Guilt prickles through the lust and I suck in a deep breath to try and cool myself. I have to remind myself she’s hurt, even though she said she isn’t in pain. I’m sure that’s a lie. But I have to take it slow. Already I know I’m not good enough for her, but I have to try. And she doesn’t need my lust filled brain leading with my dick.
Rolling a hand over my face, I blow out a breath and remember why we’re here.
“Do you want a change of clothes?” I ask her. She looks down at herself and extends her leg out to look at her foot. “I can also get some healing balms for your feet.”
She shrugs and looks up and away again. “I just want to get whatever it is over with. Your. . . father, he said I needed to be questioned about the destruction of Stone House?”
She turns to me and I refuse to believe it. After the ceremony of the Willow of Lore someone had torched Thorne’s rooms at the house. Luckily they didn’t spread to the rest of the house, but they weren’t ordinary flames. Thorne said they were blue, and he said his shadows felt a presence of raw, un-guided magic. An aura so strong, so expansive there was no definition to it. He said it didn’t feel like threads or ribbons but a sheet.
And Mavyn’s aura had looked like that during the ceremony – which I still can’t believe I saw because people cannotseeaura’s – but to have a magic that strong you’d have to at least be some sort of celestial. People cannot just create blue flames.
I nod anyway. She was the first person to leave the ceremony so she would have had time to go to Stone House and somehow start the fire. “Yes, they’ll want to question you. But Varian will be questioning you, and he has empathic magic.”
Something flashes through her eyes as she looks once more at me. “You think I did it?”
“No!” I step towards her and raise my hands but stop right before I touch her. Even though there’s a layer between our skin I don’t want to risk hurting her in anyway. She’s already been through enough pain. “I’m just warning you. Varian’s magic is strong and demanding. Even when you don’t hide the truth it can still be painful.”
She slightly shakes her head and then looks past me. “Can we just get this over with then? I’m starving.”
The night of the party flashes through my mind and my true devil rumbles at it, but I silence it and ask, “Do you need food or blood? I can get someone to bring you something.”
She shakes her head again. “I drank all my blood bags when I woke up this morning, I’ll just wait till lunch.”
I stretch out my mind to call for Varian so they can come back as I mentally scold her because she will not be waiting several more hours. I’ll be getting her something to eat the second we’re finished with all this bullshit.
The crowd comes back, all of them standing in a group to the side instead of where they all had been before. Mavyn glances at my and Thorne’s fathers and her upper lip twitches. I don’t blame her for hating them. They’re part of the reason she’s here and not with her family. Not that I can be entirely angry at the situation, it led her straight to me, and she ismine.
“Are you finished. . .conversing, Callahan?”
I have always seen Edmond Arcturus as like an uncle. Growing up and schooling with my own father – and Darian’s – the three of them were best friends. But right now all I want is to pummel is distasteful expression into the ground.
Varian steps between us and gestures towards the office I had just been in. A mediator between us because I could feel Uncle Edmond’s magic gathering around him to challenge me. “Let’s just begin this so we can figure out what happened.”
Guards fall in line behind Mavyn but I grab her hand and tug her away from them. I place her ahead of me and lead her into the room with everyone else behind me. All the damn guards is overkill.
The Dean is the last one to enter and flicks his fingers to close the door. Varian approaches us and his red eyes pierce into me. The rest of the men stay behind him and wait. I know how these things go.
Turning my back to them, I face Mavyn and her pink eyes look even paler right now. Her under eyes are more pronounced and her skin is drained of most of its color. But she looks at me openly, trustingly, waiting for me to explain.
“Varian is going to be asking you some questions. In order for his abilities to properly take affect he needs to place his hand over your heart. He won’t enter your mind, but it will feel like it because he’s tapping into your emotions and spirit.”
Nothing about her changes when I say that. She just looks exhausted, but she dips her head. That’s when I take a step to the side and Varian approaches.
“Can you pull your shirt down?” he actually asks. I can count on one hand how many times his questions have sounded like actual questions and not demands. But I can see why now because panic flashes in Mavyn’s face.
Her hands tremble as she lifts them to her neckline and a shot of fiery rages fills my veins. Not only will she have to expose her scars to all these people – all thesemen– but Varian will have to touch her bare skin. He’ll be touching her scars as he pulls the truth from her.
Dejection slowly transforms her face and numbness dulls her eyes. I step to intervene but her deadened voice stops me.
“It’s fine.” She sounds like she’s preparing for her death. “It won’t hurt.”
Which I know she’s lying about but I’m stuck with needing to help and protect her and heeding to her words.
She pulls her collar down and silence fractures the room. The bitemark under her collarbone gets exposed, along with more scars, but it’s what’s right over her chest that stills the room. I hadn’t seen it before. Didn’t notice it among all her other scars when she had changed in front of me.
My vision goes in and out of focus but I reign it in for her. Because she had told me to get ahold of my true devil and so I will. But it peaks right on the surface of my conscious. Peering through my eyes even though I know his have not consumed my own eyes.
Right over her heart, in a perfect circle, are black scarred bitemarks. So many fang imprints he must have bit her from multiple angles to form the circle. So many blackclaimingbite-fucking-marks. And right over her heart.
