monster.”
Something unreadable flickers in her eyes before her expression hardens. She releases her magical hold on Rebecca, who crumples to the floor with a gasping cough.
As Rebecca wheezes and clutches her throat, Julia scans me up and down, her nostrils flaring. Her gaze lingers on my neck, bitten and bruised, and then my hair, tangled with leaves and twigs, before settling on my eyes. “I needed to confirm that the binding spell had been severed.”
“Byleaving?” My fists are clenched so tight that my nails bite into my palms. “By seeing how far away from me you could get?”
Her gaze turns frosty. “What did you expect? That we would embrace tenderly after the spell broke?”
Shame washes over me so fiercely that my eyes prickle. I offered her my body, my life force, my submission, and she took it all before abandoning me the second she thought she was free.
It’s not that I wanted to wake up in her arms. Not really. But I didn’t expect to be abandoned.
My throat is too tight to say any of this, so I just stare at her, blinking back the hot prickling in my eyes. I refuse to cry and let her see how deeply this cuts.
