Agrippina, not Mamma.
Curling my fingers into fists, I raise my gaze back to the island that seems to float atop the ocean like a swirl of strawberry gelato.
The birthplace of my ancestors.
Sorceresses . . .
I want to both shiver and shudder that I descend from women who use blood to cast spells.
To think that one day, a drop of what runs through the web beneath my skin will make me just as feared as they are. I take comfort in the fact that Phoebus, Syb, and the others know what I am, and they haven’t shunned me.
The desire to understand more about my heritage and learn how my powers will be unbound tempts me to plow through the wall behind which Lorcan resides—or use my door and then his. I’ve no doubt he’ll skirt the truth, for the day my magic is liberated, I become vulnerable to obsidianandget sucked out of Luce.
A lose-lose for the Crow King.
I suppose it’s not much of a win-win for me, unless . . .
Since I’m only half-Crow, perhaps I’d only become half stone. Still not ideal.
If my lower half becomes a block of obsidian, I can kiss walking around goodbye. If my upper half becomes stone— Well, definitely not ideal.
Lorcan would probably know what happens to half-breeds.
The floor tips. The stone wall blurs.
I’m suddenly standing in a room lined with books and more books. Thick leather spines embedded with gilt lettering. Some titles make sense, while others are clearly not in Lucin, what with their oblique dashes and apostrophes smack in the middle of words.
I whirl on myself, because where the underworld am I? I almost lose my balance when my nose grazes black leather and a hard arm bands around my back. I crane my neck and gulp when I meet a familiar golden stare.
Eight
“You cannot stay away, can you, Behach Éan?” His scent whispers over the tip of my nose, wind-spun sunshine and summer storms.
Giving Lorcan my best eye roll, I dig my palms into the hard leather covering an even harder chest. “Let go.”
His arm falls away so suddenly that I stumble backward and whack my tailbone into a bookcase.
“Why am I here?”
“Inside my mind? Because you’re my mate.”
“Your mind is a library?” I choose to skip over the second part of his answer.
A slow smile snares one corner of his mouth. “When I’m awake, my mind is anywhere my body is. When I’m asleep, my mind is any place my dreams take me.”
Huh.“What’s the scope on this mind link thingy?”
“Mating bond.”
I shoot him a withering look, which I hope translates what I think of him insisting on calling it a mating bond.
His smile grows. “Did a lash fall into your eye?”
I frown.
“Your left eye is twitching a tad manically.”
I snap my eyes wide and jack up my chin. The new look I hurtle his way does nothing to scare off his smile. “The scope, Morrgot? Focus. What’s the scope on this mind link?”
