“What do you mean you canfeel him? Do you have feelings for him?”
A look of pure disgust suffused her face. “Gods, no.”
I couldn’t hide the relief that flooded me, but he had tried to use that blade on her. What if he had nicked her, and we had missed it?
“Not like that, but …” She shrugged. “Maybe I have been … aware of him this whole time. I knew something was off after the attack, and now it makes sense. I felt him when he came back like a tether snapped back into place, and I feel him now. He’s not lying, and he feels different.”
I bit my tongue to keep my emotions in check. No matter what, I could not escape this man. I folded my arms tightly over my chest, trying to keep myself from storming back in there and beating him bloody for once again daring to have a hold on her.
Dianna closed the distance between us and placed her hand on my face, turning me toward her. The rage threatening to boil over cooled beneath her touch.
“It’s not like us or what we have. I don’t feel him like that.” She gave me a small, even smile. “I did not show you my past with him because I still have feelings for him. The only emotion I feel toward him is hatred, and it is raw and aching, a constant ache that carries Gabby’s name. I showed you so you would understand everything fully because I trust you more than anything. Love you more than anything. All of my love, all I am, belongs to you. Forever. Soul or not.” She raised onto her tiptoes, slanting her lips over mine before pulling back and dropping her hand. “I feel Isaiah, too. His anger and hate.”
I couldn’t help the groan that left me. “I hate this,” I replied viciously. It wasn’t directed at her, but at the situation. “I don’t want you tofeelany of them at all.”
Dianna didn’t falter under my anger, her smile only widening a fraction as if she enjoyed my jealous rage. She swept her hand down my chest, petting me soothingly, stalling the storm rising beneath my skin again.
“I don’t think I have much of a choice,” she said.
“Why now?” I asked. “Why not before?”
“I was thinking about that, too. I think it may only be intense emotions. Or because we have seen Death. Maybe that old bastard did something to trigger it. Right now, out here with you, I only feel you and your power and quiet, lethal rage.”
My jaw clenched hard enough to crack my teeth. “I am so sick of everyone trying to take you from me. My dead father, Gathrriel, and now even Death thinks he has some claim. On top of all of that, fucking Kaden is back making eyes at you.” She giggled, and I ran a hand over my face in frustration. “It’s not funny.”
“Oh, but it is,” she said. “Do you really think anyone has the power to take me from you? I like to stroke many things on you but not your ego, so trust me when I say there is no force as powerful in these realms or the next as you, my love.”
The corner of my lips rose. “Oh, I do like that. Do it again.”
She playfully popped my biceps. “No.”
I only snorted before running my thumb under my lip. “How do you feel about solitary confinement? I’ll just hide you away and keep you all to myself.”
Her brows rose with a playful smirk playing on her lips. “Planning to tie me up again?”
Heat coursed through my blood, but not in anger as the image of her bent over and bound as I drove inside of her flashed through my mind. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about, but it is what I am thinking about now.”
She laughed.
Lowering my head, I rested my forehead against hers. “Dianna, I know I’m being irrational and emotional, but I cannot control that part of myself when it comes to you. I haven’t been able to since we met. I just don’t like either of them tied to you in any way, especially after all they have done. What about what you feel when you’re near him?”
“I just said—”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Her eyes grew dark. She’d shown me her grief back on the remains of Rashearim. We had worked through it together, and I had pulled her back from that brutal, violent edge. Through screams of pain and overwhelming anger, we had fought to purge the wound enough that she could finally start to heal. I knew that just being near him caused her to hurt. It was impossible for her to look at him and not think of her sister’s last moments. He couldn’t kill her because of the cursed tether between them, but there were fates far worse than death.
“I love my sister, and I know he took her, but we have more important things to worry about right now.” She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, the shine of tears glazing her eyes. “It hurts. It always will, but I have you, and there is nothing I fear when you are with me. Not even a broken heart.”
I leaned forward to brush my lips over hers. “I will protect all of you with my life.”
“I know, my love.” She smiled up at me. “I don’t like them being tied to me, though,” she said, blowing out a breath and pulling back. “But I will admit, I am more nervous as to why?”
My head turned toward the door to the dungeon. “As am I. What makes Death so afraid that he not only resurrects Kaden, but ties them to you so I won’t kill them?”
“I don’t know, and that worries me more than him being alive.”
“It doesn’t matter. They won’t be for long. The second that mark or tie between you three is lifted, I’ll kill him again.”
