Back when there were so few immortals roaming the earth. When Seth walked alone and without purpose, or so the stories often said.
“Have you ever made another?” I asked, though I vaguely remembered asking it before.
Eamon drew back slightly to look into my face and shook his head. “Never. I have been waiting for you.”
I swallowed thickly, reaching up to trace the line of hissharp jaw. “Then take me, change me, and make me yours. But promise me you will not allow me to succumb to the darkness the way others have. I do not think I could bear it.”
His smile was radiant even with the tears staining his skin. “There is no darkness your light cannot destroy, Adrienne. You do not need me for that.”
“Promise me all the same.”
Eamon nodded, leaning forward to brush his mouth against mine, the words featherlight across my lips. “I promise.”
Heat prickled across my throat, faint at first, like the sun warming my skin. But it grew hotter until it was sharp and piercing like a burn. I cried out, only for the pain to be smothered by a wave of dizzy relief. The garden vanished into nothing and I waded in inky black water.
My mother stood before me as I remembered her from my childhood, her shiny blonde hair swept up in an elegant bun, silvery bites across her throat and collarbones. She stared at me with one arched eyebrow raised. “This means nothing.” Her voice was a screech. “It is yet another trick, another means of?—”
But whatever she’d meant to say was cut off by the rising tide. A great, black wave crashed over us, wiping away her beauty until she was ragged in her old clothes, the snarling monster I knew her to be. More callous and cruel than any immortal I’d ever met.
“You are only as good as what you can provide,” she rasped.
Those words were etched on my soul and I was not sure if I would ever be free of them. But I could only look at my mother with pity, finally able to clearly see the wounds this world had left and the misguided way she’d sought to protect me—in the beginning at least, before greed and addiction had sunk their claws in.
Another wave rose and I knew without question that this would be the last time I saw her. “I am sorry for all you have suffered, Maman. And though I do not forgive you for all you have done, I will work every day to free myself from the shackles you put me in.”
The dark water took us both, but I did not fight the current because it was strong arms around my frame, hands touching my face, and warmth sliding through my veins.
“Drink, my heart,” Eamon encouraged.
I was already drinking, gulping down his blood greedily. Each draught sent a shock of lightning until my body was alive with sensation. I groaned in the dark, my heavy arms rising. My hands slid through the thick hair that fell over us like a shroud and I held him close, rising through the water to my knees.
“That’s it, Adrienne. Take what you need.”
Pain vanished in the next breath—all the aching sores of wounds left to fester blinking out like a candle. Heat circled my belly, dipping lower, pulling a moan that was both guttural and needy from me. But the edges of my awareness were bleeding out, the water rising.
“Tomorrow and the next,” Eamon promised.
And the darkness reached up to take me.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Adrienne was unconscious as I bundled her into my arms, stepped to the window, and shot into the night sky.
I had not been able to wake her and I could only hope the conversation we’d had in her mind would be enough. If it wasn’t, I would do whatever necessary to make it right. Fear had its hand wrapped around my heart, squeezing with each breath I took. She had barely roused during the blood exchange, but she’d taken a full measure of my blood.
The winter wind was bitter as I made for the crumbled ruins in which I took my rest, and I shifted the cloak higher around her. If the transformation took hold, there would be no need for such precautions, but I could not help but fear something had gone wrong. Perhaps the infection was too great. Usually, fledglings were awake for at least the beginning of the first death, as it was agony. Thousands of years later and I still remembered that pain.
“She has suffered enough.” Seth’s voice was quiet in the ruined castle. He appeared beside me as I paused before my coffin.
It was not a surprise that he knew where I took my rest. I blew out a breath, my chin dropping to my chest with theweight of the last few weeks. Seth ran his hand through my hair and I leaned into the comforting touch.
“Amayah wished for me to tell you not to fear, and I did not want you to suffer during your daylight rest,” he explained.
Relief flooded through me and for the first time in weeks I breathed. I shifted Adrienne so I could pull him closer and press my brow to his. “Thank you,kah aneyur, thank you.”
There was a heaviness in him I had only seen once before, when he’d told me he would go to ground for the long sleep.He drew away and pressed his lips to my brow.
“Rest easy,ahnak makayna,she will be with you when you wake,” he promised and then vanished in the next breath.
