Page 142

“That’s not why I want to see him,” he says. “But you can always ask him while we are there.”

I push myself up onto my elbow. “Then why would you want to go there?”

Kylian sighs heavily. “Just before you passed out in the field,” he says slowly. “I saw something. I thought I imagined it, but Eagan saw it too.”

“Saw what?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” His brow creases. “She was . . . visible for just a moment, but she vanished the moment you collapsed.”

The breath leaves me in a rush. “She?” I repeat.

“Your mother.”

The words settle over me, pressing down on my chest. I look at my hands, and the memory from the field rushes back. Not the blood, the pain, or the gold light pouring from my palms. The feeling. The moment when the magic shifted from mine alone to something else, something guided. The sensation of hands pressing over my own. Warm, steady, sure. Hands I hadn’t felt since I was child.

“You felt her, didn’t you?” Kylian asks.

“I thought I felt my mother.” I wait for him to laugh and say I’m delusional, but he doesn’t. “I can’t explain it. I didn’t notice anything. But when the magic was flowing through the soil, I was trying to hold it steady, and it was as if her hands were on mine. It sounds insane, but I know it was her.”

Kylian watches me for a long moment. “Power is handed down through bloodlines,” he says. “When a mage dies, the magic doesn’t die with them. It passes to whoever is close enough and strong enough to carry it. Your mother’s power has been sitting inside you since the day she burned. I believe she was waiting for you to awaken it. For the door to open wide enough that she could reach through.”

The idea of it wraps around my chest and squeezes. My mother, present in my magic. Alive through the power I’ve spent my life hiding. Just waiting in the dark for me to stop being afraid of the light.

I sink back against the pillow and close my eyes, and when I open them, his body is above mine, one arm braced beside my head, the other resting against the mattress near my waist. His face is close enough that I can count the dark lashes framing his eerie crimson eyes.

My fingers move without permission. They find the line of his jaw and trace along it. His stubble is rough beneath my fingertips, and his eyes close at my touch.

“You seem to be handling your hunger since we got back here,” I say quietly, my fingers still moving along his jaw. “It has been days since you’ve fed.”

His eyes open. The red in them burns darker for a moment.

“I am ravenous,” he says. “I just don’t plan on being blasted again. Especially now I’ve seen how powerful you are.”

“Do I scare you, my king?” The laugh that escapes me is light and airy. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to take real enjoyment in anything that I had forgotten the sound of it.

Kylian doesn’t laugh. His gaze holds mine, and the humor drains from his face, replaced by something more serious. “You scared me from the moment I laid eyes on you.”

My fingers pause on his jaw. “You didn’t know what I was back then.”

“No.” His voice drops lower. “But I knew you were mine. And nothing scares me more than the idea of losing you.”

“Is this your way of sweet talking me into letting you feed off me?”

Kylian laughs, and the sound is so genuine and unexpected that it transforms his entire face. Then he buries his face in my neck.

“I don’t need words to get you to comply,” he chuckles, nipping at my neck.

His stubble drags across my skin, and the sensation is immediate and overwhelming. Not pain, not pleasure, something between the two that shoots down my spine and makes every nerve in my body stand at attention. I jerk sideways, my shoulder rising to protect my neck, and a sound escapes me that I refuse to call a squeal.

“Somebody is ticklish,” he murmurs against my throat.

The vibration of his voice combined with the rough scrape of his jaw makes my entire body contract. “Because your face feels like sandpaper.” My hands find his face and push. He doesn’t budge. Of course he doesn’t. Pushing a vampire is about as effective as pushing a stone wall, and he knows it, because he does it again. Deliberately.

He drags his jaw along the curve of my neck in a slow, purposeful scrape that has me writhing beneath him. My legs kick at the sheets. My hands shove uselessly at his shoulders as he continues to torture me with his face.

“Kye, stop it!”

My laughter is breathless as I try to shove his face away, and I don’t realize what I’ve said until the word is already out. I freeze beneath him. The laughter dies in my throat, and the heat rushes into my face with enough force to make my ears burn.