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“So far, I haven’t been given a reason not to. And that’s not an answer.”
“I don’t recall ye asking a question.”
“Why would you be willing to go against your master to protect me? Why do you care what happens to me at all?”
What if I tell her my suspicion and she freaks out?
Only one way to find out.
“I feel as if there is a connection between us. Like an unseen tether that binds us together.”
She takes another step forward and sends my undead heart racing.
“Ye feel it too. Don’t ye?” I turn my head slowly and watch her approach from the corner of my eye, careful not to spook her and ruin the moment.
“Is that your next question?” Josie asks.
Her gaze flicks to my lips and her breathing catches just a touch. So many emotions bombard her and—in turn—me. Our feelings have tangled together until I can’t tell what either of us is feeling.
“I’d like to try something,” I say quietly, turning to face her once more. “Just… stay as still as possible for me.”
I lift my hand slowly—painfully so—until only a few empty atoms of air separates us, and when my fingers brush against her pink hair, the curls bouncing against my touch, I inhale softly and stop breathing altogether.
Josephine stiffens but doesn’t pull away and something inside me sings with joy at the small win. She’s letting me touch her.
Her hair is just as silky as I thought it would be.
Deciding to push my luck, I take a strand of her hair where black meets pink and move it from her face, letting my touch linger a precious moment. This close, I finally get a good look at her eyes. Wide as a doe’s and dark as the darkest chocolate, full of fear and… remorse?
Just when I thought we were making progress, I catch a sudden switch in her emotions a split second before she swings her fist at me through the gap between the bars of her prison. I see it coming quick enough to avoid the punch, but I let her knuckles connect with my jaw.
It hurts her more than it hurts me.
Still, as she shakes out her fist, my first instinct is to retaliate—to show this witch who is in charge here, but as I look at her, something inside me shifts.
The fear in her eyes and the desperation to escape hold me motionless—a mistake, because it gives her the opportunity to strike.
A sharp pain in my chest draws my gaze downward to see metal protruding from my middle—one of the silver bars of the cell, melted and torn from where it had been cemented into the floor.
Josie holds the other end in a white-knuckled grip, breathing hard, her face only inches from mine as she leans her weight against the spear and drives it further into me until I cough up blood.
That can’t be good.
It won’t kill me—she missed my heart by a good four inches—but it hurts like a bitch.
I clutch at the hole in my chest, my fingers slipping against the blood oozing down the slick metal. Josephine lets go of the bar and raises her open palms toward me. She conjures a brutal wind that whips around us and shocks me with the amount of power she commands.
With a flick of her wrist, the current condenses to a single point until the gust slices through the air with a whoosh, and I swear it cuts through the ends of her hair, sending wisps of pink drifting toward the floor.
A stinging pain in my skull turns my vision white and I collapse to my knees, the end of the metal bar clanging against the concrete and sliding even deeper into me for one last stab.
Pain radiates through my body and I black out.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SEBASTIAN
I should be in my coffin, pleasantly in the grasp of daysleep. Dead to the world. Rune parted ways with me to do just that, but there is too much going on in my brain to shut it off. It would be like powering down Fintan’s computer while one of his video games is downloading. A definite no-go. Instead, I hope to ease my plagued mind and find some solace in creating before retiring to my chambers.
