“Or like this?” he asks.
His power flashes again, but this time, it’s a black light that makes me freeze.
Black light means he’s using dark magic to create something very real. But to use dark magic, he has to drain life from a living thing.
He has destroyed whole trees this way.
Now, my left hand clamps around his wrist, as if I could stop him. My claws dig into his flesh so hard that blood drips from between our clasped hands.
I could tear off his right hand in a blink.
This time, he doesn’t seem to care.
“Don’t worry, my Veda,” he says. “There are plenty of rosebushes outside this cottage from which I can drain life. I haven’t harmed your pack.”
There are no windows in this room for me to check the truth of what he said, but despite my distrust, I don’t hear any screams or shouts from outside. On the contrary, if I listen hard enough, I can hear my pack talking quietly among themselves.
They’re worried about me. They don’t like that I’ve been gone so long already.
Emil shrugs. “You’re free to check on them.”
I nearly pull away from him, nearly give in to the fear that, even though every member of my pack sounds perfectly fine, something might have happened to them.
But then I narrow my eyes at him, mentally replaying the eagerness of his suggestion. “Youwantme to leave.”
The corners of his mouth turn down. “The longer you remain in my presence, the more painful it is.”
Which would be why he used his dark magic just now. To fucking scare me away.
I can’t stop my smile. It’s cruel. I’m fully aware. “Then I’ll stay.”
“As you like.”
The dark light swirling around his left hand spreads rapidly outward, moving across his body to reach the shackles he’s wearing.
The metal transforms from rusty iron to a gleaming bronze, each shackle thinning out.
I expect the bindings to disappear entirely, but, while the chains retract so that only bronze anklets and bracelets remain, the excess metal becomes liquid. It quickly ascends his legs and chest, traveling outside his clothing, while the liquid at his left wrist rushes up his arm and also across his torso, all of it meeting in the middle and solidifying for a few moments like plates of armor.
It’s beautiful armor, etched with what looks like runes, before it, too, re-liquifies and continues on its path.
Now gathered together, the metal streams toward his right hand, which is clasped in mine.
I edge backward, eyeing the bronze liquid warily as it slows, forming another plate around his forearm before a thread of bronze very slowly glides forward around his wrist and then onto mine.
It forms a new shackle binding me to him.
I take a sharp breath. “Stop.”
At my command, the liquid stops extending along my arm, but it doesn’t cease moving, flowing around and around my wrist.
Emil tilts his head. “Are you sure?” He edges closer to me again, the backs of his fingers feathering the inside of my wrist. “We’re already bound, my Veda. Even without these chains.”
“I can cut through any chains you make,” I whisper. “All I have to do is extend my claws.”
“True,” he says.
My heart beats harder when he asks, “But is that what you want?”
