Page 44 of On Broken Bonds

Before I can reconsider, I close the remaining distance between us.

Nyx goes very still. So do I. Neither of us speaks. Then I take her hand in mine. My thumb brushes lightly against her knuckles as I lift her injured finger, unable to look away from that impossible smear of blood.

“Forgive me,” I murmur.

And before either of us can think better of it, I bring her fingertip to my lips.

The instant I taste her blood, the world tilts. It rushes through me like a shock of cold water, like plunging into a lake in the dead of winter. Every sense sharpens at once. My pulse pounds. My thoughts scatter. The night air feels brighter, cleaner, charged with impossible energy.

Nothing could have prepared me for this.

The blood itself is rich and intoxicating, but it's the feeling that follows that truly steals my breath. It's as though I've been walking through life half asleep and only now have I been jolted awake.

For one dizzying moment, all I can think about is her.

When Lady Nyx leans away from me, letting out a low noise in her throat, I realize I’ve overstepped, and I pull my lips from her finger.

“Forgive me,” I rasp, stepping back and putting some much-needed space between us.

I shouldn’t be out here in the first place, let alone tasting her, giving my addled brain even more reasons to stray to her.

“I…” she says, and when she lifts those bright eyes to mine, it takes all the restraint in my body to keep from taking her here. In more ways than one.

Drinking from a person is highly personal, highly potent. A bond forms, however slight. But not like this. This is different. Our bond, formed by my saliva in her, her blood in me, has already snapped into place with a strength that’s shocking, an introduction of what could come if I continued drinking her. Right now, with just the lightest touch, she looks like she might melt into my arms and tip her head to the sky so I could take from her to my heart’s content.

“You should walk away,” I say, instead of commanding her to come back to me, “while you still can.”

I’m not sure if I’m talking about me and her, or the Trials, but she takes the obvious meaning from both.

She shakes her head, the wisps of hair framing her face floating up in the cool night air. “That’s not an option. My sister is the Courted Prize. If I walk away, she’ll die.”

I don’t like that at all, and swallow, looking away from her as I joke, “Right. And when you die in the Trials, how will that improve her situation?”

“It won’t,” she says, with the voice of a woman who has already considered all the possible outcomes, and knows which one is most likely. “But I have to try. If I do not try, then I’ll die anyway, as a stranger to myself.”

Of course she’s doing this for such a pure reason.

Much more virtuous than my own.

There’s the loud boom of Valtor’s laughter through the grand windows of the ballroom, and Lady Nyx startles.

“Go back inside,” I say, trying to shake away the serious feeling of foreboding that wells in my stomach at the idea of her in the competition. “Only tell them I helped you if you want us both smited.”

“Is smote the correct way to say that?”

“I’m not sure it will matter much when we’re smited,” I volley back, and she shoots me a small smile before turning and hurrying inside, the little golden flower held protectively against her chest.

Her small smile only means one thing. She knows there's no point in us being friends. Tomorrow, when the competition begins, chances are I'll either have to watch her die by another competitor or kill her myself.

Getting attached to this woman would be a mistake.

I decide to take a walk around the garden, to breathe in the fresh night air and wash myself clean of this moment, but even hours later, her taste still lingers on my tongue and my cock remains painfully hard.

14

Nyx

Valtor is still laughing when I step back into the ballroom.