“Don’t touch me,” she snapped in a hostile rush, her blue eyes blown wide and fully dilated.
“I apologize.” I raised my hands, palms out. “I was only trying to see if you were harmed.”
She scoffed in disgust. “Harmed?”
I kept still while she gripped me hard, her full lips pulling thinner as she went on.
“I am always harmed. Near it, recovering from it, watching it bestowed on others, swimming in it.” She shook her head, her silky dark waves more disheveled than when she was on display at Valerius’s party.
“I live in a world of hurt and injury and pain.”
Her eyes were glassy and glazed with it. “I see that.” Something pinched at my sternum, hearing the despair in her voice.
Not only could I see the pain, but I saw how these injuries she gaveherself made her intoxicated in a way. I’d seen this look on opium enthusiasts. Inhaling deeply, I smelled no sign of opium or another drug, only the sweet tang of her own blood.
She blinked quickly, rousing from her trancelike state. “What are you doing in here,Senator?” Hatred dripped from her tongue.
“Why do you cut yourself, Lela?”
She winced. I wasn’t sure if it was the question that made her flinch or something else. She reached out and gripped my wrist, staring where she held on to me, her thumb brushing along my skin. I realized she was rubbing the blood from her fingers onto the skin of my inner wrist.
My pulse quickened, my breath becoming labored. I wasn’t sure why until I felt the distinct presence of mystical power. The gods’ power.
I thought Valerius may have fabricated his little story about her, only to make himself seem more daring and brave to keep a witch in his house. But it appeared I was wrong. It felt similar to the god-touched magic pouring through my veins when I shifted into the dragon. Only this felt slightly different. More… feminine.
There wasn’t the roar of a beast surging through my body and consciousness to break free, but the rush of scintillating, hypnotic power encircling me where I still knelt on the stone floor.
“It is true,” I said softly. “You are touched by the gods.”
She stared dazedly where she continued to brush her thumb and rub her blood in a circle over my pulse throbbing in my wrist. I didn’t understand what she was doing, but I couldn’t seem to stop her.
“By a goddess. Not a god,” she stated clearly, even though her voice remained dreamlike. “I see you, Trajan.”
I gulped at the sound of my name on her lips, having no idea why it affected me so deeply. It was as if by saying my name, she had ensnared me somehow, able to cut me open and see all my secrets. Evenso, my heart pumped harder, not because she might actually know the darkest depths of me, but because I suddenly wanted her to.
She lifted her gaze to mine, her pupils slowly shrinking, her irises a deep blue like the Tyrrhenian Sea far away from shore. I was caught in their midnight depths and the stunning beauty of her face. She was the most striking woman I had ever seen.
“You are going to protect me,” she whispered softly, her magic compressing the room—a command, not an observation. “I can see it so clearly.”
I could say nothing at first, bewildered by this strange sensation winding tighter around me.
“So you are a witch,” I confirmed.
Then she smiled and caught my very soul. It wasn’t a smile meant to be beguiling or sweetly alluring. Still, I felt trapped and slain all at the same time.
“Yes, Trajan,” she assured me, sorrow creeping into her eyes again. “A witch with no power.” She finally let me go and sat back on her heels, looking around the small temple. “Not in this depth of hell.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
Her head snapped back to me, features sharp and focused.
“I believe,” I told her gently, “that you have a great deal of power. Even in this hell you live in.”
“As if you could possibly know anything about my world,” she bit out furiously.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps coming up the hallway behind us. I launched to my feet, quickly thinking of an excuse as to why I’d be in this part of the house.
Lela didn’t even bother to move or hide her bridle and the knife on the ground. When the male slave who’d been serving us wine stepped into the temple, he quickly surveyed Lela then swung his attention to me.
