Bu-bump. Bu-bump.
My sharpened senses recognized the pounding of a live heart at once. As beautiful and beguiling as any melody I’d ever heard.
Need.
Before my brain caught up, I was standing, slamming myself against the cursed copper bars of my cell door.Pain. The metal burned my palms, blistering on contact. I hissed and withdrew my hands, but I was grateful for the pain. It chased the thirst back enough that my rational mind could process the sight in front of me.
Amalthea. The one-eyed oracle. Her silver hair with blue undertones seemed to glow with the little light allowed, her dress simple yet ornate. My new eyes could make out every stitch of fabric. Her neck was exposed, her arms bare. I couldhearthe blood running through her veins. I would have sworn I could see her pulse beating in her wrists, on the column of her throat.
She drew closer, her gray eye surveying my cell. In contrast to her finery, I was still in the same tattered red gown I’d been wearing for however many days.
She was ten paces away when I snarled, “Don’t.”
Gods curse me, I sounded like an animal. My voice was cracked from disuse and the feral need to bite into her neck.
Her steps stopped, but she didn’t withdraw. She simply continued to look me over. There was no way her still-human sight could make out much with this scant amount of light, butI would have sworn they found the spot on the floor where the blood had dried.
Where I’d been contemplating licking the stone for a taste.
And here was Amalthea. Warm-blooded, a witch.
The beast inside me didn’t see a friend. Just a meal.
The rational part of me that fought for control… I wasn’t sure I saw a friend either.
“You need to drink, Samara.” Her words had the same lilting, confident tone they always did.
“And if I don’t?” I rasped. Would I die then? Before, I’d made vows of vengeance. Now, I would welcome an end with open arms.
“You’ll drink,” she replied, not answering the question.
Bitterness coated my tongue. “You’ve seen this with yourgifts? Like you saw Raphael biting me?”
She’d made it sound like he was going to bite me at the Tri-Lunar Eclipse Ceremony, which I’d pleaded I didn’t want. Instead, he’d bitten me after Titus stabbed me. Maybe that tricky language was why King Stormblood had hunted the oracles to extinction.
“You know you’re hard for me to see,” she said, her voice betraying no sign of offense. But I heard it—thebu-bumphad becomebu-bump-bumpas her pulse jumped at the accusation.
Or at the realization I was turning into a feral animal, a predator.
“So you haven’t seen me drink,” I hissed. I wouldn’t do it.
“You’re a fledgling, Samara. If you don’t drink, the transformation won’t hold.”
“I could turn back?” I said, feeling hope for the first time in days.
Her eyes softened with pity. “You’ll die, Samara. You’re already dead, on borrowed time. Unless you drink and turn.”
“I’d rather die.” Anything to make this thirst end. Anything but that…
She took one step forward. I wished I could have stepped back, but the predator now within my skin was tracking every step, calculating when she might be close enough for me to snatch.
“You’re not the first fledgling to feel that way.” Her tone was meant to be soothing. I drew no comfort from it. “You must drink. I thought perhaps, with you being so new to the thirst, a friend might be easier to take from. I don’t want to see you suffer.”
“A friend? After I poisoned your king?” My words were ugly. I just wanted her to leave me to the darkness of thirst and silence, before I could hurt her too.
The oracle’s heart was racing now, the bounding rhythm nearly drowning out her next words. “I know you, Samara. I’m sure there’s an explanation, one likely rife with pain. Letting yourself die won’t solve anything.”
She was right, it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t solve the fact I’d fallen for Titus’s ploy and poisoned Raphael, who might well be dying even now.
