“If you saw me on the rooftop, then…” Her fingertips brush my arm. “Hewasthere in the library. I really did see him.”
My brow furrows, my weapons remaining abandoned as I straighten to my full height again. “Who?”
“The Ember King. He appeared in front of me just as a blade vision ended. He pulled me out of the path of danger. He used the thread! I’m sure of it. But at the time, I didn’t understand how?—”
Mindless impulses flood me.
Stronger than my logic. Burning around the stone in my chest like icy flames.
My arms snake around her waist, and I pull her close, once more like a feral wolf guarding a meal as I clamp her to my chest, as close to my heart as I can get her.
“Maxim will not visit you again.”
Thyra’s breath catches in her throat, a barely uttered gasp.
Her cheeks flush, and her heart grinds out its beats as she rises to my challenge. “Given that my blade visions are uncontrollable, how do you intend to stop him?”
I couldn’t control my descent into her vision. If Maxim was pulled into one of her other visions, then I doubt he could control his descent, either.
But there is nothing rational about the desires engulfing my mind. Vengeful. Possessive. Completely fucking unusual for me.
I repeat, harder now, my Lethian power scratching at the back of my throat, demanding a freedom I want to give it. “My enemy will not visit you again.”
Thyra exhales a shaky breath.
Her hand must have flown up between us when I reached for her because, once again, her palm rests against my heart, her fingers finding the rip in my tunic.
She searches my eyes as if she were scraping out my soul and then she responds with a softness that defies how tightly I’m holding her.
Instead of biting and scratching and clawing at me as she should, she’s quiet, a worried hitch in her breathing. “Stellen, are you?—?”
I barely hear her. “I will give you everything you need.”
I stroke her back, angling my hand upward because I need to tangle my fingers in her hair and breathe her in, listen to the sounds her mouth makes.
We could stay in this forest for days, and I could sing her into a frenzy of need and pleasure over and over…
I could forget my kingdom and forget who I am and what I’ve done and forget that the curse exists…
“Stellen?” Her voice is sterner now, but it carries a concern I can’t place as she leans hard into me. Her other hand slides swiftly upward to cup my jaw before she brushes her thumb across the corner of my lips. “You’re bleeding.”
I’m…what?
My legs buckle.
The stone in my chest drops like lead.
I finally taste the blood in my mouth.
My damaged heart squeezes, sharp as the dagger that stabbed it, and now my injury is dragging me down…and down…
Thyra’s arms fly around me, but I’m already crashing to the ground.
Chapter Nineteen
Thyra
Thump.
