For everyone. And it would literally be everyone at risk if he achieved his endgame.
My family, especially my dad… what he’d do to protect me… it would destroy him. And that would destroy us all.
“If you had reached out to me like I advised—and made possible—things wouldn’t have escalated to such an awful level of discomfort for you, Winter.”
He was mad.
This was punishment—through the demonstration of how wonderful it would be if I obeyed him? As in how much would be lost and closed to me if I didn’t?
“Made possible? When you fused some of our blood with that Spiral Thorn instrument?”
“I know you felt it, a connection constantly open for you to latch onto, to reach out to me. It’s also how I’m able to gift you this now even though it is occurring across planes, something I wasn’t previously able to do without compromising Sanctus.”
When I didn’t say anything, he pushed more heat into my chest and it surged through me, making me pant and tremble all over because it was almost… too much.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Ungh…”
“Use your words. Explain it to me.”
“Like… you said before… I’m not… ready. Not up to par… for you. And what… you need from me.”
“I also recall conveying that you would need me in the meantime.”
His magic sparked on his palms, but this was infected with a gray tint alongside his usual midnight-blue.
I was choking and shuddering in the next moment as it poured into me—ice. Fucking ice tearing through my veins.
“What… is that? No! Don’t!”
“This? Why, this, my deathborn darling, is what it will come to feel like at all times for you if you keep your distance from me again. In fact, if you’d waited another few days, this is what you would have experienced.”
The gray tint went away and then the warmth soothed the ice-like sensation stabbing through my veins. Slowly. Very fucking slowly.
I squeezed my eyes shut, gasping and sinking back against the side of the pool.
I heard a splash and I blinked to see him now in the actual water.
Then he was wrapping his arms around me and pulling me against his bare chest, even stroking my hair. I shuddered and not just because of the ice hell.
“I detest seeing you uncomfortable, but you needed to be aware of the consequences. If you’d obeyed me, it wouldn’t have been necessary. Do you understand going forward how things must be between us?”
“Y-yes.”
“That nasty sensation will leave you soon, so long as you remain against me for a little while longer. Not to worry.” He stroked my back, my hair again, offering what appeared to be benevolent comfort. “I am proud of you.”
“You… are?”
“Aside from your misstep regarding maintaining contact, you have impressed me with your training. You’ve maderemarkable progress in such a short timeframe. It is the mark of a true prodigy, meaning also that you will be readied much sooner.”
I was still shaking, the warmth taking time to heal the damage he’d done.
Purposely.
While he’d made sure to praise my training accomplishments with my dad, he thought that ‘improvement’ was just rooted to my necromantic performance and confidence in that specific area. He’d infected me before too, which he’d used to gauge both my temperament and my knowledge base in all sorts of things.
But he’d missed something.
