Page 21 of The Endless One

He tore through the veil of the world one more time and used some of her blood to do it. She groaned, but he knew without a doubt that she understood what he was doing. He had to get them away from here. Away from him.

Rushing through the portal that took blood from them both to work, he fell to his knees in the sands. He held her against his chest and dropped his head down onto her shoulder.

They took a moment, the two of them together. Just soaking in the knowledge that they were still here.

“Nightmare?” he murmured against her throat. “Are you still alive?”

“Wouldn’t you know if I was dead?”

Yes. He would. He’d always been so close to her, and he knew exactly what was going on with every heartbeat that burned in her chest. Elric had found her in that dying realm long before she could move on into the next. He reassured himself with that knowledge.

Even if she had died with Ajax, he would have brought her back. Elric was the only one who was the master of death, and he would have made damn well certain that she was still there in that realm. Even if he had to find another body to put her in.

Placing his hand over her heart, he sought that connection. He needed to hold it against himself, just to be assured that they were both safe.

But the warmth of that thread wasn’t easy to find. The connection between them had been instant from the moment he had seen her in his realm. He’d felt the connection of a new gravesinger and he had tied himself to her until… now.

His eyes snapped open in horror as he realized what Ajax had done. “Did you feel weaker around Ajax?”

“Yes.”

“Like you couldn’t access your magic?”

“Elric, you’re scaring me.” She leaned back and cupped his jaw with a bloody hand. “What is going on?”

“I can’t feel you anymore.”

She blinked a few times, a little crease forming between her eyes. “I can feel you, though. I summoned you during that ritual, didn’t I? We got away because I was able to summon you!”

Sorrow made it feel like someone had punched his stomach. “But I can’t feel you, Jessamine.”

He stared at her, trying to impress that there was something very wrong with this. He had always known where she was. That was how he’d found her time and time again. It was how he knew where she was in his realm as well. If she died again, he wasn’t certain he would be able to find her like this. There was nothing between them to guide him to her side now.

“What does that mean?” she whispered.

“I can’t save you anymore. I won’t know how to get to you. I don’t know where you are or how you’re feeling. I won’t even know if you’re dead.” Elric swallowed hard, trying to force the emotion down so he could tell her what this meant. “It means I don’t even know if you’re a gravesinger anymore.”

“The ritual. Some of his magic hit me before I ran. I don’t know what it was. It wriggled underneath my skin.” She struggled in his arms, clearly trying to get away from him. “Elric, something’s not right. He did something to me, even though the ritual wasn’t completed. I can feel it inside of me. Get it out. Get it out!”

He held on to her, struggling to keep her still. “Don’t panic, Jessamine. Let me look you over.”

“What if it’s worse than we thought? What if he somehow put her inside of me?” She spat the word “her” like it was a curse.

He didn’t know what would happen if they were too late. The Huntress was a force of nature who would probably enjoy being inside Jessamine’s body. There was a certain connection between god and host, even if the divine energy within their body decided not to share it. That connection was hard to deny for anyone.

Reaching out with his magic, he bent his head and focused on searching through her. Elric could sense other gods. He’d forgotten about this ability for such a long time, but all the gods knew what the others felt like. There was a strangeness to it. A tinge of magic that was easier to sense when they were closer to each other.

He looked through her entire being. There was a strangeness to Jessamine, but that had been brewing ever since they had made their tenuous deal. He’d known for a while that his magic inside of her was shifting and changing.

Her magic reacted to him like it always did. A soft touch, the lightest pressure of warmth. He was blessed that her magic saw him as a friend and a lover, because he had the sense it did not like many people. If there was ever a protector of his nightmare, it was his own dark power that had attached itself to her and grown far beyond his own reckoning.

“You’re much stronger,” he murmured as he shifted throughout her form. “Your magic is normally strong, and I don’t know if it grew because you were in danger or if something is… different.”

“Different?” she hissed. “Pull it out of me, Elric. Kill me, if you have to. I don’t want her anywhere inside of me.”

“It’s not her,” he said, finally opening his eyes and looking into her gaze. The terror filling her eyes was killing him, so he repeated, “It’s not her, Jessamine. I don’t sense any other god inside of you. It’s just that your magic is different. Something in that spell perhaps was preparing you to become a host. I’ve never seen that particular one done, and each god has a different way of creating them. The Huntress loves blood and pain, and I don’t know if that ritual would affect you because you were so close to it.”

She went boneless in his arms. Twin tears dripped down either side of her cheeks as she finally relaxed. “It’s not her.”