No...
Her tiny body jerked as confusion arched her eyebrows. Her thick, filthy lashes fluttered. “I’m...” Blood bubbled at the corner of her mouth as her arms loosened around my neck. “...hungry.” Her final word branded my neck with the last puff of air she would ever breathe and...that was it.
Flames no longer waited for me to give them an answer—they claimed me.
A bargain struck.
A life stolen.
Just like all the lives they’d stolen down here.
I sank into the fire and...
broke.
Chapter Sixty-Four
I WOKE SCREAMING.
My body exploded in agony, my heart threatening to burst.
Bolting upright in bed, I clutched my shoulder where I swore a phantom dagger drove right into me.
Whisper leapt to his feet, snarling at shadows as I gasped and hugged my stomach.
More pain crippled me.
God, the agony in my shoulder was nothing.
Nothing.
I’d never felt such pain. Such raging, roaringfury.
It threatened to shatter my bones.
It felt as if lightning gathered inside me.
The bond swelled, scorched, then tore at the seams.
The tether binding me to Lucien became murderous. I felt himpulling. Summoning me, siphoning the cold right out of me, falling into a cyclone of power.
The room warped as frost burst free with jagged faultlines, making Whisper leap off the bed.
“Lucien?” I looked wildly for him, gasping and quaking as excruciating agony kept building, building.
Ice crackled over my ribs, sinking its silver tendrils directly into my heart.
Flickers of despair fed down the bond, clashing with snowy suffocation.
I slipped into his mind.
I saw from behind his eyes—
Surrounded by men. Guns all trained on him. A cave system that reeked of death. His heart incinerated. His humanity disintegrated. He surrendered to the fire and—
“No!”
Whisper let loose a thunderous snarl as if he felt what I did. Felt that Lucien was only moments away from total annihilation.
